Iraqi army lacks “moral cohesion,” “will to fight” ISIS: U.K., U.S. defense officials

“We don’t like it from a moral point of view in the ethical sense, but at the heart of ISIS is a very strong cohesion, good strong leadership and a determination to succeed. And that’s why they’re doing so well. They’ve won the psychological battle.”

The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards also took issue with criticism of the performance of the Iraqi military, accusing the United States of having “no will” to stop ISIS. An Iranian newspaper quoted Gen. Qassem Suleimani as saying that the United States did not do a “damn thing” to stop the extremists’ advance on Ramadi.

Suleimani asserted that Iran and its allies are the only forces that can deal with Islamic State militants.

Iranian advisers guided Shi’a armed militias in the effort to block ISIS advances in Iraq, but military analyst say that the performance of these militias was surprisingly poor given the support and training they had received from Iran and Hezbollah.

On Sunday Cross also addressed the argument advanced by former British army chief Sir Richard Dannatt, that it was time for the United Kingdom to send British troops to fight ISIS on the ground: “Collectively I do think we need to sit down and begin to try and tease out this issue and decide how we’re going to take it forward and, yes, putting in more people like forward air controllers, maybe some attack helicopters, maybe some more special forces will help.

“But that will not solve the will power issue, the ability of the Iraqi military to hold the Sunni and Shia communities together, to fight coherently and to begin to seriously push back ISIS.”

The fall of Ramadi came after some successes in the fight against ISIS. The militants, for example, now control a smaller area – smaller by about 25 percent – that the territory they gained in their drive into Iraq last spring. Based on this relative success, the Iraqi army, joined by Sunni tribal fighters and American airstrikes, was planning a major offensive in western Iraq’s Anbar province in a few weeks, but it now appears that ISISs success in capturing Ramadi has pulled the rug from under these plans, at least in the near future.

Military analysts told the Post that unexpected collapse of Iraqi forces in Ramadi, forces which included elite counterterrorism troops from Iraq’s Golden Division, indicate that the Iraqi forces may be weaker than many in the U.S. government had assumed.

There is a deeper issue here, though, as the Obama administration is facing a broader challenge in the war against the Islamic State in the Middle East: Finding reliable and dedicated partners. This is especially difficult when it comes to recruiting Sunni partners.

President Obama noted this when he said that “The really important question moving forward is: How do we find effective partners — not just in Iraq but in Syria and in Yemen and in Libya — that we can work with,” Obama said in a recent interview with the Atlantic magazine. “How do we create the . . . atmosphere in which people across sectarian lines are willing to compromise?”

Iran and the Shi’as share the U.S. interest in defeating ISIS – but few, if any, Sunnis would agree to fight ISIS if such a fight would mean the strengthening of Shi’a groups. Thus, in Iraq, Sunni tribesmen have been unwilling to fight the Islamic State on behalf of a Shi’a-dominated government in Baghdad, especially as this government has a history of excluding and oppressing the Sunnis.

In Syria, too, moderate Syrian rebel groups, both secular and Islamist, are reluctant to fight ISIS if such fighting means strengthening the Alawite Assad regime. The United States had to promise these groups that the fight to remove Assad from power would be conducted at the same time that the fight against ISIS is carried out.

Resolving the question of having reliable partners on the ground to fight ISIS cannot be escaped, and Obama administration officials agree that more U.S. airstrikes would not necessarily change the performance of Iraqi troops on the ground. “Airstrikes are effective, but neither they nor really anything we do can substitute for the Iraqi forces’ will to fight. They’re the ones who have to beat ISIL and keep them beaten,” Carter said. In particular, Carter said that the Sunni tribes in western Iraq, whose populations were initially welcoming of the Islamic State, must do more.