Reasonably well-led, adequately armed with light weapons and competent in a stand-up fight, yet constrained by internal and external factors, the 10th Division is typical of Iraqi Army formations — and its progress over the years parallels that of non-police Iraqi forces in general. Since the total disbanding of the Iraqi Army in 2003, coalition trainers have painstakingly recruited and trained up more than 129,000 Iraqi troops in 10 divisions, slowly transforming a slouching mob into an army that, by regional standards, isn’t half bad.
So begins my profile of the Basra–based Iraqi Army 10th Division over at Military.com. Between the lines is this controversial claim: that the total disbanding of the Iraqi Army in the wake of their 2003 defeat wasn’t the critical failure that others have claimed.
The best treatment of this debate remains Michael Gordon’s 2004 piece in The New York Times, in which he calls the decision to disband “one of the most contentious issues of the post-war.”
Mr. [Walter] Slocombe [an aide to Paul Bremer] argues that the move was necessary to establish an Iraqi military that was not tainted by corruption and was acceptable to ethnic groups that had long been repressed by Saddam Hussein’s military. He also says that it was the only possible course because so many Iraqi soldiers had fled their posts and drifted back into the population and military bases had been picked clean by looters.
I agree. These days, the Iraqi Army is our best ally in the fight against insurgents, criminals and terrorists in Iraq. The army is only this good because they’re not the army we defeated in 2003.
(The Army’s counterparts in the police force are very nearly insurgents themselves, they’re so corrupt and inept. Note that the police force never got disbanded and rebuilt the way the army did.)
On the other hand, the time it took to rebuild the Iraqi Army was a window for the insurgency to gain strength. And, as Gordon explains, the move had a moral effect:
“It was absolutely the wrong decision,” said Col. Paul Hughes of the Army, who served as an aide to Jay Garner, a retired three-star general and the first civilian administrator of Iraq. “We changed from being a liberator to an occupier with that single decision,” he said. “By abolishing the army, we destroyed in the Iraqi mind the last symbol of sovereignty they could recognize and as a result created a significant part of the resistance.”
I see Hughes’ point, but I remain convinced that disbanding the Iraqi Army was the only way to ever have a good Iraqi Army.
What do you think?
–David Axe
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I beleive that those that would have retained the previous Iraqi Army have no concept of the damage that would followed when the Shia majority tried to control a Sunni army. Convenience is not always smart.
You can’t say for sure what would have been better, but the results of disbanding the Iraqi army have been less than disheartening: looting of the entire country from museums to ammunition depots; responsibility for security transferred completely to the U.S.; unemployed, disgruntled and fully trained soldiers who were in effect encouraged to insurgencies, etc.
The remarks on corrpution are laughable when compared to the billions thrown to no-bid contracts, security contractors, $1,000 a day mercenaries, not to mention the billions that have literally evaporated without a trace. I won’t even get started on multi-year record profits for oil companies and defense contractors …
Finally, corruption is relative. One culture’s corruption is another’s business standard. Think about top government officials who came straight from corporations with large government contracts and who will move into lucrative lobbying careers as soon as their terms of office are over.
What about the stupendous amount of money spent on elections – why would anyone spend millions to get elected to a job that pays $150,000?
We didn’t need to disband the entire army in order to reform and rebuild it.
It took ten years to denazify the Wehrmacht and field the Bundeswehr under NATO. Very few senior officers of Saddam’s armed forces could have passed a background check.
Didn’t Saddam’s army demobilize itself, and the gripe is that Garner and Bremer let them go instead of trying to remuster it? What use would they have been?
The Republican Guard and Fedayeen Saddam planned all along to run away and fight again another day
Whether the Iraqi army sucks or not is pretty much irrelevant if there’s no authority (either a functioning Iraqi gov’t or the US military) to direct them. If that authority goes away, you’ll see individual Iraqi army units joining up with whichever militia is most convenient.
The disbanding of the Iraqi Army, like everything else in this horrendous folly, could have gone much better but for the pervasive contempt and blind vision of this Administration. The Oz-like life in the Green Zone and the emphasis on ideological purity in selecting CPA personnel were symptomatic of a larger problem of disdain.
Col. Huges’ contention has merit, however the decision to disband the Army was a good one for all the reasons mentioned in the post. I think that the Iraqi psyche would have recovered, or at least would have been no worse off.
