November 8,2008:
American military advisors are dismayed at how many units of the Iraqi
military are loyal to one political faction or another, and not the country
they have sworn to defend. As bad as that is, it's just a sign that the new
Iraqi armed forces are suffering from many past problems. The big one is that the
Iraqi military was never "the army of the nation." That is, the many
factions in the country were represented as separate military units. For
example, even before Saddam came to power in the 1970s, it was recognized that
different political, ethnic and religious factions "owned" units in
the armed forces. Even the air force, which contained the most educated and
"modern" personnel, was not immune from this. Each squadron was
staffed with men of similar political beliefs. That way, the leader of the
government had no doubts about how loyal, or not, each unit would be in a
political crises.
When Saddam
came along, he continued past practices, but with some changes. Saddam created
a new army (the Republican Guard) within the army. The Republican Guard was
staffed with troops who were mainly loyal to Saddam. That was nothing new, but
Saddam came up with some new ideas to expand the pool of people he could depend
on. Basically, he bribed or terrorized men from the Sunni Arab minority to be
loyal to him, not just to the Sunni Arabs. This was always a work in progress,
as there were many factions among the Sunni Arabs, and Saddam was constantly
killing, exiling or jailing Sunni Arab henchmen who changed their minds.
The new
Iraqi army is mainly Shia Arab, and there are a lot of Shia factions (based on
religious attitudes, political ideas, tribe or a charismatic leaders). The
government tries to keep control over this mélange by constantly shifting
around the senior leaders. What most Iraqis fear is another military takeover,
an event that is all too common in the region. A lot of Iraqis see this as an
inevitability, and American military and political advisors are trying to come
up with a fix. So far, there isn't one.