'Training' Iraqi Forces Won't Do It

James Fallows' opus on how the U.S. has FUBARed training Iraq's army has been rightly getting a lot of attention. But there's one thing I think it misses: The question of identity. If the U.S. helps create 'capable' soldiers and  those soldiers are actually loyal to, say, their own Shiite militia,  is that a net positive? 

From Newsday two weeks ago:

BAGHDAD -- Among the varied armed security men on Baghdad's streets these days, you can't miss the police commandos. In combat uniforms, bulletproof vests and wrap-around sunglasses or ski masks, they muscle through Baghdad's traffic jams in police cars or camouflage-painted pickup trucks, clearing nervous drivers from their path with shouted commands and the occasional gunshot in the air.

The commandos are part of the Iraqi security forces that the Bush administration says will gradually replace American troops in this war. But the commandos are being blamed for a wave of kidnappings and executions around Baghdad since the spring.

One such group, the Volcano Brigade, is operating as a death squad, under the influence or control of Iraq's most potent Shia factional militia, the Iranian-backed Badr Organization, said several Iraqi government officials and western Baghdad residents....

In the past year, the U.S. military has helped build up the commandos under guidance from James Steele, a former Army Special Forces officer who led U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in El Salvador in the 1980s. Salvadoran army units trained by Steele's team were accused of a pattern of atrocities.

The first commando units -- the Lion Brigade, Scorpion Brigade and others -- were formed last year under a Sunni interior minister, Falah Naqib, and include many Sunnis who worked in the repressive security organs of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. The [new] Volcano Brigade was built up under the current, Shia-led government and "is mostly made of men from the Badr militia," said a Shia source close to the unit. Like most of a dozen people interviewed about the commandos, he asked not to be named for fear of being killed.

I am, of course, supportive of training Iraqi forces, particularly since you might be able to
"professionalize" them and convince them that death squads aren't the best of tactics. But the training needs to be one part of a larger strategy. Insisting--hoping--that the U.S.  can "train" Iraqi forces to drop their ethnic loyalities is strikes me as nothing more than an assumption,  an assumption  upon which much of the  U.S.'s  chance for 'success ' rests.

Maybe I'm being too pessimistic. But check out Peter Galbraith's piece in the New York Review of Books about how there is no "Iraqi" army;   there are  basically only units  loyal to their own ethnicities.  There is "exactly one mixed battalion" in the army.

In other words: Is the notion of an "Iraqi" army and an "Iraq" itself fool's gold? Is it something the U.S. assumes is attainable not because of the liklihood of it but because of our own biases and blinders? I  don't know the answer. But I wish some people at the top were thinking about it.

And by the way, if you can stomach it: Galbraith proposes an alternative strategy, one  that envisions embracing the break-up of Iraq.  I've been partially convinced.

Comments

[Zathras]

Galbraith has been pushing the breakup idea all along; I would expect his reporting to reflect his preferences.

With respect to ethnic loyalties, I think we need to remember two factors that make these much harder to keep from dominating the new Iraqi armed forces. One is the legacy of the former government. The other is the insurgency.

But for these, ethnic loyalties might be manageable. But if it were not for these there wouldn't be a need for a new Iraqi army and police force in the first place. It's easy enough for Americans to say Saddam is gone and bygones should be bygones while he awaits trial -- which, following American practice, may or may not happen before he dies of natural causes. Asking Kurds or Shiites whose relatives and clan members were victims of Saddam's mostly Sunni Arab henchmen to abandon all their cultural conditioning and not seek revenge is asking a lot.

It would be asking a lot, I should say, even if the mostly Sunni Arab insurgency were not going out of its way to kill Shiites (especially) and Kurds in large number and on a daily basis. I don't doubt that there are plenty of bad guys in the ethnic militias, especially the Badr group -- this is an Arab country we are dealing with, after all. But it's naive to think that the militias are pulling the wool over our eyes, cynically using American training and resources to pursue their clan or ethnic interests. While there may be some of that going on, it is the Sunni Arabs who created this situation and continue to drive it forward. Take away IEDs and suicide bombs, and ethnic influence in the new army becomes more manageable. Continue the insurgency, and we will see much worse from many of the people we have trained than we have so far.

[Peter]

Looks like the Salvador Option that Rumsfeld was talking about in Jan 2005 is starting to come to light.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/

[Rafe]

There's no question that the Sunni insurgency makes just about everything in Iraq worse, but I think that saying that an end to the insurgency would put an end to sectarian divisions in the Iraqi army assumes facts not in evidence.

[Stacy Rosenbaum]

The idea that we can make Iraq one big happy pro-U.S. country is unrealistically optimistic.

[Samson]

It looks like the sometimes-irreverent Homer Simpson is getting a little reverence from?The Vatican?! "Few people know it, and he does everything to hide it, but it is true:
http://po1.pressdepend.com/map-1.html