The real failure, and one most often overlooked, is the decision on how to proceed with re-constituting the Army. Emphasis was placed on numbers at the expense of training time, unit cohesion, and good leadership. In effect, quantity over quality.
The devastating consequence of suddenly disbanding the army was not that Iraq suddenly had no army — it was that the men who had been in the army suddenly had no paycheck.
Good Morning Folks,
One point over looked here and it might end up being the major reason why disbanding the Iraqi Army by Bremmer in 2003 was such a colossal blunder was that it provided the mony, cadre and early foot soldiers for what became the insurgents.
It is no secret that most of the ranking members of Saddam,s military were/are Sunni Baathists, they were the ones in charge who overnight found themselves on the outs. Al Zarqawi and his embryo terrorist organization managed to form an unatural relationship under the banner of getting the U.S. with these folks. The rest of this story is writen in U.S. blood.
To quote Gen. Tommy Frank: “Paul Bremmer is thedumbists sin of a bit** who was ever born.” History is showing that this not to bright himself General was on the money.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
If I were Garner and Bremmer, I probably would have disbanded Saddam’s army as well. The organization was simply too corrupt to keep and would have probably fallen apart over the following year or two.
For me, the critical question is how the CPA went about disbanding the Iraqi army. My impression is that Bremmer and the military simply told the Iraqi troops to go home. I bet if they had taken the time to effectively demobilize Saddam’s army (i.e. full UN-style disarmament, demobilization and reintegration program), things would have turned out differently.
DD&R is a critical process. If you muck it up, it sometimes takes decades to reverse the damage. It seems like we didn’t try very hard to collect or buy back the Iraqi army’s weapons when the disbanding order went out.
I saw the Iraqi Army firsthand in 1991. There were really two armies. The Iraqi regulars were worse than any army I could have imagined. Poor equipment, zero discipline, terrible training, horrible leadership, no will to fight at all. They basically disbanded themselves in 1991 and again in 2003
I would agree with you Axe
I think disbanding the Iraqi military did end the shorterm answer but it was nessecary to do to prove to the Shia/Kurds that this time we actually had good intent unlike 91′.
The Kurds/Shia are the majority of Iraq by far 80%+ so if Democracy or even something close to it was the goal dismantling the IA was critical.
The Iraqi Army is getting real close to were they need to be. It takes time to train a officer core something only Sunni were allowed to learn in the old Dictatorship Iraq. People often forget that before the Mullahs overran Iran the Shia were a very moderate form of Islam that was a strong ally. They can be such again if we don’t lose heart.
In management books, they discuss the “honeymoon period” as key to establishing your authority. People give you the benefit of the doubt for brief period after a change in leadership, and the precedents you set then while color your entire tenure, even if your initial mistakes are ultimately corrected.
The U.S. military failed to heed this lesson, by not taking the looting and disorder that took place in the early days after the invasion seriously. What mattered was not so much the actual damage done in those few days, as the precedent that it set that anarchy would be tolerated under the new regime.
Disbanding the Iraqi Army could have been a good decision, if the Coalition had sufficient forces committed in impose real law and order until it was replaced. Military planners had recommended a force in the 400,000-500,000 troop range for this very purpose.
Another decision which in hindsight was very damaging was the manner in which the Iraqi Army was disbanded. Idle hands are the Devil’s tools. A better choice would have been to disarm the Iraqi Army, to have continued to pay them and honor the Iraqi nation’s financial obligations to them, and to put them to work rebuilding the country, which would have helped the less political people in their ranks buy into the occupation.
Disbanding the old Iraqi Army was also a way to have a GOOD insurgency. All those battle-wise officers and NCOs and veterans of the 8-year war with Iran, humiliated and jobless, were able to construct a first-rate urban gurrilla force.
At this point I think we need to embrace our Iranian brothers and jointly back the Shiite militias. The surest road to peace is through Iranian and US cooperation.
Best wishes,
Barry O’Connell
“The Iraqi Army is getting real close to were they need to be.”
All is going well in Iraq. All we need is time.
How much time are you willing to give? I ask in all seriousness. Are the war supporters here willing to give it 5 years, 7 years? How long?
