Building an Iraqi Defense Force

by Joseph McMillan

Strategic Forum

With the demise of the Saddam

Hussein regime, a high priority

must be the rebuilding of the Iraqi

armed forces. The United States must supervise and assist in this task, but the template

for the new force should not be the American

model—a joint, highly trained, all-volunteer

force that emphasizes quality over size. Iraq

does not need and cannot produce such a

U.S.-style force.

What Iraq does need is a military that

provides for self-defense while complementing political reformation—or at least not

undermining it. What the region and the world

need is the assurance that the new Iraqi

military will not threaten the peace anew.

Shaping a new force’s capabilities in

the short term is therefore far less important

than creating institutions by which a legitimate civilian government can control and

monitor the development, funding, and employment of the military and ensuring the

development within the new military of attitudes and patterns of behavior that reinforce

the new constitutional political order at

home and peace and stability abroad.

These goals can be met by a force that

is based on conscription, which is the regional norm, provided that it is led by a new

and more inclusive officer corps and shaped

by a recast military education system. The

resulting active force of about 350,000—

considerably smaller than the combined

regular and irregular forces before the war—

would be sufficient for defense against external threats without posing a threat to Iraq’s

neighbors.

The reconstruction and reform of the

Iraqi armed forces will inevitably take place in

the context of both Iraq’s present and past.

Saddam Hussein and his predecessors, going

back to the creation of the state, have left Iraq

a legacy of endemic domestic political violence, dysfunctional civil-military relations,

and, in recent decades, an ideology of unremitting hostility to virtually every one of

Iraq’s neighbors.

The use of Iraqi armed forces for internal

repression is often associated with Saddam.

Most people are aware of the brutal 1987–1989

Anfal campaign, which resulted in the systematic slaughter of at least 50,000 Kurdish men,

women, and children1 and ethnic cleansing

operations in southern Iraq in the early 1990s

that caused the deaths or forced displacement

of over 200,000 Marsh Arabs.2 Though Saddam

certainly escalated the army’s role as an agent

for repressing the Iraqi people, he did not

originate it. On the contrary, this was one of

the main purposes for which the army was

developed.3 From the 1930s onward, the army

carried out summary executions of combatants

and noncombatants alike, razing of villages,

and aerial bombardment to suppress any and

all challenges to the authority of the central

government, even by such numerically insignificant groups as the Assyrians and Yazidis.

As the historian Charles Tripp observes:

The use of violence to suppress dissent, much

of which took violent form itself, has been

reproduced and elaborated by central governments in Baghdad since the foundation

of the state. Indeed, control of the means of

violence has been one of the lures for those

who seized the state apparatus. The result has

been not only the prominence of the armed

forces, but also the proliferation of security

services which have introduced a baneful

logic to Iraq’s political life.4

From the beginning, to be an officer was

one of the main paths to political power and

social advancement in Iraq. With the exception

of the royal family, the makers of the Kingdom

of Iraq were predominantly former officers of

the Ottoman Imperial Army, mainly Sunni

Arabs from modest families who rose to the top

through military service.5 Eight of the 22 prime

ministers under the monarchy and all 4 presidents of the republic before Saddam were

career military men. Their combined tenure in

office covered 43 of the 58 years from the

installation of the first Iraqi cabinet in 1921

until Saddam assumed full power in 1979. At

least 10 times in Iraq’s history, the army intervened to change the government, either by

actual coup, threatened coup, or political

pressure. Even when civilian politicians headed

the government, the officer corps was the most

important base of political support. In several

cases, civilian prime ministers served simply as

front men for cabals of officers.

With these officers in the vanguard, the

ruling elite in Baghdad developed an intensely

centralizing, nationalistic, authoritarian

ideology that justified the use of force—and

hence of the army—as an indispensable

component of national development. This

principle, along with the corollary that the

military should be actively involved in politics,

was propagated to new generations of officers

through their training at the Iraqi Military

Academy.6 It was in this overheated praetorian

milieu that younger officers developed the

“free officers” movement that would oust the

No. 198

June 2003

Institute for National Strategic Studies

National Defense University

Key Points

No. 198, June 2003 Strategic Forum 1
monarchy in 1958, and in which still younger

ones would orchestrate the coup that brought

the Ba’ath to power 10 years later.

