Inexcusable Failure -Progress in Training the Iraqi Army and Security Forces as of Mid-July 2004

The Department of Defense has provided new data on the development of Iraqi military and security forces as of July 13, 2004. The new data provide information on the equipment effort for the first time, and they break the manpower totals out into the new categories of Iraqi military and security forces create since April 2004, and the end of the CPA on June 30, 2004.

These data both confirm long standing problems in the effort to training and equip the Iraqi security forces, and provide details on critical problems in the security program that have never before been made public. They document an inexcusable level of failure on the part of the US, and particularly the CPA and Department of Defense, in developing effective Iraqi capabilities to establish security in Iraq.

One can argue the decision to disband the Iraqi military forces. The Iraqi military had largely disintegrated by mid-April 2003. Most of the regular forces dependent on conscripts had collapsed because of mass desertions; the heavier units in the regular army were largely ineffective and suffered from both desertions and massive looting. The Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard units have been defeated in the field and were too political to preserve.

The fact remains, however, that the US-led coalition cannot be excused for its failure to reconstitute effective security forces and police, for trying to restrict the development of Iraqi armed forces to a token force to defend Iraq’s borders against external aggression, or for ignoring the repeated warnings from US military advisory teams about problems in the flow of equipment and in creating the necessary facilities. The US failed to treat the Iraqis as partners in the counterinsurgency effort for nearly a year, and did not attempt to seriously train and equip Iraqi forces for proactive security and counterinsurgency mission until April 2004 – nearly a year after the fall of Saddam Hussein and two-thirds of a year after a major insurgency problem began to emerge.