CAIRO (AP) — The video, set to sweetly lilting religious
hymns, is chilling. Islamic militants are shown knocking on the door of a
Sunni police major in the dead of night in an Iraqi city. When he
answers, they blindfold and cuff him. Then they carve off his head with a
knife in his own bedroom.
The 61-minute video was recently posted
online by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an al-Qaida
splinter group of Sunni extremists. The intent was to terrorize Sunnis
in Iraq’s army and police forces and deepen their already low morale.
That
fear is one factor behind the stunning collapse of Iraqi security
forces when fighters led by the Islamic State overran the cities of
Mosul and Tikrit this week, sweeping over a swath of Sunni-majority
territory. In most cases, police and soldiers simply ran, sometimes
shedding their uniforms, and abandoned arsenals of heavy weapons.
Even
after the United States spent billions of dollars training the armed
forces during its 2003-2011 military presence in Iraq, the 1
million-member army and police remain riven by sectarian discontents,
corruption and a lack of professionalism.
Many Sunnis in the armed
forces are unprepared to die fighting on behalf of Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki’s Shiite-led government, which many in their minority
community accuse of sharp bias against them. The Islamic State has
exploited this by touting itself as the Sunnis’ champion against
Shiites.
Shiites in the armed forces, in turn, feel isolated and deeply vulnerable trying to hold on to
Sunni-majority areas.
Desertion
has been heavy the past six months among forces in the western province
of Anbar, Iraq’s Sunni heartland, where troops have been fighting in
vain to uproot Islamic State fighters who took over the city of
Fallujah, said two high officials — one in the government and the other
in the intelligence services.
The militants who early this week
swept into the northern city of Mosul included former Sunni army
officers who had deserted out of frustration with al-Maliki’s
government, the two officials told The Associated Press, speaking on
condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence reports.
As the
militants approached, the two officials said, many of the top army
commanders in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, fled to the autonomous
Kurdish region.
With their generals gone, the ranks saw no reason to stay.
"We
were fighting, but our leaders betrayed us," one soldier who escaped
from Mosul told the AP in Irbil, capital of the Kurdish region. "When we
woke up, all the leaders had left."
The intelligence assessments
show that many of the 52,000 police and 12,000 soldiers in Mosul
surrendered, handing over their weapons in exchange for safe passage
out, the two officials said.
With a salary of $700 a month for
newly enlisted men, the army and the police have attracted many young
Iraqis who would otherwise be unemployed. Once in, some bribe commanders
so they can stay home and take a second job, lamented the officials.
Most
are in it for the paycheck. "There’s a sense the individuals looked to
themselves and thought this is not my fight," said Feisal Istrabadi, a
former Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations. "They haven’t been
trained and imbued with a sense of professionalism."
"Even in the
army, the loyalties are not to the state," said Istrabadi, now director
of the Center for the Study of the Middle East at Indiana University.
Many
troops are drawn from the ranks of Shiite militiamen and from Sunni
tribal militias, known as the Sahwa, set up by the Americans to fight
al-Qaida. The loyalties of those troops are often more to their sect or
tribe than to the state. In Baghdad, army checkpoints manned by Shiite
troops often fly Shiite banners or images of Shiite religious figures.
With
most soldiers lacking training and discipline, offensive operations are
mostly carried out by a special, U.S.-trained counterterrorism outfit
of some 10,000 men that fought alongside the Americans for years, the
two officials said.
But that unit, they said, does not have the
manpower to hold territory after it drives militants out. So it hands
the task over to regular troops, who then surrender it when under fire.
The
counterterrorism unit is under al-Maliki’s direct authority, and there
is discontent among officers in the regular military that the prime
minister weighs in too heavily on military matters. Another source of
low morale among the ranks is widespread corruption in military
contracts that end up with troops receiving poor supplies and food.
The
two officials said the security forces’ incompetence will very likely
force al-Maliki to rely increasingly on hard-line Shiite militias, some
of which are loyal to Iran, in the fight against the Islamic State.
That would only further deepen the shadow that sectarianism casts over Iraq and its armed forces.
The
Sunni minority that dominated power under dictator Saddam Hussein
resents the political ascendancy of the Shiite majority since his 2003
ouster in the U.S.-led invasion. The two communities came close to
outright civil war in 2006-2008, with tens of thousands killed in almost
daily massacres and bombings.
Sunnis are well represented in the
military’s officer corps. The majority of soldiers and warrant officers
are Shiites, but they mostly serve in areas dominated by members of the
same sect. That leaves the Sunnis to serve in Sunni areas like Mosul and
Anbar, where many of them are demoralized by the idea of fighting
against fellow members of their Muslim sect.
Police forces are usually drawn from local populations and so are particularly vulnerable to
intimidation.
The
harrowing video put out 10 days ago by Islamic State’s media arm,
Al-Furqan, underscores the threats to Sunnis in pro-government forces.
Speaking
on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, Iraqis contacted in
Anbar and the provinces where Mosul and Tikrit are located said the
video was widely seen. They spoke of people they knew personally who
deserted the military after watching the footage of the summary
beheading.
One resident of Fallujah, identifying himself only by
his nickname Abu Ali, said the video brought home the Islamic State’s
brutality. But he said morale is already low among troops because of
almost daily attacks by jihadis on army positions. "The strikes by
fighters in the streets had more effect than the video," he said.
Besides
the scene of the beheading of the Sunni police major in Salaheddin
province, the video includes footage of drive-by shootings of off-duty
security personnel and the killings of captured army soldiers. In one
scene, fighters masquerading as soldiers set up a checkpoint on a main
highway, stopped cars and killed Shiites and security personnel by the
side of the road.
In another horrifying scene, fighters abduct a
Sahwa commander along with his two sons. They are forced to dig their
own graves in the desert before their throats are slit.
"I advise
whoever is with the Sahwa to repent and quit," the commander says to the
camera. "Here I am digging my grave with my own hands. … They can get
to anyone."
___
Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated
Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Beirut and Adam Schreck in Dubai,
contributed to this report.