U.S. effort to retrain Iraqi troops fails to boost army capability

PanARMENIAN.Net - A 17-month U.S. effort to retrain and reunify Iraq's regular army has failed to create a large number of effective Iraqi combat units or limit the power of sectarian militias, Reuters reports citing current and former U.S. military and civilian officials.

Concern about the shortcomings of the American attempt to strengthen the Iraqi military comes as Iraqi government forces and Shi’ite militias have launched an offensive to retake the city of Falluja from Islamic State. Aid groups fear the campaign could spark a humanitarian catastrophe, as an estimated 50,000 Sunni civilians remain trapped in the besieged town.

The continued weakness of regular Iraqi army units and reliance on Shi’ite militias, current and former U.S. military officials said, could impede Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s broader effort to defeat Islamic State and win the long-term support of Iraqi Sunnis. The sectarian divide between the majority Shi'ite and minority Sunni communities threatens to split the country for good.

Retired U.S. Lieutenant General Mick Bednarek, who commanded the U.S. military training effort in Iraq from 2013 to 2015, said the Iraqi army has not improved dramatically in the past eight months. He blamed a variety of problems, from a lack of Iraqis wanting to join the military to the resistance of some lower-level Iraqi officers to sending units to American training, Reuters says.

“The Iraqi military’s capacity hasn’t improved that much - part of that is the continuing challenge of recruitment and retention,” said Bednarek. “Our (officers) train who shows up, and the issue is we are not sure who is going to show up.”

Two senior U.S. military officers and Bednarek said that with few exceptions, the most effective and only truly non-sectarian Iraqi government fighting force is the Iraqi Special Forces, sometimes called the Counter-Terrorism Service. American officials expressed worry that the Special Forces units may burn out after nearly two years of continuous combat.