Iraq Desertions, Part II
This morning, the New York Times published another article about desertions in the ranks of Iraqi security forces. The Mahdi Army apparently has the Iraqi military commanders on cell phone speed dial in order to make threats - and some Iraqi commanders haven’t been paid in months. Is it any wonder that they’re taking off their uniforms and going home, rather than fight?
The pope’s in town. American Idol was on the tube last night. Crying mothers from the Mormon polygamist cult in Texas were pleading on news broadcasts for the return of their children.
I guess you can be excused if you don’t give a shit about Iraq anymore. It’s so…18 months ago. Everything’s going fine there, right?
Yesterday, the New York Times published a depressing report about the desertion of an Iraqi Army unit inside of Sadr City. Today, in another NYT article, we find that Iraqi Army officers get 2 or 3 days per week off. Oh, and they haven’t been paid in months. And that the Mahdi Army apparently has the Iraqi military commanders on cell phone speed dial:
The captain who left his men on Tuesday said that even away from the battle, he was not able to escape his army burdens. He said his phone rang incessantly. His men had called from the front line saying that, once again, they had run out of ammunition and they pleaded for help. He called another unit in Sadr City and arranged for ammunition to be transferred.
Then his phone had rung again, he said. It was the Mahdi Army militia, the group his men were fighting, on the line.
“We know where you live,” they had told him.
“If they come to my house, they can kill my whole family,” he said.
We keep hearing reports that manpower of the Iraqi Army is now up to somewhere around 200,000 personnel (depending on the source cited). Perhaps this isn’t surprising, given the fact that unemployment in Iraq is upwards of 50%. There aren’t many jobs to be had - so it’s either one of the militias or one of the Iraqi government-sponsored security forces. In a lot of cases, loyalties extend only as far as whatever it takes to bring in a paycheck and put food on the family table.
From the very beginning of the Iraq conflict (and well before that, as Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Powell and their subordinates cobbled together their ill-defined war plan), it’s clear that there was very, very little understanding of the sectarian (and tribal) nature of Iraq, or what it would take to put Humpty Dumpty together again.
Six years in, the crew of incompetents running the show in Washington still don’t have a clue. But then, neither does a vast majority of the American public. If Joe Sixpack really understood what the Bush regime has done not only in Iraq, but to America in the name of Iraq, frontier justice would have come to the I-495 beltway a long time ago.
“… it’s clear that there was very, very little understanding of the sectarian (and tribal) nature of Iraq…”
it’s also clear that there is also no understanding of the HISTORY of the region over the last 100 years. the british and american governments have spent most of that past 100 years rearranging the deck chairs in iraq to the ongoing detriment of the people who call it home. not having an understanding of the sectarian/tribal nature of iraq is almost forgiveable but not having an understanding of one’s own government’s actions and policies historically is irresponsible at this point.
Although I can’t confirm the source as reliable, TBRNews.org, in a report on the actual death toll of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, that death toll far exceeding the official figures, includes this piece of information:
“Also not discussed are the over 19,000 desertions (from March, 2003 to date) Pentagon officials say the number of desertions overall has dropped since the war began in 2003. In that year, there were 6,729 desertions from the four military branches. In 2004, 4,494 people left. In 2005, because of much stricter controls put in place by military authorities and cooperative foreign governments, the figure was 3,921 and in 2006, the figure rose again to 4,219. Figures for 2007 are not currently available.”