No. 198 Strategic Forum June 2003 Institute for National Strategic Studies National Defense University Building an Iraqi Defense Force by Joseph McMillan The reconstruction and reform of the been not only the prominence of the armed Key Points Iraqi armed forces will inevitably take place in forces, but also the proliferation of security ith the demise of the Saddam the context of both Iraq’s present and past. services which have introduced a baneful 4 Hussein regime, a high priority Saddam Hussein and his predecessors, going logic to Iraq’s political life. W must be the rebuilding of the Iraqi back to the creation of the state, have left Iraq From the beginning, to be an officer was armed forces. The United States must super- a legacy of endemic domestic political vio- one of the main paths to political power and vise and assist in this task, but the template lence, dysfunctional civil-military relations, social advancement in Iraq. With the exception for the new force should not be the American and, in recent decades, an ideology of un- of the royal family, the makers of the Kingdom model—a joint, highly trained, all-volunteer remitting hostility to virtually every one of of Iraq were predominantly former officers of force that emphasizes quality over size. Iraq Iraq’s neighbors. the Ottoman Imperial Army, mainly Sunni does not need and cannot produce such a The use of Iraqi armed forces for internal Arabs from modest families who rose to the top U.S.-style force. repression is often associated with Saddam. through military service.5 Eight of the 22 prime What Iraq does need is a military that Most people are aware of the brutal 1987–1989 ministers under the monarchy and all 4 presi- provides for self-defense while complement- Anfal campaign, which resulted in the system- dents of the republic before Saddam were ing political reformation—or at least not atic slaughter of at least 50,000 Kurdish men, career military men. Their combined tenure in 1 undermining it. What the region and the world women, and children and ethnic cleansing office covered 43 of the 58 years from the need is the assurance that the new Iraqi operations in southern Iraq in the early 1990s installation of the first Iraqi cabinet in 1921 military will not threaten the peace anew. that caused the deaths or forced displacement until Saddam assumed full power in 1979. At 2 Shaping a new force’s capabilities in of over 200,000 Marsh Arabs. Though Saddam least 10 times in Iraq’s history, the army inter- the short term is therefore far less important certainly escalated the army’s role as an agent vened to change the government, either by than creating institutions by which a legiti- for repressing the Iraqi people, he did not actual coup, threatened coup, or political mate civilian government can control and originate it. On the contrary, this was one of pressure. Even when civilian politicians headed monitor the development, funding, and em- the main purposes for which the army was the government, the officer corps was the most 3 ployment of the military and ensuring the developed. From the 1930s onward, the army important base of political support. In several development within the new military of atti- carried out summary executions of combatants cases, civilian prime ministers served simply as tudes and patterns of behavior that reinforce and noncombatants alike, razing of villages, front men for cabals of officers. the new constitutional political order at and aerial bombardment to suppress any and With these officers in the vanguard, the home and peace and stability abroad. all challenges to the authority of the central ruling elite in Baghdad developed an intensely These goals can be met by a force that government, even by such numerically in- centralizing, nationalistic, authoritarian is based on conscription, which is the re- significant groups as the Assyrians and Yazidis. ideology that justified the use of force—and gional norm, provided that it is led by a new As the historian Charles Tripp observes: hence of the army—as an indispensable and more inclusive officer corps and shaped The use of violence to suppress dissent, much component of national development. This by a recast military education system. The of which took violent form itself, has been principle, along with the corollary that the resulting active force of about 350,000— reproduced and elaborated by central gov- military should be actively involved in politics, considerably smaller than the combined ernments in Baghdad since the foundation was propagated to new generations of officers regular and irregular forces before the war— of the state. Indeed, control of the means of through their training at the Iraqi Military would be sufficient for defense against exter- violence has been one of the lures for those Academy.6 It was in this overheated praetorian nal threats without posing a threat to Iraq’s who seized the state apparatus. The result has milieu that younger officers developed