Saddam’s Legacy

Until the rise of Saddam in the early

1970s, Iraqi governments did not exercise

civilian control over the military; the military

exercised control over them. Saddam finally

succeeded in imposing civilian political control

through an enormously intrusive and destructive system of purges, executions, internal

security monitoring, political indoctrination,

and competitive parallel military organizations.7 Indeed, it was probably his success in

curbing the institutional power of the army as

much as his inflated military pretensions and

the damage he did to the nation that motivated

the deep resentment that many Iraqi career

soldiers harbored toward him by the time he

fell from power.

The civilian control that Saddam established over the military came at a heavy price.

Even before their defeat at the hands of the

coalition, the Iraqi armed forces were in serious trouble. The dismal condition of their

weaponry after 12 years of sanctions was the

least of their problems. Like the rest of Iraqi

society, the armed forces were corrupt and

demoralized; members had been terrorized by

the brutal systems of control established by

Saddam to ensure their loyalty. The corporate

professional ethic that had built up within the

officer corps over the course of the 1980–1988

Iran-Iraq war was systematically crushed by the

regime as an implicit challenge to the Leader’s

omnipotence and omniscience. The thorough

penetration of the armed forces by political and

security officers and their informers made

impossible the kind of mutual trust and respect

on which effective command relationships

depend. The regular army (that is, units other

than the Republican Guard) was particularly

affected in personal terms by the impact of

economic sanctions, with officers and men

alike forced to shirk their military duties in

order to provide for their families. Desertion

and absence without leave were endemic.

Social Attitudes

Like any military force, the Iraqi armed

forces reflected to some degree the society from

which they sprang. Iraq enters its new era with

a population that has been immersed in a cult

of militarism. In emulation of the European

fascist regimes of the day, compulsory military

training was introduced in Iraqi schools in

1935–1936 and continued right up to the fall of

Saddam. Generations of Iraqis have been indoctrinated to believe that their nation is in danger

from a host of external enemies, especially Iran,

Israel, and imperialism, as well as internal

enemies, and they have been taught to glorify

the armed forces and their achievements.

The extent to which ordinary Iraqis still

share that vision is open to speculation. Many

undoubtedly see the army, along with the other

security services, as an instrument of decades of

repression—as the enemy of the people, not

their protector. Moreover, the prestige of the

military services cannot be high after their poor

performance against U.S. forces. It is probable

that the unrepresentative nature of the force

has been a matter of public unhappiness; while

Sunni Arabs make up somewhere between 15

and 20 percent of the population, a small selfperpetuating elite drawn from that minority

constituted 80 percent of the officer corps.

Conversely, conscription in the enlisted

ranks—especially in the poorly supported

regular army—fell with disproportionate

weight on the Shi’a population.8 At the same

time, other military forces have treated their

conscripts and the populations from which they

sprang with great brutality (the Soviet Army

comes to mind) yet have continued to enjoy a

sizable reservoir of popular respect and even

affection. Only when it is possible to conduct

detailed public opinion polling and get frank

and open answers will there be any way of

knowing what Iraqis think about the military.

Of course, American officials engaged in the

rebuilding effort will need to be aware that

such attitudes will have an enormous impact

on what is politically sustainable.

The Burden of History

Even if Iraqis have a low opinion of their

own military, they will nevertheless take a

skeptical attitude toward U.S. attempts at defense reform. Most will view American initiatives in military reconstruction through the

lens of their previous experience with foreign

occupiers. As has already been widely observed,

statements that “the United States seeks to

liberate Iraq, not to occupy Iraq”9 sound to

Iraqis like an echo of the proclamation issued

by Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude when

British troops took Baghdad in 1917: “Our

armies do not come into your cities and lands

as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.”10

Iraqis also recall that British mandatory officials in the 1920s rejected the need for conscription, that the British military training

mission in the 1930s functioned to restrict Iraqi

decisionmaking, that British occupation forces

during World War II purged the Iraqi army of

radical nationalists, and that the withdrawal of

British forces after World War II was conditioned on Iraqi agreement to allow contingency

access to key air bases and to accept British

oversight of Iraqi defense planning. All these

incidents have parallels in the issues that will

confront U.S. officials in considering how to

rebuild the Iraqi force today. Above all, Iraqis

will suspect that the United States is pursuing a

hidden agenda in abetting the revival of an

Iraqi military—an agenda they will assume to

be dominated by the interests of Israel and the

American oil and armaments industries.

