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Iraq's military was
supposed to build national cohesion, but it could
spur sectarian conflict.
When elections are held in Iraq at the end of
the month, Iraqis will not see any of the 150,000
American troops stationed there guarding the polling
places. Instead, voters will pass groups of armed,
masked men wearing black balaclavas to hide their
faces. The gunmen may look like terrorists, but
they'll be Iraqi Army and police, hiding their
identities to protect themselves from retaliation by
insurgents, who rarely bother to hide their faces
anymore. American officials are hopeful the
much-beleaguered Iraqi forces will prove their
mettle on Election Day, and preside over an election
"by Iraqis and for Iraqis," as an American general
puts it. Yet Iraq's rebellious Sunni minority is
likely to see it differently: an election for
Shiites and Kurds, guarded by Shiites and Kurds, to
dominate the Sunnis who once ruled the country.
The goal of American military planners has long been
to use the new Iraqi military to build national
unity. And officially, that hasn't changed. American
military officials insist that Iraq's security
services are not dominated by non-Sunnis.
"Absolutely incorrect," says Lt. Gen. David Petraeus,
who is in charge of training efforts for the Iraqi
forces. "The national forces are national forces,
typically Shia, Sunni, Kurds, Yezidi, everything.
There is no shortage of recruits from all the
difficult areas." That may be true on paper
(although no official ethnic breakdown is
available). Still, key units and leaders are clearly
dominated by Shiites and Kurds, who together
represent 75 percent of the population.
Commando 36, for instance, was the first
Iraqi National Guard unit into Fallujah when the
Marines assaulted the city in November. Shia militia
veterans and former Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas
dominate the unit. They battled Sunni fighters for
the Fallujah hospital, which was being used as an
insurgent base. The new Iraqi Army's first full
division, the Fourth Infantry, is commanded by a
Kurd, Lt. Gen. Abdul Aziz. "The division commander
is absolutely committed to an integrated Iraq," says
his American counterpart, Maj. Gen. John Batiste,
who is based in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.
"The American Army was the first institution to
integrate America. The Iraqi Army will do the same
for Iraq."
But this ideal has proved harder to implement as the
insurgency has grown stronger. Ever since mid-2003,
when the occupation authority disqualified many
officers from Saddam's Sunni-dominated military from
rejoining the force, leading Sunnis have been
reluctant to sign up. Later the insurgents focused
their attacks on the Iraqi police and national
guard, deeming them turncoats. When Sunnis have
joined the security forces, they've sometimes acted
as double agents. Distrust of Sunnis in official
positions is now pervasive. "There is no doubt that
we are heavily infested in the government, right at
the top," says a leading official who has close ties
to the Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali
Sistani.
The new Iraqi military's first chief of staff was a
Sunni—a former general in Saddam's Army. But Gen.
Amar Bakir al-Hashimi was fired last summer after
insurgents allegedly got key intelligence from one
of his staff and used it to assassinate a
high-ranking officer. The new chief of staff is a
Kurdish general, and the other two highest Iraqi
Defense officials are a Shiite and a Kurd. In Mosul,
the Sunni police chief, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Kheiri
Barhawi, fled the city after his entire force
collapsed in the face of insurgent attacks. Later
Kurdish troops arrested him carrying $600,000, and
accused him of selling out to the insurgents. He was
eventually released without charges. "He at one time
was a shining example," says an American officer who
has worked with Barhawi. "But he was ground down,
too long in that job, shot three times, house badly
damaged. In retrospect, he should have been
transferred somewhere else."
General Petraeus's training operation is turning out
Iraqi battalions at a greater pace than ever before,
and getting them better equipment. But all told, the
security forces number 127,000—less than half the
recommended total of 272,000—and the bulk of those
have had little training or experience. Recently,
Iraq's new intelligence chief, Gen. Muhammad
Shahwani, told Agence France-Presse that the
insurgents could count on as many as 200,000
fighters and active supporters. "I think the
resistance is bigger than the U.S. military in
Iraq," he said. The Pentagon was worried enough
about it to send a retired four-star general, Gary
E. Luck, to Iraq last week for a sweeping review of
policy.
Now the hope is that by giving responsibility for
election security to Iraqi forces, they will receive
a needed boost in prestige. Then, once the elections
are held, these same Iraqi forces will have a
government of their own they can fight for. "We hope
[the new government] will bring more zeal to the
security services," says a U.S. official. Yet all
major Sunni parties are boycotting the elections,
and many Iraqis have been warned that voters will be
shot on sight by the insurgents. Sunnis may feel
they have fewer reasons than ever to fight for their
government.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
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