At times, Maliki’s government has seemed to be almost purposely corroding the military’s preparedness:
This policy makes political sense if you consider Maliki’s primary goal to be protecting his own rule rather than combating existential threats to the security of Iraq.
I’ve written about this a bit in reference to Qaddafi’s rule in Libya, but authoritarian rulers—and Maliki is clearly at least headed in that direction—often prefer not to have a strong and professionally organized military. As Hosni Mubarak learned a few years ago, strong militaries can turn on you when the going gets tough. But such “coup-proofing” obviously comes at the expense of the military’s preparedness for outside threats.
Maliki made it abundantly clear to U.S. officials that one of his primary concerns was the possibility of a military coup organized by Saddam Hussein’s former officers. The best protection against such a scenario is not a large, well-trained, multiethnic military but a small elite fighting force selected on the basis of loyalty. In 2012 Toby Dodge of the International Institute for Strategic Studies described how Maliki was constructing such a force:
The linchpin of this praetorian guard, Iraq’s Special Operations Forces, or ISOF, has been described by U.S. commanders as the country’s most capable counterterrorism force, but has also operated “in legal and financial limbo, neither part of the Defense Ministry chain of command nor assigned to an agency approved and funded by parliament.”
Shane Bauer wrote in The Nation in 2009, “Established by a directive from Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, the [Counterterrorism Bureau] answers directly to him and commands the ISOF independently of the police and army. According to Maliki's directive, the Iraqi Parliament has no influence over the ISOF and knows little about its mission.”
A RAND Corp. report last year noted that beginning in 2011, Iraq’s counterterrorism service “experienced a gradual 'Shi’afication' ” and that “the percentage of “Shi’a in CTS classes became disproportionately high.”
By that year, the report states, Maliki
had successfully surrounded himself with loyal forces assigned to the 54th and 56th Brigades and the 6th Iraq Army Division, located in Baghdad. Prime Minister Maliki had also used his powers to personally promote loyal officers and retiring officers he suspected would be independent. The debate within [U.S. Special Forces] was whether Prime Minister Maliki was simply consolidating power and coup-proofing the government or whether he was taking systematic actions that would enable him to serve as an authoritarian leader with military forces at his disposal to buttress the power of a nascent and corruptible legal system to target political adversaries.
And indeed, Maliki has been accused of employing the special forces in operations against political opponents.
It’s not exactly a surprise to learn that the army divisions that collapsed last week were the multiethnic divisions far from the capital, unenthusiastic about dying to protect Maliki’s government, while more loyal and professional,predominantly Shiite units close to the capital have mostly been holding strong. This disparity in preparedness was likely a feature, not a bug.
It’s also not a surprise to see that it’s special operations forces that are engaged in the battle at the Baiji refinery and the efforts to retake Tal Afar.
But what Maliki seems not to have anticipated is that threat he was most concerned about—Baath Party remnants—and the one his American backers were most concerned about—extremist insurgency—would combine into one overwhelming threat. Special operations forces, a few loyal units from Baghdad, and irregular Shiite militias may not be enough to meet it.
The military Maliki has built may work to keep him in power in Baghdad but could be incapable of keeping the country from falling apart.
