AN ARMY OF NONE
Maliki’s crackdown on the Mehdi army to retake Basra has put to the test the Iraqi troops – more than 15,000 of them - British and U.S. military advisors qualified as battle ready. They were not. They were incompetent troops sent in to fight with inadequate gear and insufficient water, food, and ammunition; the Iraqi army’s 14th division, for instance, lacked 74 per cent of the equipment necessary to be combat ready. The Mehdi army, a militia that is trained and financed by Iran, stalled the Iraqi army’s offensive in most of Basra by dividing and isolating its units, thus cutting their logistical lines. Iraqi units were unable to sustain the operational tempo necessary to win such offensive; they kept running out of ammunition. Additionally, the Iraqi army was beset by a high rate of desertions precipitating its defeat; one Iraqi brigade suffered 1,200 desertions within the first two hours of operations. The 1,300 men strong Iraqi police in Basra refused to deploy into the city.
At the last minute, when Maliki realized that his initiative (retaking Basra) was based on alarmingly poor judgment, he lobbied to have a cease fire brokered. The combat operations ended in a stalemate.
The second and ongoing operation in Basra is yielding positive results. The Iraqi army has regained control over most of the city, but only because the brunt of the fighting and the uninterrupted logistical support to sustain it are spearheaded by U.S. and British troops. British troops are indeed back to patrolling the street of Basra only months after officially handing it over to the Iraqi government.
Despite a noticeable involvement of Iraqi forces in tactical operations in Basra, Baghdad, and elsewhere in Iraq (except in Kurdistan where the Peshmerga forces have proved more apt at maintaining security,) the security situation is worsening. The lead cause for such deterioration is the Maliki’s inability to deal politically and militarily with the Sadrist, which constitutes an opposition to reckon with for his party, whose support base and capabilities project them as a parallel political and military entity in Iraq. The situation is turning into such shambles that Bush announced he was suspending U.S. troop reduction in Iraq.
Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008
