Iraq: We Have Met The Enemies
24th March 2020
Most Iraqis agree that Iran is a toxic neighbor that, in its current state (an increasingly unpopular religions dictatorship) is a toxic force obsessed with controlling Iraq and the Iraqi government. Iran has sent hundreds of IRGC officers, most of them from the Quds Force (similar to the U.S. Special Forces, but specializing in supporting Islamic terrorists not fighting them) and even more lower ranking IRGC personnel to Iraq. Dozens of senior IRGC officers have been killed in Syria and Iraq since 2012. These IRGC personnel are now seen by most Iraqis as hostile foreign agents. What the Quds Force does get credit for is its leading role in organizing the PMF (Popular Mobilization Force) militias in 2014. This came in response to the corrupt armed forces created by the elected Iraqi government falling apart in the face of the ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) advance. The ISIL force was much smaller and less well armed than the Iraqi security forces they encountered. For the Shia majority in Iraq this ISIL advance was their worst nightmare. Quds stepped in where corrupt Iraqi Shia army and police commanders had failed and turned the poorly armed and trained Shia Iraqi militias into a force that could halt the ISIL advance. But these militia could not drive ISIL out of Iraq. That required newly trained (by American and foreigner military specialists) special operations units supported by American and Iraqi artillery and air power.