the neighbors. “free officers” movement that would oust the No. 198, June 2003 Strategic Forum 1 monarchy in 1958, and in which still younger Social Attitudes Of course, American officials engaged in the ones would orchestrate the coup that brought rebuilding effort will need to be aware that Like any military force, the Iraqi armed the Ba’ath to power 10 years later. such attitudes will have an enormous impact forces reflected to some degree the society from on what is politically sustainable. which they sprang. Iraq enters its new era with Saddam’s Legacy a population that has been immersed in a cult Until the rise of Saddam in the early of militarism. In emulation of the European The Burden of History 1970s, Iraqi governments did not exercise fascist regimes of the day, compulsory military Even if Iraqis have a low opinion of their civilian control over the military; the military training was introduced in Iraqi schools in own military, they will nevertheless take a exercised control over them. Saddam finally 1935–1936 and continued right up to the fall of skeptical attitude toward U.S. attempts at de- succeeded in imposing civilian political control Saddam. Generations of Iraqis have been indoc- fense reform. Most will view American initia- through an enormously intrusive and destruc- trinated to believe that their nation is in danger tives in military reconstruction through the tive system of purges, executions, internal from a host of external enemies, especially Iran, lens of their previous experience with foreign security monitoring, political indoctrination, occupiers. As has already been widely observed, and competitive parallel military organiza- Iraq enters its new era statements that “the United States seeks to tions.7 Indeed, it was probably his success in with a population that liberate Iraq, not to occupy Iraq”9 sound to curbing the institutional power of the army as Iraqis like an echo of the proclamation issued much as his inflated military pretensions and has been immersed by Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude when the damage he did to the nation that motivated in a cult of militarism British troops took Baghdad in 1917: “Our the deep resentment that many Iraqi career armies do not come into your cities and lands soldiers harbored toward him by the time he Israel, and imperialism, as well as internal as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.”10 fell from power. enemies, and they have been taught to glorify Iraqis also recall that British mandatory offi- The civilian control that Saddam estab- the armed forces and their achievements. cials in the 1920s rejected the need for con- lished over the military came at a heavy price. The extent to which ordinary Iraqis still scription, that the British military training Even before their defeat at the hands of the share that vision is open to speculation. Many mission in the 1930s functioned to restrict Iraqi coalition, the Iraqi armed forces were in seri- undoubtedly see the army, along with the other decisionmaking, that British occupation forces ous trouble. The dismal condition of their security services, as an instrument of decades of during World War II purged the Iraqi army of weaponry after 12 years of sanctions was the repression—as the enemy of the people, not radical nationalists, and that the withdrawal of least of their problems. Like the rest of Iraqi their protector. Moreover, the prestige of the British forces after World War II was condi- society, the armed forces were corrupt and military services cannot be high after their poor tioned on Iraqi agreement to allow contingency demoralized; members had been terrorized by performance against U.S. forces. It is probable access to key air bases and to accept British the brutal systems of control established by that the unrepresentative nature of the force oversight of Iraqi defense planning. All these Saddam to ensure their loyalty. The corporate has been a matter of public unhappiness; while incidents have parallels in the issues that will professional ethic that had built up within the Sunni Arabs make up somewhere between 15 confront U.S. officials in considering how to officer corps over the course of the 1980–1988 and 20 percent of the population, a small self- rebuild the Iraqi force today. Above all, Iraqis Iran-Iraq war was systematically crushed by the perpetuating elite drawn from that minority will suspect that the United States is pursuing a regime as an implicit challenge to the Leader’s constituted 80 percent of the officer corps. hidden agenda in abetting the revival of an omnipotence and omniscience. The thorough Conversely, conscription in the enlisted Iraqi military—an agenda they will assume to penetration of the armed forces by political and ranks—especially in the poorly supported be dominated by the interests of Israel and the security officers and their informers made regular army—fell with disproportionate American oil and armaments industries.