Iran Prevails In Iraq
16th June 2016
After a year of strenuous and expensive effort the American military advisors and trainers sent to Iraq to retrain and reform the Iraqi Army have admitted that a similar Iranian effort has crippled the U.S. plan to expand the Iraqi army and improve the quality of officers and troops. The basic problem was that most men the army wanted to recruit referred to join one of the Shia militias organized and trained by Iranians. It was all a matter of trust. Potential Shia recruits (in a country where Shia are over 60 percent of the population) did not believe the Iraqi Army could be reformed and rebuilt and felt the paramilitary Shia militias would be better led and more effective even though the Iraqi Army had better weapons and was more likely to get American air support. American military leaders were disappointed, but not surprised. Unfortunately many of the Shia militias are led by men known to have been members of pro-Iran militias that, before 2008, attacked American troops as well as Sunni Islamic terrorists. These militias were disbanded by 2010 but after 2014 were allowed to reform again.