Obama’s meddling in the Middle East is failing once again. And while this isn’t Obama’s biggest foreign policy failure, it’s definitely a big one as it may impede the plans of Iraq’s Prime Minister to take out ISIS:
REUTERS – A 17-month U.S. effort to retrain and reunify Iraq’s regular army has failed to create a large number of effective Iraqi combat units or limit the power of sectarian militias, according to current and former U.S. military and civilian officials.
Concern about the shortcomings of the American attempt to strengthen the Iraqi military comes as Iraqi government forces and Shi’ite militias have launched an offensive to retake the city of Falluja from Islamic State. Aid groups fear the campaign could spark a humanitarian catastrophe, as an estimated 50,000 Sunni civilians remain trapped in the besieged town.
The continued weakness of regular Iraqi army units and reliance on Shi’ite militias, current and former U.S. military officials said, could impede Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s broader effort to defeat Islamic State and win the long-term support of Iraqi Sunnis. The sectarian divide between the majority Shi’ite and minority Sunni communities threatens to split the country for good.
Retired U.S. Lieutenant General Mick Bednarek, who commanded the U.S. military training effort in Iraq from 2013 to 2015, said the Iraqi army has not improved dramatically in the past eight months. He blamed a variety of problems, from a lack of Iraqis wanting to join the military to the resistance of some lower-level Iraqi officers to sending units to American training.
“The Iraqi military’s capacity hasn’t improved that much – part of that is the continuing challenge of recruitment and retention,” said Bednarek. “Our (officers) train who shows up, and the issue is we are not sure who is going to show up.”
These Shiite militias are all over the place, and apparently are stealing our military weapons:
Over the past year, U.S. military officers have struggled to ensure that militias do not seize American weaponry delivered to the main Iraqi army supply depot in Taji and to a brigade in the Saqlawiya region.
“We would transfer arms to units in those areas – and either because of corrupt commanders or outright robbery – they would end up in the hands of the militia groups,” said one U.S. officer. The officer noted, however, that controls have been tightened and the number of cases was small. “You can’t eliminate it entirely. It’s just not realistic.”
Obama biggest foreign policy failure with respect to Iraq was when he gave it away by pulling out years ago. And now his attempt to build up Iraq’s army to fight ISIS, a group he helped create in 2012, is now another abysmal failure.
Obama has been nothing but a trainwreck in the Middle East, at least from an American perspective. But from the perspective of his Caliph in Turkey who is trying to revive the Ottoman Empire, Obama will probably get mostly high marks.