The stunning collapse of the Iraqi army, despite repeated assurances from U.S. military commanders that it was a competent fighting force, was a critical factor in enabling the Islamic State's startling advance in Iraq. The failure of the Iraqi army after years of training at the hands of the world's best military and a huge influx of U.S. cash should have given Washington pause.
So what's a beleaguered administration to do? According to David Ignatius, the White House is likely mulling over a variety of strategies that entail... training new fighting forces:
Accelerate the training of the Iraqi army and a new Sunni national guard. Hundreds of foreign trainers, drawn from the special forces of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Australia and other nations, will be working with the Iraqi military. A similar effort is needed for the Sunni guard. Plans call for three battalions of tribal fighters in Anbar and three more in Salahuddin province. U.S. officials believe a quick start for this program will boost morale among Sunni tribal leaders who say they’re ready to fight the extremists but lack the tools....Speed the training of the moderate Free Syrian Army so it can battle the Islamic State’s militants. Easier said than done: The FSA is a ragtag force that must be rebuilt into a real rebel army with a solid command structure. Some officials argue for doubling the planned force to 10,000 and speeding completion of training camps in Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
What's maddening about the above is not simply that we have seen, first-hand, that this has already failed in Iraq, it's that the administration is sitting on a CIA study surveying decades of covert U.S. efforts to train and equip fighting forces around the world. According to the New York Times, the "still-classified review... concluded that many past attempts by the agency to arm foreign forces covertly had a minimal impact on the long-term outcome of a conflict. They were even less effective, the report found, when the militias fought without any direct American support on the ground."
So despite having a fair amount of empirical evidence that training various groups of armed men will likely backfire, the administration is evidently still considering it as a serious option.
