European migrant crisis: Iraqi soldiers ditch fight against Islamic State for life in Europe

European migrant crisis: Iraqi soldiers ditch fight against Islamic State for life in Europe


Posted Sun at 12:47pm


Some Iraqi soldiers are abandoning their posts and joining a wave of civilian asylum seekers headed to Europe, raising new doubts about the cohesion of the country's Western-backed security forces in the fight against Islamic State (IS) militants.

Interviews with asylum seekers and an analysis of social media activity show scores of fighters from the national army, police and special forces as well as Shiite militias and Kurdish Peshmerga have left in recent months or plan to go soon.

We were fighting while the government and political parties made it their mission to make money and officials sent their children to live abroad.
A 33-year-old Iraqi soldier

They join more than 50,000 civilians who have left Iraq in the past three months, according to the United Nations, part of an even larger exodus from neighbouring Syria and other conflict zones across the Middle East.

The inability of Iraq to retain its soldiers threatens to further erode morale in a military that has partially collapsed twice in the past year in the face of the IS group.

It could also undermine the efforts of a US-led coalition that has spent billions of dollars training and equipping Iraqi forces to take on the militants.

A spokesman for the Iraqi defence ministry said the military was not concerned about the migration of soldiers, which he put in the "tens" out of a security force estimated to number in the tens of thousands.

"The armed forces are performing their duties. There is no reason to be worried," said General Tahsin Ibrahim Sadiq.

But Saed Kakaei, adviser to the minister of Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq's Kurdistan region, said while he could not provide a specific figure for how many Peshmerga forces had left, the numbers were "concerning".

Iraq government 'not worth fighting for'

The soldiers' departure highlights a pervasive sense of hopelessness among many Iraqis more than a year after Islamic State seized a third of their country's territory, threatened to overrun the capital and declared a modern caliphate.

Despite driving them back in some areas, members of the security forces say they are leaving because they face daily offensives by the insurgents, sectarian violence, and economic depression.

What drove us to leave was seeing our guys getting wounded, killed or maimed, and nobody cared.
A 33-year-old Iraqi soldier

Many in the security forces are also frustrated and disillusioned with elected officials, who they allege abandoned them on the frontlines, while failing to provide adequate resources and enriching themselves through graft.

"Iraq is worth fighting for but the government is not," said a 22-year-old SWAT policeman who decided to emigrate after his brother was killed in battle earlier this year at the northern Baiji refinery where he was also posted.

"There is no concern for us at all. The government has destroyed us," he said, saying Baghdad's failure to reinforce soldiers had caused avoidable losses in a battle that has dragged on for more than a year.

Control of neighbourhoods in Baiji, about 190 kilometres north of Baghdad, has changed hands many times. Authorities said in July they had recaptured most of the town, but IS attacked central neighbourhoods days later, forcing pro-government forces to pull back.

Others echoed the policeman's concerns. A 33-year-old special forces member who was based in western Anbar province — an Islamic State stronghold — said he had lost any reason to stay, and joined 16 fellow soldiers who smuggled themselves to northern Europe last month.

"We were fighting while the government and political parties made it their mission to make money and officials sent their children to live abroad," he said.

"What drove us to leave was seeing our guys getting wounded, killed or maimed, and nobody cared."

Baghdad launched a campaign to retake the Sunni heartland of Anbar after the provincial capital Ramadi fell in May, leaving only a few government holdouts across the sprawling desert territory.

But fighting has progressed fitfully with sectarian tensions coming to a head and ground advances delayed by explosives planted by Islamic State along roads and in buildings.

A special operations member based in Ramadi said the elite unit alone had seen more than 100 fighters leave for Europe in the past six months. This could not be independently verified.

Many soldiers who left have changed their Facebook profiles from portraits in fatigues beside tanks or holding machine guns to photos riding bikes or relaxing in parks in Austria, Germany or Finland.

Reuters


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-21/some-iraqis-ditch-fight-against-islamic-state-for-life-in-europe/6790504