Finally, we must keep in mind in building

a new Iraqi defense force that the Iraqi armed

forces under Saddam did not constitute the

only significant military institution in the

country. Including the Republican Guard, the

armed forces are estimated to have totaled

some 390,000 active duty personnel11 at the

start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. On top of

that were roughly 15,000 members of the

Special Republican Guard, as many as 40,000

thugs of the paramilitary Fedayeen Saddam,

and an indeterminate number of the Ba’ath

Party’s People’s Militia, an organization that

once numbered over one million. The coalition

must decide what to do not only with these

forces but also those on the other side—the

2 Strategic Forum No. 198, June 2003

Joseph McMillan is the academic chairman of the Near East-South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at 

the National Defense University (NDU). He prepared this analysis as a distinguished research fellow in the

Institute for National Strategic Studies at NDU. Comments or questions may be e-mailed to his attention 

at: www.ndu-inss-research@ndu.edu.

Iraq enters its new era

with a population that

has been immersed 

in a cult of militarism
sizable Kurdish and Shi’ite militias that sprang

up in opposition to Saddam’s rule. By most

estimates, each of the main Kurdish parties, the

Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic

Union of Kurdistan, could put 10,000 to 15,000

fighters into the field, while the Badr Brigades

operating under the auspices of the Supreme

Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq

(SCIRI) had up to another 15,000. Other

antiregime groups probably accounted for

2,000 to 3,000 more men under arms. The

future of these forces must also be taken into

account, notwithstanding whatever role their

members may have played in the liberation.

Priority Tasks

What are the most crucial areas that the

United States should focus on in helping develop a new Iraqi defense force? Essentially,

they are those tightly interrelated issues that lie

at the political-military nexus between any

constitutional government and the armed

forces that serve it:

■ how national security policy is determined

through the political process

■ how the legitimate government exercises

control over armed forces

■ how national resources—both human and

financial—are allocated to military purposes

■ how the military force reflects and interacts

with the society at large.

The processes by which the new Iraqi

government will formulate security policy lie

beyond the scope of this paper, but several key

points should be made. First, unless the new

government embraces the principles set forth in

the United Nations (UN) Security Council

resolutions that terminated the 1990–1991 Gulf

War, there will be no way to rebuild the Iraqi

military that does not eventually endanger

regional security all over again. These principles include not only the permanent renunciation of weapons of mass destruction, which has

received the greatest attention over the years,

but also the renunciation of territorial claims

against Iraq’s neighbors and of the use of force

to change the regional status quo. Secondly, the

new government must develop more legitimate,

consensual means of dealing with the country’s

ethnic, religious, and tribal cleavages.

An Accountable Military

Creating institutional mechanisms for

civilian control of the military and the security

services will be one of the greatest tests facing

the new Iraqi government. Any remnants of

Saddam’s system of control must be eradicated. That system is hostile to both military

effectiveness and a healthy civil-military relationship. Those who operated it were the most

irredeemable of the old regime’s supporters

and in many cases indictable war criminals.

Assuming that Iraq adopts a European-style

parliamentary political structure, a system of

parliamentary accountability should be established to ensure civilian control of the military.

Ideally, a civilian member of parliament12

should be appointed as minister of defense,

given the support of a trained civilian staff,

and placed squarely in the chain of command

for both operational and administrative purposes. The model is a familiar one in the West,

but not in the Arab world or even the broader

Islamic world. The United States and United

Kingdom can play a key role in the development of these institutions, especially in the

training of staffs, but even more valuable

might be the advice of countries, such as

Spain and Poland, that underwent the process

of transformation from dictatorship to democracy in the fairly recent past.

Particular attention should be given to

parliamentary control over military budgets,

including not only the amounts budgeted but

also the uses for which funds are programmed

and the follow-up accounting to ensure that

they are properly disbursed. Given the culture

of corruption that has long characterized Iraq,

it will be difficult to stop the diversion of government funds to private pockets. While meeting this challenge is important, it is more

critical for the representative government to

ensure that funds are not siphoned off to the

development of capabilities within the military

that undercut a government policy of peace

abroad and civil liberties at home.

Making parliamentary control work will

require sweeping changes in the leadership of

the new Iraqi defense force. Many Iraqi officers

resented Saddam, but this does not mean that

they—even those who went into exile—held

views conducive to a healthy civil-military

relationship under a constitutional system of

government. Indeed, the chauvinistic, authoritarian mindset of the old Iraqi officer corps

must be cleared away if the new Iraqi military

is not to revert to old habits. At a minimum, all

general officers should be retired and barred

from future involvement with the armed forces.

