In Iraq, military still seen as dysfunctional

KHOR AZ-ZUBAIR, Iraq — Eight years after the United States disbanded the Iraqi army and set out to build a new one, uniformed Iraqi soldiers seem ubiquitous and increasingly professional.

But Iraqi politicians and military officers say the country’s armed forces remain dysfunctional, with power dangerously decentralized and wielded by regional fiefdoms controlled by Iraq’s top politician.

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Local commanders have a direct line to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, circumventing heads of the military. The armed forces remain focused almost entirely on internal security; no one knows how the Iraqi military would come together to fight a foreign enemy, or even who would be in charge.

With U.S. troops scheduled to pull out of Iraq by the end of the year, it has long been clear that the withdrawal would leave the country without many advanced military capabilities, including fighter aircraft and other sophisticated equipment.

But with Iraqi military and police power increasingly concentrated under Maliki, there is also growing concern that Iraq’s military could be seen as an agent of the country’s Shiite majority, a perception that would inflame sectarian tension.

In addition to serving as prime minister, Maliki has retained three titles for the past six months — acting simultaneously as head of Iraq’s defense, interior and national security ministries. He has said that political squabbles have prevented him from fulfilling a commitment to apportion authority over the security branches among the country’s three main sectarian blocs, as he promised when he formed a government in December.

Since then, Baghdad-based elements of the security forces have repeatedly arrested political protesters, carried out questionable raids on offices of Iraqi journalists and, according to leading Sunnis, dismissed more than 600 officers solely because of their political affiliations.

“The reality is we do not know the state of the Iraqi armed forces; only [Maliki] does,” said Iraqi parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni. “I am the speaker, and I do not know. All the security agencies are being run by one man; he gives orders to 1 million men.”

Ali al-Dabbagh, Maliki’s minister of information and the chief government spokesman, said the prime minister has no intention of retaining operational control of the country’s military, police and intelligence agencies. He said naming heads of the ministries remains Maliki’s “top priority” and will happen soon.

Yet, if and when he does, the regional domains that have developed under Maliki could continue to give him near-total backdoor control.

During a series of military exercises that concluded last month in Khor az-Zubair, a southern port near Basra, the head of a local security operations center with a direct line to Maliki assumed broad authority. The local security chief directed the Iraqi navy and coast guard to intercept a boat carrying mock terrorists, ordered special forces — a separate branch in the nation’s military — to swoop in to attack a compound and instructed Iraqi army helicopters to fire Hellfire air-to-surface missiles.