Iraq’s Armed Forces This book provides the first comprehensive study of the evolution of the Iraqi military from the British mandate era to post-Baathist Iraq. Ethnic and sectarian turmoil is endemic to Iraq, and its armed forces have been intertwined with its political affairs since their creation. This study illustrates how the relationship between the military and the political center in Iraq has evolved, with the military bringing about three regime changes in Iraq’s history before being brought under control by Saddam Hussein, up until the 2003 war. The instability that followed is partly due to the failure to create a new military that does not threaten the region, yet is still strong enough to deter rival factions from armed conflict. The reconstitution of the armed forces will be a prerequisite for an American withdrawal from Iraq, but this book argues that immense challenges lie ahead, despite the praise from the Bush administration for the progress of the new Iraqi Army. This book will be of great interest to students of Middle East studies, military and strategic studies, and contemporary history. Ibrahim Al-Marashiis a visiting scholar at the Annenberg School for Com- munication at the University of Pennsylvania. Sammy Salama is a Middle East expert with the Monterey Institute of International Studies, California. Series: Middle Eastern military studies Series editor: Barry Rubin Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Israel The Israeli Military and the Origins of the 1967 War Army command vs. political leadership, 1963–1967 Ami Gluska Israeli Counter-Insurgency and the Intifadas Dilemmas of a conventional army Sergio Catignani Israel and its Army From cohesion to confusion Stuart A. Cohen The Palestinian Military From the mandate to the Palestinian authority Hillel Frisch Iraq’s Armed Forces An analytical history Ibrahim Al-Marashi and Sammy Salama Iraq’s Armed Forces An analytical history Ibrahim Al-Marashi and Sammy Salama First published 2008 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2008 Ibrahim Al-Marashi and Sammy Salama All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-92876-8 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-40078-3 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-92876-8 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-40078-7 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-92876-9 (ebk) Contents List of illustrations vii Preface viii Acknowledgments x Notes on transliteration xii List of abbreviations xiii 1 Introduction 1 PART I The mandate army 11 2 Creation, conscription and cohesion 1921–1936 13 PART II Praetorian Iraq 43 3 Iraq’s military moderator regimes 1936–1941 45 4 Dismantling the military moderator regime 1941–1958 64 5 Military coups and the ruler regimes 1958–1968 77 PART III The totalitarian military 105 6 The Baathification of the military 1968–1980 107 7 The totalitarian military and the Iran–Iraq War 1980–1984 129 vi Contents 8 The reassertion of the Iraqi officers 1984–1988 153 9 Wars, coups, sanctions and collapse 1988–2003 174 PART IV The mandate army redux 197 10 The US and the Iraqi Army 199 11 Conclusion 225 Appendices 232 Glossary 236 Bibliography 237 Index 247 Illustrations Maps 2.1 The 1920 Iraqi insurgency 18 8.1 The Iran–Iraq War 162 9.1 The 1991 uprising 183 Tables 2.1 Notable Iraqi officers during the mandate army eras 1921–1958 16–17 5.1 Officers who participated in coups during the military ruler regimes 1958–1968 80–1 7.1 The growth of the Iraqi armed forces 1980–1987 143 8.1 The Iraqi military high command 1985 159 9.1 The military high command 1994 189 9.2 Select list of various officers purged, arrested or executed during the totalitarian military 1968–2003 190 9.3 Iraqi land forces in 2002 192 A.1 List of selected coups; actual, attempted and alleged 232–4 Preface As an Iraqi-American my relationship with the Iraqi military was an unconventional one. I grew up with stories of my mother’s uncle who served in the Iraqi military of the 1960s. She would proudly remember his arrival to her home upon taking leave from his post at the Habbaniyya air base near Falluja. She would recall the way his crisp pale green military uniform made him seem even taller, the way he would turn on the radio and dance for her and her sisters in spite of his snug-fitting jacket. The Iraqi military of Baathist Iraq was a different story however. It was this military that some of my relatives fled Iraq to escape military service and others were compelled to join only never to return from the front. It was a military I grew up learning about as a young child, piecing together an image of the Iraqi armed forces from the news coverage of the Iran–Iraq War that my father watched on our wooden paneled TV. It was a military I watched as a teenager during the 1991 Gulf War on the same outdated wooden paneled TV. It was not until I became a Ph.D. student, that my relationship with the Iraqi military changed. When part of my research on Iraq’s security forces was plagiarized by the British government prior to the 2003 Iraq War, I went from watching the news on military affairs on Iraq to being part of this news. As the story about my article circulated, I joined the throngs of news pundits commenting on the Iraqi military. Looking back at those transcripts of my media appearances, where I discussed topics such as the “elite Republican Guards,” I wondered if I really contributed to the public’s knowledge of the Iraqi military, or just added to the sound bites that made up the terminological fog that pundits and government officials alike produce during war time. During my first trip to Iraq in 2004, I first came face-to-face with the final remains of Iraq’s armed forces. In my unpublished memoir of growing up as an Iraqi-American I describe my first experience of meeting unemployed officers from the former Iraqi military struggling to survive in the “new Iraq,” or passing by a row of destroyed tanks on the way to Basra. Years after the 2003 Iraq War, I still have an attachment to the Iraqi military, but not as a confused child, nor as a media pundit, but Preface ix merely as a concerned Iraqi who wonders if the new Iraqi Army can keep my ancestral home together. For the last five years my co-author Sammy Salama and I have been scouring through literally thousands of documents produced by the Iraqi military dating back to the Iran–Iraq War. These files have emerged from a variety of sources. Some were given to us directly by acquaintances who served in the Iraqi military. These documents ranged from the books they used in military school to their discharge papers. Some of the Iraqi military documents were also made public by an archive at Harvard University. Those documents provided an unprecedented insight into the internal workings of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and a window into the machinations of how the Baath Party managed the Iraqi military. When compiling the research for this history, I hoped to use this material, interspersed with oral histories of former Iraqi soldiers and officers. The study of the Iraqi documents and the interviews yielded enough material to serve as their own work, which will be published in the future. Nevertheless, having examined these sources, they helped us gain a perspective of what it would have been like to be a soldier on the front lines or one of the privileged elite officers in the Republican Guards. As a historian of Iraq, I had hoped that after the 2003 Iraq War I would be able to conduct archival research in Baghdad for this book. Unfortu- nately most of Iraq’s archives were damaged after the war, denying me opportunity of delving into my country’s past. Researching the Iraqi mili- tary was also hampered by more mundane constraints, such as border crossings. My efforts during a visit to Iraq to take a suitcase filled with books by Iraqi authors on the military were thwarted as some of the material was considered sensitive to the country I was entering and was confiscated at the border post. Thus, the history of the Iraqi military now lies in London. Most of the material on the Iraqi military during the mandate era and the 1950s and 1960s can be found in the libraries of the School of Oriental and African Studies and Oxford’s Middle East Centre and in Kew’s Public Record Office. Fortunately, other British archives can be also accessed via electronic data bases made available by the UPA Col- lections offered through Lexis Nexis and Thomson Gale Middle East Online Series, ensuring that at least some parts of Iraq’s history cannot be damaged by the ravages of war. We hope that this volume will contribute to a greater understanding of the military that endured the longest war of the twentieth century (the Iran–Iraq War) and fought the world’s superpower on two separate occa- sions, and whose future survival in the twenty-first century remains in question. Ibrahim Al-Marashi