It goes without saying that all former political

and security officers and anyone who was ever

in the Special Republican Guard should also be

banned for life, if not imprisoned. It may very

well be that anyone who served as an officer in

the Republican Guard, regardless of rank, will

also have to be excluded, although service in

the Republican Guard was not always voluntary—a number of officers and men were

ordered into the Guard because of their professional qualifications, not for political reasons.13

In any case, it will be necessary to apply a

careful review process—similar to that used in

post-war Germany and again when the Bundeswehr took over the former East German

Volksarmee after unification—to determine

which officers, whether regular or Republican

Guard, are fit for service under the new dispensation. The process will inevitably and intentionally result in the decimation of the Iraqi

officer corps as it existed under the old regime.

For all practical purposes, a new officer corps

will have to be built from scratch. This will

undoubtedly delay the recovery of the Iraqi

military as a qualitatively effective force vis-àvis such threats as Iran, but this is a price that

must be paid.

Dealing with Militias

The sorts of militias maintained by the

Kurdish parties and the SCIRI, while justifiable

as instruments of resistance against Saddam’s

tyranny, are nonetheless rightly prohibited

under the old Iraqi constitution,14 as they are

by the constitutions or laws of most countries.

The failure of previous governments to enforce

this provision against the militias raised by the

Ba’ath Party was a key element in Saddam’s

rise to power, and it is hard to see how such

militias could be allowed to continue outside

some sort of governmental control without

undermining the legitimacy and credibility of a

No. 198, June 2003 Strategic Forum 3

creating institutional

mechanisms for civilian

control of the military

and the security services

will be one of the greatest tests facing the new

Iraqi government
constitutional government. The specific solution to this problem will depend in large measure on the shape of the constitutional system

that is adopted; clearly, a pure federal structure

will require different arrangements than a

basically unitary state with limited devolution

of powers to the various governorates. In either

case, Iraq might consider establishing an

organization similar to the Pakistani Frontier

Corps, in which the enlisted ranks are filled by

voluntary recruitment from local tribal communities—including the current

peshmerga—while the officer cadre is provided by the regular national army.

Reforming the Ranks

Attention should also be given to integrating the leaders of opposition militias into the

officer corps of the new defense force. The new

Iraqi government should look closely at the

similar experience of South Africa as it integrated African National Congress and other

forces into the South African Defense Force

after the end of apartheid. This process will

accelerate the attainment of broader representation for the Shi’ite and minority communities in the new military leadership, something

that is essential if a replay of the Iraqi army’s

historic role as an enemy of Iraqi society is to

be avoided.

The coalition should insist that the new

Iraqi government completely revamp the selection procedures and curriculum of the military

academy (historically the overwhelming source

of new officers) and staff college to ensure that

these institutions do not continue propagating

the aggressively nationalistic mindset that has

traditionally characterized past graduates.

Heavy emphasis should be laid on developing a

professional ethos—an organizational culture

that values apolitical competence and demands

service to the duly constituted civil government

regardless of personal agreement or disagreement with its policies. At the same time, given

the very troubling human rights record of the

Iraqi armed forces, an Arab version of the

German Bundeswehr’s concept of Innere

Führung, or “inner guidance,” is essential. In

other words, officers—indeed, all members of

the force—must be indoctrinated in the understanding that no order, even from a democratically elected government, can justify violations

of basic human rights.

Not only education and training but also

the process of inducting candidates into the

officer corps should be reformed. Assuming

that Iraq will continue to use a system of conscription to fill the enlisted ranks of the military (see below), it should take the step of

making a term of conscripted service in the

ranks a prerequisite for attendance at the

military academy and the receipt of an officer’s

commission. It should also diversify the training of officers by instituting something comparable to the American officer candidate schools,

through which those who have already completed their military obligation in the enlisted

ranks will have the opportunity to return to a

career as an officer following completion of a

civilian university education. This will weaken

the residual grip of the culture heretofore

cultivated at the military academy and, as in

the case of the other proposed reforms, make

the new Iraqi defense force a better mirror of

Iraqi society.

