IraqIraqis want to know the reasons for army’s rapid collapse

One of the more puzzling questions raised by the ease – and speed – with which a rag-tag group of Islamist insurgents gained control over about one-third of Iraqi territory is this: What happened to the Iraqi army that caused it to collapse in less than three days – three days in which, in any event, it hardly engaged in any fighting? What brought the curtain down on a force in which the United States had invested billions of dollars, a force which, according to two American administrations, was the best trained and armed military force in the Arab world?

It should be said again: the Iraqi army was not defeated. It did not lose. It just ran away. Tens of thousands of soldiers simply put their weapons down, left their gear behind, and walked away – to their homes and families. The military equipment they left behind was picked up by the Jihadists or by the Kurdish peshmerga forces, depending on who got to it first.

The army’s collapse brought about a sudden and dramatic shift in the balance of power between Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia. The question now being asked is how a region so central to the bitter feud between Iraq’s Kurds and Arabs was so easily surrendered.

The Guardian reports that one explanation being offered is that the three Iraqi generals responsible for Mosul, Tikrit, and Kirkuk simply did not want to fight for a state that was not working. A second theory is that the Iraqi troops quickly realized they were no match for battle-hardened and ideologically motivated Jihadists coming their way.

A third theory is that giving the Kurds the important city of Kirkuk — capital of a region with huge oil reserves — would be the first step in a set of carefully choreographed moves to reframe relations between Baghdad and the Kurds in order to pull the dysfunctional country out of a state of permanent chaos.

The Guardian notes that central to this theory is the fact that the Kurds had long ago gave up on prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s ability to serve either their interests or those of Iraq and its diverse population.

Maliki, with Iran’s encouragement, ruled Iraq not as a national leader, but as the leader of the Shi’a majority. Even member of the Shi’a majority, however, showed little enthusiasm for the clumsy leader. Of late, the Iranians, too, began to distance themselves from Maliki. Weighed down in Syria, the last thing Iran wanted was to have another unstable country in which they will have to invest blood and treasure to maintain their interests. Iran began to understand that Maliki’s determined exclusion of the Sunnis from Iraq’s power structure – a policy they themselves had urged Maliki to follow – would boomerang sooner rather than later, as the Sunnis, emboldened by their success in Syria, where they control most of Syria’s territory, would have no reason not to follow similar tactics in Iraq.

Officers with Kurdish and Iraqi units told the Guardian that they are still trying to understand what happened in the north – specifically, why the army was told to stand down, and who ultimately called the shots. There is a growing conviction among these officers – and among ordinary Iraqis who spoke with the Guardian’s reporter — that the questions would be better answered by politicians in Baghdad, the Kurdish north — or Tehran.

“This will all be sorted out sooner than most people think,” a senior Iraqi official said. “And clarity will emerge from the mist of last week.”