Well That Would Explain Part of the Iraqi Army’s Pathetic Performance

[Valin]

National Review/The Corner:

Patrick Brennan

December 3, 2014

 

It was disturbing — if not genuinely surprising — when earlier this year large portions of the Iraqi army fled in the face of the advance of the Islamic State, allowing the group to take over large swaths of territory across the country’s northern half. Well, if you were wondering how hundreds of thousands of American-trained and -equipped troops can turn out to be so ineffective, one explanation is that 50,000 of them didn’t exist. Loveday Morris of the Washington Post:

 

The Iraqi army has been paying salaries to at least 50,000 soldiers who don’t exist, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Sunday, an indication of the level of corruption that permeates an institution that the United States has spent billions equipping and arming. . . .

 

Abadi, who took power in September, is under pressure to stamp out the graft that flourished in the armed forces under his predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki. Widespread corruption has been blamed for contributing to the collapse of four of the army’s 14 divisions in June in the face of an offensive by Islamic State extremists.

 

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Abadi seems more interested in that than Maliki, who was a committed Shiite sectarian from the start, ever was, but it’s going to take more than one committed prime minister, if we even have that. (One piece of good news today: The Iraqi central government has reached a new revenue-sharing deal with the Kurdish Regional Government, which has always been a point of conflict — the deal should make cooperation between the two parties on all matters easier, after they’ve struggled to work with each other to confront the Islamic State over the last year.)