Reliance on Conscription

As suggested above, the enlisted ranks of

the new Iraqi defense force will undoubtedly be

filled through conscription. Conscription in

Iraq has always been seen as a symbol of national independence, since it was instituted in

part as a way of asserting Baghdad’s right to

make security policy notwithstanding British

objections. In fact, it is even written into the

constitution and has been since the beginning

of the republic.15 Conscription is also the regional norm, the means by which most of

Iraq’s neighbors, including those countries

perceived by Iraq as its most serious threats, fill

their enlisted ranks. Moreover, it is a relatively

inexpensive way to man a force in which high

levels of individual proficiency are not

required. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, conscription has been viewed in Iraq, as

it was Italy in the 19th century and Israel in the

20th, as an important means of forging a national identity from among disparate religious

and ethnic communities.16

Despite the American disposition in favor

of an all-volunteer force, Iraqi reliance on

conscription will not necessarily be a bad

thing, especially if it can be administered in a

way that helps reshape military culture. Under

the monarchy, the early republic, and the

Ba’athist dictatorship, the draft was of course a

source of popular resentment, partly because

conscription is never popular, partly because its

burden fell disproportionately on already disadvantaged elements of society, and partly because it was overtly used as a tool of control.

Despite this history, however, a new Iraq has the

opportunity of using a fairly administered

system of conscription to ensure that the military is more representative of the population.

Without the leverage of conscription, there is

little chance that the Kurds, and perhaps even

many of the Shia, will enter the army, leaving

it even more Sunni Arab-dominated than in

the past and thus making it even more difficult

to persuade Kurdish, Shia, and other militiamen to lay down their arms.

Young Iraqi men and their families may

find themselves more willing to endure conscription if they are decently paid, housed, and

fed. They should also be provided a modicum

of technical training, not only to increase their

military effectiveness but also to help position

them for a more productive life after leaving

the service. Perhaps most importantly, an

entirely different approach to discipline and

military justice will be required. Presumably an

Iraqi military justice system will draw heavily

on Islamic legal principles. In any case, the

new Iraqi government should give careful

consideration to structuring such a system so

as to protect the interests of conscripts as well

as the interests of the state—a balance that

has rarely been taken into account in Iraqi

military affairs. A German-style defense ombudsman, responsible to parliament and

charged with protecting the rights of servicemembers against abuses, could be a further

safeguard. Ultimately, if democratization of

Iraq succeeds, the connections between conscripts and their families and elected representatives will serve as a check on unconstitutional

uses of the armed forces. If it does not, a nondemocratic government will find it more difficult to use an army that is manned, officered,

and trained as described here as an instrument

of repression.

despite the American

disposition in favor of an

all-volunteer force, Iraqi

reliance on conscription

will not necessarily be 

a bad thing

4 Strategic Forum No. 198, June 2003
Pitfalls to Avoid

With approximately 275,000 young Iraqi

males coming of military age each year, it is

reasonable to expect that some 180,000 would

be taken into service after taking into account

deferments and those unfit for service. An 

18-month service obligation would yield a force

of about 270,000 conscripts. Adding a reasonable proportion of officers and long-service

noncommissioned officers, the total active force

would fall somewhere in the range of 350,000,

considerably smaller than the combined armed

forces, paramilitary security forces, and irregular militias that constituted the armed population of the country before the war. A force of

this size is not disproportionate to those of

Iraq’s neighbors (for example, Iran, 545,000;

Syria, 354,000; Turkey, 515,000). Properly

trained and equipped (which does not necessarily mean up to American or British standards), such a force, backed up by reserves,

should suffice for defense against external

threats without posing the threat to Iraq’s

neighbors that could be presented by a highly

trained professional force of the same size.

Strategically, Iraq does not need an offensively oriented military posture in the postSaddam Gulf. While many Iraqis and other

Arabs would undoubtedly like to see Iraq resume its supposed 1980s role as the counterweight to a hegemonic Iran, it would be a

mistake for the United States to share that

vision. For one thing, pitting Iraq and Iran

against each other in the belief that a bipolar

regional balance could be stabilizing turned

out to be disastrously wrong. For another, the

nature of the Iranian threat is such that Iraqi

armed forces could play little direct role in

defending anyone other than Iraq, unless, of

course, they acquired the kind of countervailing weapons of mass destruction capabilities

that the international community has sought

for 13 years to keep out of their hands.

