SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – The number of Kurds in the Iraqi military has dropped to a record low, following a fall in overall Kurdish enlistment in the Iraqi military over the past two years, according to a lawmaker in Baghdad.
“The number of Kurds within the military is now around 1 percent, with maybe one or two Kurds in an entire brigade,” said Shakhawan Abdulla , who is also a member of parliament’s defense committee.
He told Rudaw that a gradual decline in Kurds enlisting in the Iraqi army gathered pace after Iraqi forces pulled out of Kurdish-populated territories, in the face of an Islamic State onslaught in June 2014.
Abdulla noted that Kurdish soldiers had accounted for some 20 percent of the Iraq’s military force in the early days of its re-establishment in 2004.
The then US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, disbanded the Iraqi army in 2003 in the aftermath of the US-led invasion of the country and the ouster of the Baath regime in Iraq.
A new army was established in 2003, with many former Baath loyalists banned from holding positions within the new establishment.
Kurds, who had the only organized military force in Iraq after the invasion, received key posts in the new military, including the chief of staff.
“But the post of chief of staff is currently occupied by an Arab, despite the fact that the position was for a Kurd to fill, according to agreements,” Abdulla said.
Earlier in 2015 Gen. Babakir Zebari, a Kurd, resigned as chief of staff in silent protest against what he described as “very limited powers” he had been entrusted by Baghdad.
“When you have a position and you cannot practice your powers, you are better to step aside,” the now retired general told Rudaw in an interview, after resignation.
With over 800,000 active recruits and another 2 million reserves, the new Iraqi army is one of the largest military forces in the region.
The US has so far provided the army with an estimated $25 billion in equipment and military training since 2004, in addition to another $25 billion provided by Iraq’s own treasury.
The army, however has been loudly criticized in the past for being a “sectarian force” which excludes non-Shiite officers from holding top positions.
“It is not the army of all Iraqi people. If anything, it is more of a nightmare for the entire country,” said Bakhtiar Shawes, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi parliament.
“It is a tribal army and a source of corruption, which has cost $50 billion, but could not even defend itself against a few hundred (ISIS) gunmen,” Shawes said, referring to the army’s retreat from northern areas prior to the ISIS assault.
The Iraqi army withdrew from many of the disputed territories outside the Kurdistan region in June 2014, as ISIS militants overran Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul.
Many of the Kurdish soldiers left the army then and joined Peshmarga forces that now replaced the Iraqi military in the area, including in the disputed oil city of Kirkuk.
“Before the retreat, at least two whole Iraqi brigades were Kurdish, but now you see only a fraction of that number in the entire army,” Shawes added.