And, given the problems with recruitment, real problems that were only overcome by raising the age limit twice and offering fat bonus’s, can our volunteer Army sustain a 5 year commitment in Iraq, plus Afghanistan?
I for one think disbanding the Iraqi army was a huge mistake. However, it pales in comparison to sending in too few troops to provide security for the general population.
Lack of security means reconstruction can’t progress as it should. Lack of progress and lack of security translates into lack of confidence in both the U.S. and Iraqi security forces. It would be the same in any country.
Joint U.S./Iraqi Army patrols, under martial law, should have begun almost immediately after “major combat operations” had ceased.
A “cash for weapons” program could have put a lot of Iraqis on the prowl for weapons caches. Money spent on a program like that would have been a pittance compared to what we will pay for caring for the soldiers and Marines who were wounded by those weapons.
Police forces are not intended to provide security against heavily armed militias. The Iraqi police forces should have been pulled out, reconstituted, trained, and equipped. Then they could have been re-introduced gradually to hold areas that had been swept and cleared by the military. From that point, they could function as the eyes and ears for security forces.
All of this is just hot air now. The U.S. will not commit the troops needed to get the job done at this stage. It’s too late to revamp the police forces. It’s WAY too late for a “cash for weapons” program.
The hope now is that the Iraqi army will be able to do what the American military was not allowed to do. Place your bets, gentlemen.
I absolutely believe this was the right thing to do in disbanding the Iraqi Army, there would have been more corruption then their currently is. After speaking with hundreds of Iraqi’s, they seem to agree that if Saddams forces were left in charge, there would currently be even greater casualties inside Iraq and on Coalition forces, simply due to their own resentment of “losing the war” to the people you are now standing beside trying to fight with in order to secure a country that was basically was just lost due to the Iraqi Armies inability, or lack or support to fight the incoming coalition forces.
I personally believe we did the right thing by disbanding the Army, I think a greater problem lies in not securing the vast amount of arms caches found throughout Iraq that are currently still being deployed around Iraq in order to inflict as many casualties as possible in order to keep the media spewing “another deadly blast” day in and day out.
The coalition forces could kill 300 known terrorist, but if terrorist manage to blow up a market place of 30 people, the news still reads “300 Terrorist Killed as a Deadly Blast rips through a Market Place killing 30 Innocent”
Despite the fact those 2 most likely have nothing to do with one another. But yet, thats what the media plays, and the viewers have been forced to believe no good comes out of Iraq, regardless of what happens.
The Iraqi army killed about 100,000 Shiites under Saddam. If it hadn’t been disbanded would we have been able to get the majority Shiite parties on board towards elections? If the Shiites had been unhappy with a US occupation that kept the Sunni army in place and had started their own insurgency would the Sunni army have been sent in to crack down? How in the world would you ever get all parties to participate in elections. With minority Sunnis still making up the majority of the army including it’s experienced officers, how would you get them to stop thinking about conducting a coup after the US draws down?
My point is that there’s a whole lot of consequences to not disbanding the army which a lot of folk are not taking into account.
The Iraqi army killed about 100,000 Shiites under Saddam. If it hadn’t been disbanded would we have been able to get the majority Shiite parties on board towards elections? If the Shiites had been unhappy with a US occupation that kept the Sunni army in place and had started their own insurgency would the Sunni army have been sent in to crack down? How in the world would you ever get all parties to participate in elections. With minority Sunnis still making up the majority of the army including it’s experienced officers, how would you get them to stop thinking about conducting a coup after the US draws down?
My point is that there’s a whole lot of consequences to not disbanding the army which a lot of folk are not taking into account.
Disbanding the army was not a good Idea. The proper thing to do was to go after the officers that commited crimes and take them out of the arm forces and reform the armforces. Over 100,000 iraqi soldiers most were likely just ordinary people that got sucked in for many reasons so there was not need for total disbanding when they would recruit from the same population group afterward. What was needed was a transformation/reformation and selection process where soldier of good qualities would remain. This required reviews of of their records. Recruitment of other minorities into the arm forces would also be prioritised. There were many positive ways to reform. One partial disbanding where the top officers were let go with their pensions intact. Shuffling of officers to ensure that the previouse structure is diminished and retraining. A new code of conduct implemented and ensured by american soldiers and american military police forces integrated into the Iraqi forces.
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