The experience they bring is said to be a major reason for Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) victories in conquering large parts of Iraq and Syria, senior Iraqi officers on the front lines of the fight against IS told AP. Former Hussein officers gave the militant group the structuring and discipline it needed to bring together jihadist fighters from across the world. They have been allegedly put in charge of intelligence-gathering, spying on the Iraqi forces, maintaining and upgrading weapons, as well as trying to develop a chemical weapons program.
The officials estimate the number of Saddam-era veterans in mid- and senior-level positions within IS ranks stands between 100 and 160. They hail from Sunni-dominated areas as a rule, with intelligence officers mostly from western Anbar province, the majority of army officers from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and members of security services exclusively from Saddam's clan around his hometown of Tikrit, a veteran of battles against IS north and west of Baghdad, Brigadier General Abdul-Wahhab al-Saadi, told AP.
A former CIA case officer who has served in Iraq, Patrick Skinner, told AP that Saddam-era military and intelligence officers were a "necessary ingredient" in IS' battlefield triumphs last year, accounting for its expansion from a "terrorist organization to a proto-state."
"Their military successes last year were not terrorist, they were military successes," said Skinner, who currently works for a private strategic intelligence services firm.
Another aspect of the problem is how officers from Saddam's mainly secular regime happened to infuse one of the world's most radical Islamic extremist groups. It's believed that a Saddam-era program which tolerated Islamic hard-liners in the military in the 1990s, as well as anger among Sunni officers when the Pentagon disbanded Saddam's military in 2003 have mostly contributed to the transformation in Islamic State’s present line-up...................http://www.rt.com/news/311988-saddam-veterans-isis-command/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS
9/8/15
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Related:
Lack of Cooperation Between West, Syria Undermines Efforts to Battle ISIL/ISIS (Vitaly Churkin)
Mevlut Cavusoglu: Turkey to Start Fight against ISIL in Syria
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Iraq's PM office says U.S. general's comments on partition 'irresponsible'...
ReplyDeleteComments attributed to the most senior U.S. army official about the possibility of Iraq being partitioned are irresponsible and ignorant, the media office of the country's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Thursday.
General Ray Odierno, who retires as U.S. Army chief of staff on Friday, told reporters in Washington on Wednesday that partition "could happen" but was for the region, politicians and diplomats to figure out.
"It might be the only solution, but I'm not ready to say that yet," said Odierno, who has spent most of the last two decades dealing with conflict in Iraq.
The seizure of swathes of Iraq's north and west over the past year by Islamic State militants has fueled speculation about the country splintering into Shi'ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish regions.
Abadi, who took office a year ago, is a moderate Shi'ite Islamist who has sought reconciliation between Shi'ites and Sunnis but has struggled to build broad political support for change.
His media office said it was surprised at the comments attributed to Odierno, which it considered "irresponsible and reflecting ignorance of the Iraqi situation".
Abadi introduced sweeping reforms this week aimed at ending a setup that shares out government posts on ethnic and sectarian lines.
But his government's reliance on Shi'ite militia and volunteers rather than the ineffectual national army as a unifying military force has deepened sectarian mistrust without pushing the rebels back much.
Addressing his last Pentagon news conference, Odierno also said the fight against Islamic State was at a stalemate and the U.S. military should consider putting support troops on the ground with Iraqi forces if it saw no progress in coming months.
REUTERS
http://www.todayonline.com/world/iraqs-pm-office-calls-us-generals-comments-partition-irresponsible
13/8/15