Due to the attack on the mosques, the Iraqi Army can no longer be regarded as securely under American control in my opinion. The Iraqi government which is really controlled by the interior ministry and not by the elected leadership is attacking the Sunni minority and the Iraqi troops under American control are sympathetic to this cause and will soon no doubt simply become troops under the control of the interior ministry. America is losing any control it had over events in Iraq.
This from Nyceve reporting a Iraqi blogger “on the ground” in the aftermath of the mosque attacks.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2006/2/24/164553/342#1
There was not much to hear in our area, apart from the occasional thud and fire exchange, which are really usual everyday experiences for the last 3 years. There was no presence of security forces that I could witness. Friends from areas around Sadr city said pickups full of armed men in black were patrolling the streets, unchallenged by Iraqi security forces. Many people swear that the Interior ministry forces are explicitly siding with the Mahdi militiamen in their rampage of arson and plundering. Most of the mosques in Baghdad are now closed and surrounded by barbed wire.
The Iraqi Army which is almost exclusively Shiite will probably be breaking away from American control and siding with the Peshmerga and other militias in Iraq who are heavily under the influence of Iran. This is part of Iran’s strategy to nullify any attack by America on it. The Ministry of the Interior has recently come under criticism by Americans for torturing Sunni detainees. The reason for the criticism is that the Americans, who also use torture, see the Ministry of the Interior as allied with Iran and as their enemy. The Interior Ministry force is essentially meant to be a police force but they have become a militia force commanding more than 30.000 Badr militia fighters who were trained in Iran as well as many other militias. The Iraqi Army is not under their control, but it is under their influence. And I believe the attack on the Shrine increases that influence and it would a small matter for them to agree to move themselves over to control by the ministry rather than American forces.
This means that the U.S. may be about to lose control over the Iraqi Army. Recently the U.S. has come up with a plan to build up the Iraqi Army.This from Voice of America:
The Iraqi Army has been billed as the U.S. Army’s ticket home. As part of the 11-point-five billion dollar effort to build up the new Iraqi Army, the U.S. Military is embedding small, ten man teams of American soldiers, called Military Assistance Transition Teams, into Iraqi units to help them develop.
The idea was not to build up the army, but to keep an eye on them. The Americans saw this defection coming. The Iraqi Army is made up of militiamen who have infiltrated it, (from the Ministry of the Interior and other militias) people looking for work, and some insurgents. None of these groups have any loyalty to the American’s overseeing them. The Americans have been worrying about this and now it appears the Army is about to switch and join the militias who are controlled by Iran and not by the titular heads of the Iraqi government or the Americans. Some of the Army will go home, but it appears on the brink of dissolving.
It is not civil war that threatens American interests it is the defecting and or dissolution of the troops they claimed to have trained.
This makes the urgency for a U.S. attack on Iran more imminent. The defection of the Iraqi troops to the Interior Ministry will make it clear to Bush that his invasion was a failure. The defection is being orchestrated by Iran in an attempt to counter the upcoming attack upon it by the US by air. I believe they hope to embarrass Bush as much as possible, in hopes that public sentiment and outcry will prevent him from attacking Iran and causing another debacle like the one in Iraq. The debacle is intended by Iran to be the dissolution of the Iraqi Army.