If the Iraqi military is not to have the

international role that it sought in the past,

still less should it have the kind of domestic

role that it has played since Iraq was formed

following World War I. Iraqi governments have

traditionally treated the armed forces, security

and intelligence services, and police as more or

less interchangeable instruments for achieving

the same ends.17 As we have seen, this attitude

was manifested in the routine use of the army

and air force to carry out internal security

functions. Even without the heavy dose of

totalitarian ideology that permeated Iraqi

military education over the decades, this immersion of the armed forces in what amount to

domestic political issues would have tended to

politicize the force and impair its professionalism. The limits within which the new Iraqi

defense force will operate therefore need to be

precisely defined and the boundaries between

their functions and those of civilian law enforcement and security organizations strictly

enforced. It is true that some other countries do

not maintain such rigid compartmentalization

between military and internal security functions and are still able to keep their armed

No. 198, June 2003 Strategic Forum 5
forces out of politics, but they do not have

Iraq’s political-military history.

Roles and Missions

Rather than serving as either an instrument for projecting Iraqi power in the region

or a tool of domestic control, the reconstituted

Iraqi force must be given the clear mission of

defending Iraq itself—not the entire Arab

world—against external aggression. Over

time, the United States might look toward

helping shape constructive, cooperative military ties among Iraq, the Gulf Cooperation

Council states, Jordan, and Turkey, but fundamental changes in the attitudes and outlook

of Iraq’s new government and military must

first take root before Iraq is assigned anything

like a leading role beyond providing for its

own defense.

In forging new military-to-military ties,

there will be a temptation in the United States

to assume that Iraq would be best served by a

force structure that looks and operates like

ours. We should avoid this trap. That Iraq

could not produce a U.S.-style 21st-century

military, even if it needed one, reflects a reality with which the United States—after

decades of training and equipping other Arab

military forces and after twice fighting the

Iraqis themselves—should be well

acquainted. This reality is that a society’s

overall culture determines its military culture.

Within the U.S. military, recruiters and trainers are well aware that a force must be built

using the raw materials that its society produces. As Michael Eisenstadt and Kenneth

Pollack have pointed out, “a military doctrine

created by one nation will inevitably reflect

the dominant cultural traits of its society, and

thus may not ‘fit’ another military.”18 Twentyfirst century American doctrine is an even

worse fit with the cultural dispositions of the

men who will make up the Iraqi military than

the British, Soviet, and French models that

failed to take root in the past.

Perhaps this can be seen most clearly if

we think about how American methods of

command and control would work in an Iraqi

context. Although the U.S. services use different

terms to describe their approaches, all rely

heavily on what the Germans call Auftragstaktik, usually translated into English as “directive

control.” Commanders give their subordinates

general guidance, emphasizing the commander’s intent and leaving it up to the discretionary judgment of the junior how best to

carry out that intent. It is a system that depends

on flexible, self-reliant officers, noncommissioned officers, and soldiers capable of making

independent decisions in the heat of battle all

the way down to the squad level.

This approach could only work for the

Iraqi military if it were populated by young

men—18- to 25-year-olds—who had been

culturally conditioned to make individual

decisions, to take personal responsibility, and to

communicate with their superiors frankly and

confidently. It should go without saying that

Saddam’s regime did not produce many young

men with these behavioral traits. The fact is

that these are not the kind of behavioral patterns that Arab societies anywhere tend to

produce. As a result, Arab officers and soldiers

have different standards, expectations, habits of

thought, and styles of command than their

American counterparts, with a much heavier

reliance on top-down guidance and detailed

instructions.

Doctrine and Equipment

To be at all effective in fulfilling its mission of defending the Iraqi homeland, a new

Iraqi military must develop doctrines and

methods that build on this reality rather than

fighting against it. Iraqi ground forces have

demonstrated the ability to conduct effective

static defenses against opponents who are not

capable of fast-moving modern maneuver

warfare. Conversely, when Iraqi staffs and

troops have had time to plan and rehearse setpiece offensives—as in the cases of the 1988

offensive that drove Iran off the Al-Faw Peninsula, the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and the

attack on al-Khafji, Saudi Arabia, during

Operation Desert Storm—their forces have

generally been able to execute plans effectively.

Again, where they have problems is with an

opponent who does not act as predicted by a

plan. However, the new Iraq military is unlikely

to have to fight the kind of opponent with

which the Iraqi armed forces—and Arab forces

in general—have problems. Other major

military forces in the region, with the exception

of the Israelis, fight in much the same style as

the Iraqis do, while any potential conflict with

Israel would likely be conducted on entirely

different terms.

