That country rich in Petroleum, but incapable of knowing how to exploit its resources except for a small caste, is a perfect buyer for the countries that, pretending to be guarantors, continue to sell every type of military equipment. One really wonders if air raids are not really a cover for unbridled sales that does not take into account the context or the final user of the platforms.
From the Pentagon they minimize, but the ISIS continues to be equipped at no cost. I wonder if one day we should not regret this strategy that takes more and more account of the petrodollars and not of the operational scenario.
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The one called the "Iraq Train and Equip Fund" is part of the Obama administration's main plan to train Iraqi troops against fundamentalists. The cost of the operation is 1,6 billion dollars. The deployment of weapons and equipment is part of a broader strategy to counter the Islamic State.
In two weeks, what is believed to be one of the biggest military supplies since US support began, will arrive in Iraq to equip Loyalist troops, Sunni groups and Peshmerga Kurds. Complete supplies will come to Iraq to equip entire brigades: assault rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars, protective masks, visors, suppressors and millions of ammunition.
A particular fact emerges. One of the largest military commissions (obviously US production) was delivered in the same week as Iraqi forces (the same ones who always complained about small ammunition) lost Ramadi.
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If indeed these weapons have never reached the regular troops, then it is easy to hypothesize the fate of the entire supply, delivered at no cost to the ISIS militiamen. And the Pentagon continues to minimize.
Iraq's military supplies do not arrive as they should have - the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi complained from Paris - our troops do not receive what was promised by the Allies within the time allowed. The air campaign is useful, but not intensive enough. We need assistance.
It turns out, after months and months (?), That something in the supply doesn't work. There are regular troops that have weapons, but not ammunition. Others, which have ammunition but are waiting for weapons.
The complaints are unjustified - the Pentagon replies - the slowness of the program was foreseen. The problem is not the ammunition or the weapons that do not arrive, but the vulnerability of the Iraqi leadership.
ISIS: a modern army at no cost
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On the black market in Mosul, you can buy just about anything: AK-47, M4A1, Special Operations Peculiar Modification kits, H&K assault rifles, any kind of mine, pistol or knife. Certainly not an M1A1M Abrams tank, but terrorists now have at least two dozen of them, as well as other systems they usually wouldn't be able to get. This is because the withdrawal of the Iraqi regular army, equipped with the best of US production (but also Russian, Chinese, French, Italian and English) that petrodollars can buy, never happens in an organized way.
Every defeat of the Iraqi army always happens with the uncontrolled escape of soldiers who have only one thought "to save the skin". And to slow down the enemy (and attract his attention), they abandon everything: individual equipment, encrypted instrumentation, documents, armored and non-armored vehicles. And these episodes are no longer isolated, but occur with a certain regularity.
What is worse, with every defeat, terrorists acquire skills and power. And to think that they don't know how to use the equipment would be pure folly, considering the mercenaries, who have come in thousands from all over the world to join the Daash cause.
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Until a few months ago, it was unthinkable that the ISIS had a barrage. Now it turns out that at least sixty M198 Howitzers, heavy artillery from 155 mm, are regularly in battle among the ranks of the Islamic State as well as dozens of BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers.
The terrorists would not yet have a real anti-aircraft force, but they captured a dozen ZSU-23-4 Shilka from the Syrian army. If these antiaircraft self-propelled vehicles were to operate against an allied aircraft that does not expect such a barrage, it could also be shot down. And the terrorists are waiting for nothing else.
It would be a serious mistake to consider the militia as "savages" with a gun and to consider Iraqi soldiers as professional soldiers. It would be a serious mistake because thousands of Chechens, experts in unconventional guerrilla warfare, fight among the terrorists. But the fundamentalists who have come to Iraq come from all over the world and almost all have received paramilitary training.
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The Iraqis, despite the latest equipment, have demonstrated real basic incompetence and strategists have forgotten one of the basic rules for going to battle: training. The million-dollar allowances taken away to acquire skills that make the West shine, can do nothing without real military training.
They will certainly not be modern, but at least sixty T-62M / K and about forty T-55 are on the list of ISIS. The list of "spending" made by Iraqis and Syrians is impressive. Hundreds between BMP-1, M1117, BRDM-2. More than 300 MTVR Americans, one hundred M113 and more than 3500 HUMVEE all equipped with additional armor and armed turret. At least fifty Cougar armored vehicles acquired. Millions of bullets of various caliber, thousands of light and heavy weapons, about 500 anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.
Iraq and Syria, unintentionally, are equipping the enemy for free. And another massive offensive is being planned to free Ramadi from other brand new vehicles.
The terror is that ISIS is able to acquire and implement even a large-scale and organized anti-air component. In that case, the entire role of the Coalition would be revised and the only fighter-bombers alone would not be enough. History teaches.
The feeling is that while the terrorists are gaining capacity, the Iraqis go into battle defeated even before firing a single shot.
Franco Iacch
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(photo: US DoD / web)
