Iraq's Iffy Army

We hear a lot these days that while Iraq's police are ethnically-based and essentially extensions of militia, the army is a different story. So exactly how broad-based is Iraq's army?

For the first time, I can across some actual stats on it, and I suspect you're not going to be to be hearing them in the president's progress reports anytime soon. Here's what strategy guru Anthony Cordesman concluded:

Only two of the 10 divisions as yet have something approaching sectarian and ethnic balance, and even this is weak. About 60% are Shi'ite dominated, and 20% are Kurdish influenced.

In other words, 80 percent of Iraq's army is dominated by one group or another--and those are the forces we're optimistic about.

Background: That quote comes from a "paper" Cordesman  sent out via email but hasn't posted on the Web. And no there weren't any footnotes or source listed.

Comments

[Steve]

I don't at yet think this is a big deal. If the country is 60% Shia, 20% Kurd and 20% Sunni, then the law of averages would make units about the same, which is what this guy says.

Otherwise, all units would be Shia dominated, if based on population proportions.

You can't have it both ways. Either some units will be Shia dominated or all will be.

[Jamison1]

Steve's right here.

[Eric Umansky]

I don't think so. If the Iraqi army were 60 percent Shiite, 20 percent kurd, and 20 percent Sunni, that'd be great. But it's not really the point. What you need to have is some sembalance of ethnically balanced units. That is, there's a big difference between having 60 percent of units all shiite and having all units 60 percent shiite. The latter is great, the former would amount to a kind of ethnic segregation.

Imagine if in the U.S. you had all-white units making up 70 percent of the army, all black-units making up 15 percent, and all hispanic units making up 15 percent. It'd be perfectly porportioned to the population and perfectly nuts.

[Anton Traversa]

This is a problem but not really that surprising. One of the US Army's biggest successes in Afghanistan has been to prevent Afghans from serving in military units stationed near their hometowns. I'd like to think that a similar approach would be used here - but maybe because Iraq is so much larger and the need for an army is so much more urgent they skipped that. Since the sunni-wide insurgency is relatively subdued, though there are pockets of resistance (Shiite as well, as recent events show), after Zarqawi's little circus is shut down it would probably be prudent to reorganize units.

Still, I don't think it's as simple as Eric is saying. Shiite dominated is a far cry from being Shiite entirely. Since most of the regions in Iraq are indeed Shiite dominated (but not 100%), there is evidence to suggest the army reflects the geographic spread of the population. In truth, if one were to spread around units to make sure it was perfectly multiethnic, there would be no Kurd or Sunni dominated units, they'd all be Shiite dominated, technically.