This understanding of the kind of force

Iraq needs and can reasonably produce should

carry over to issues of equipment. Just as the

United States should not seek to export its

doctrine and organizational methods, it should

also resist pressure (either Iraqi or American) to

provide large quantities of advanced American

weaponry, and particularly to pursue the kind of

sweeping replacement of Soviet-origin with

U.S.-origin arms that has been attempted in

Egypt. In the first place, there will be countless

competing claims on Iraqi financial resources

that should rightly have a far higher priority

than reequipping the Iraqi military. Moreover,

even if Iraq had unlimited resources, the United

States needs to be sensitive to the claim—taken

as an article of faith in much of the Arab

world—that it sells expensive but unusable

hardware only as an indirect means of getting

its hands on Arab oil money. From a military

point of view, the normal rationale for preferring that friends and allies buy American—that

doing so promotes interoperability—really 

does not apply. Realistically, there is little

chance that Iraqi forces will be called upon to

fight side by side with American forces against a

common enemy.19

It is not certain at this stage how much

Iraqi military equipment survived the recent

war. By the time a new Iraqi military force is

up and running, the picture will be clearer. It

seems likely that, despite the effectiveness of

coalition operations, a substantial quantity of

hardware probably did survive, if only because

it was unserviceable and therefore never deployed for combat. In any case, when the time

comes, first priority should be given to salvaging what was not destroyed and putting it

back into working order. The United States

should at that point be willing to support

lifting of the UN Security Council ban on sales

of military equipment to Iraq for the limited

purpose of allowing sales of spare parts and

repair and maintenance services, even though

most of the business of providing those spares

will inevitably flow to Russian, French, and

other companies. Notwithstanding the political

6 Strategic Forum No. 198, June 2003

the reconstituted Iraqi

force must be given the

clear mission of defending Iraq itself—not the

entire Arab world
unpalatability of allowing those who opposed

the liberation of Iraq to participate in the

revival of its armed forces, doing so will be

more cost effective than reequipping the Iraqi

forces with American hardware. Over time, the

prohibitions on arms sales can be lifted more

completely. At that point, American firms will

be able to compete for the business, but by

then procurement decisions will be those of a

fully sovereign Iraqi government and therefore

less likely to be seen as decisions taken under

U.S. pressure.

Conclusions

It is impossible to convey the scope of the

reforms necessary in building a new Iraqi

defense force without making reference to the

methods other countries have used to address

comparable problems. At the same time, we

must keep in mind that post-Saddam Iraq is

not the same as post-Nazi Germany, postcommunist Eastern Europe or Russia, or postapartheid South Africa. The problems and

prospects facing Iraq are not even perfectly

comparable to those that have been encountered by other Arab militaries.

In approaching the rebuilding task, we

must be careful not to do too much. Iraqis

themselves must have a say in the shape of

their new military force. The more we impose

our own solutions on Iraqi strategic problems,

the more we will trigger the anti-imperialist

reflex that is never far beneath the surface in

Iraq. It is essential that the new government

and its army embrace the principles of constitutional civilian control, military professionalism, respect for human rights, as well as ethnic

and religious inclusiveness described above, but

we need to be conscious that making such a

radical break with history will create stresses

within the Iraqi body politic.

As we have seen in the former Soviet

Union, reforms instituted under external pressure—especially in the national security

sphere—often serve as rallying points for

nostalgic reaction, with potentially damaging

effects for the governments that accede to

them. On top of this, there are already many

permanent constraints placed on Iraqi national

security policy by the UN Security Council—

the requirements to renounce weapons of mass

destruction, recognize Kuwaiti independence

and respect the UN-defined boundary, and

refrain from threats against its neighbors.

Given the way they were brought up, many

Iraqis, and not just unreconstructed Ba’athists,

will find these restrictions burdensome and

unfair. Insisting on U.S. practices and policies

more extensively than necessary, whether in

doctrine and training or in how threats are

defined, will magnify that sense of unfairness

and could well trigger a reaction that will

jeopardize the entire political-military edifice

that we are struggling to construct.

