Home | Community | Message Board

Cannabis Seeds - Original Sensible Seeds
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
InvisibleAlex213
Stranger
Registered: 08/22/05
Posts: 1,839
Iraq army units fight each other
    #5627501 - 05/14/06 04:32 AM (17 years, 8 months ago)

Iraq's 'ragtag' army units start fighting among themselves
By Patrick Cockburn in Arbil
Published: 14 May 2006

A gun battle between two units of the Iraqi army has left one soldier and a civilian dead, underlining how ethnic and sectarian divisions are crippling the US-trained force.

The shooting, which took place between Kurdish and Shia soldiers on Friday near Duluiyah, 45 miles north of Baghdad, is a bad omen for US plans to hand over security to the Iraqi army by the end of the year.

The incident shows the deepening divisions and mistrust within the Iraqi army. Kurdish leaders have told the IoS that in a real civil war, they believe the national army would evaporate immediately, because its units owe their primary allegiance to their own communities. Peter Galbraith, the former US diplomat and expert on Iraq, citing senior Iraqi Ministry of Defence sources, says the Iraqi army consists of 60 Shia battalions, 45 Sunni battalions and nine Kurdish battalions. There is only one mixed battalion. In fact the number of Kurdish troops, formerly known as peshmerga, is understated. Apart from Kurds in the Iraqi army, there are another 60,000 men under arms within the Kurdish region.

Washington has repeatedly claimed that its aim is to train Iraqi security forces loyal to the central government and capable of fighting the armed resistance to the occupation. This would allow the US and Britain to reduce their forces in Iraq.

But the Iraqi army has remained a ragtag force. In 2004-05 its entire $1.3bn (£690m) procurement budget was stolen or spent in return for outdated or non-functioning weapons. Its vehicles, often elderly pick-up trucks, are very vulnerable to roadside bombs such as the one which hit the convoy of Kurdish soldiers on Friday. Even the numbers of the army are unclear, because it contains many "ghost" soldiers whose salaries are still drawn by their commanders.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article447806.ece


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Iraq explodes Xlea321 306 0 08/22/04 10:34 AM
by Xlea321
* Suspicious shells found in southern Iraq
( 1 2 all )
Anonymous 1,822 23 01/16/04 03:05 PM
by Xlea321
* Bush Says US Must Stay in Iraq for Long Haul
( 1 2 all )
Zahid 1,344 21 11/02/03 09:05 PM
by monoamine
* 43 Attacks on Americans in Iraq Yesterday
( 1 2 all )
Zahid 2,296 24 10/30/03 04:46 PM
by PsiloKitten
* Study Finds Up to 15,000 Killed in Iraq War
( 1 2 3 4 5 all )
Zahid 4,885 81 11/02/03 01:32 PM
by lysergic
* CNN: Bin Laden's Audio Tape - al Qaeda & Iraq Unite -
( 1 2 all )
Jammer 3,865 26 02/14/03 01:09 PM
by Jammer
* The President's Real Goal in Iraq Anonymous 694 2 04/09/03 01:54 PM
by RadioActiveSlug
* iraq
( 1 2 3 all )
Lallafa 2,565 46 08/21/02 08:06 PM
by Phred

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: Enlil, ballsalsa
298 topic views. 4 members, 4 guests and 5 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.023 seconds spending 0.008 seconds on 13 queries.