At some point, Iraq will again have the

resources to develop military capabilities outside the control of either the United States or

the United Nations. It is therefore at the level of

political intentions, political control of the

military, and reformed institutional culture

that efforts to prevent a repeat of Iraqi history

must be focused. For eight decades, Iraqi leaders tried to use an army to build a nation-state,

and the results for the Iraqi people were catastrophic. This time, building the military must

be secondary to building the nation-state. That

is the only way to prevent a new Iraqi military

force from undercutting the objective that the

coalition sought to achieve in waging war

against Saddam and his cronies: a democratic

Iraq at peace with its neighbors and with its

own people.

Notes1

Human Rights Watch, Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal

Campaign against the Kurds (New York: Human Rights Watch,

1993), accessed at <http://hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/

ANFALINT.htm>. 2

Human Rights Watch, “The Iraqi Government Assault

on the Marsh Arabs,” January 2003, accessed at <http://www.

hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/marsharabs1.htm>. 3

Ahmed Hashim, “Saddam Hussein and Civil-Military

Relations in Iraq,” Middle East Journal 57, no. 1 (Winter 2003),

12–13. In a confidential memorandum written in March 1933,

King Faisal I made clear that he saw the lack of a military force

capable of “leading the people against their will” as the only

obstacle to sweeping aside the traditional social structure of the

country. See also Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the

Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1978), 321. 4

Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2000), 6–7.

5

Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder, CO:

Westview, 1985), 47–48. 6

Ibid., 80

7

Hashim, 18–25.

8

Ibid., 58.

9

Paul Wolfowitz, remarks at town hall meeting with

Iraqi-American community in Dearborn, Michigan, February 23,

2003, accessed at <http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2003/

sp20030223-depsecdef0042.html>. 10 Anthony Shadid, “As 48-Hour Deadline Ticks Down,

Baghdad Loses Its Bravado,” The Washington Post, March 19,

2003. According to David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace

(New York: Avon, 1989), 306, the proclamation was actually

drafted in London by Sir Mark Sykes, a villain to Arabs for his

involvement in the Sykes-Picot agreement by which the Arab East

was divided into British and French zones of influence. 11 In addition to about 650,000 inactive reservists.

12 The value of having a member of parliament as

minister of defense in the Iraqi case is that a minister who is

solely indebted to the president for his position is less likely to

resist potential presidential efforts to use the armed forces as a

political instrument. This precaution may not be needed in

countries where there is a better-established tradition of apolitical

military professionalism. In Iraq, the more checks and balances

built into the civil-military relationship, the better. 13 Kenneth M. Pollack, The Threatening Storm: The Case

for Invading Iraq (New York: Random House, 2002), 159. 14 Article 31(c) of the 1970 Interim Constitution states,

“The State alone establishes the Armed Forces. No other organization or group is entitled to establish military or paramilitary

formations.” Essentially, the same provision was contained in

Article 79 of the 1964 Interim Constitution. It goes without

saying that Iraqi regimes have treated these documents with utter

contempt. For instance, the 1964 edition shamelessly states that

“spreading political and party ideas in the ranks of the Armed

Forces by any means is absolutely forbidden.” They are cited here

as indications of the ideas that the rulers of the country thought

it appropriate to express, not as describing the way the government actually functioned. 15 The present provision, contained in Article 31(a) of the

1970 Interim Constitution, reads, “The defense of the homeland

is a sacred duty and honor for the citizens; conscription is

compulsory and regulated by the law.” 16 Marr, 66.

17 Article 78 of the 1964 Interim Constitution actually

defined police, security, and guard forces, along with the army, as

integral parts of the armed forces. 18 Michael J. Eisenstadt and Kenneth M. Pollack, “Armies

of Snow and Armies of Sand: The Impact of Soviet Military

Doctrine on Arab Militaries,” Middle East Journal 55, no. 4

(Autumn 2001), 577. 19 Some may argue that U.S. and Iraqi forces might

someday fight Iran together, but it is hard to imagine any

democratic (that is, Shi’ah-dominated) Iraqi government

supporting such a war, nor is it likely that any American

combatant commander would want to depend on an Iraqi force

in conducting one. In any case, a cornerstone of U.S. planning

for the new Iraqi military must be that it is building a defensively

oriented force without any significant ability to project force

outside its borders.

No. 198, June 2003 Strategic Forum 7

the more we impose our

own solutions on Iraqi

strategic problems, the

more we will trigger 

the anti-imperialist reflex

that is never far beneath

the surface in Iraq
8 Strategic Forum No. 198, June 2003

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