Katarzyna Bzdak | 17 Apr 2008
Over the course of the Iraq war, a principal mission of the U.S. military effort has been to build, arm, and train Iraqi security forces capable of quelling internal violence and protecting Iraq from external threats. As with other elements of the Iraq war, this mission has not proceeded smoothly.
A number of governmental and media sources have recently highlighted the haphazard procedures and inadequate accountability standards the United States utilized to equip Iraqi soldiers and police officers with lethal firepower, shedding light on the often chaotic nature of the train-and-equip program. While most evidence remains uncorroborated or anecdotal, U.S.-supplied arms have reportedly turned up in the hands of insurgents, militia groups, private contractors, and criminals, some outside of Iraq. These lapses in accountability, particularly with regard to weapons transfers, could and should have been prevented.
A Rush to Arm
Following the end of the conventional phase of the Iraq war, the United States largely dismantled what was left of the Iraqi security apparatus. The U.S. military command initiated the train-and-equip program to rebuild military and police forces loyal to the new government of Iraq from the ground up, to eliminate loyalty to Saddam Hussein and purge security forces of the nefarious operating procedures that characterized Hussein's regime.
While the U.S. managed to rapidly recruit troops for the new Iraqi forces and begin transfers of weapons and other equipment, it quickly became apparent that the new Iraq troops were under-equipped and under-trained as the Iraqi insurgency took root and expanded from mid-2003 on. According to the Department of Defense's own "Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq" report from July 2005, the first Iraqi units thrown into battle against insurgent forces in early and mid-2004 performed poorly: Apart from dismal combat performance in general, most Iraqi forces suffered from high rates of desertion, and several battalions collapsed outright. Government officials widely cited a lack of proper equipment and training as the contributing factors that led to this bleak performance. The United States subsequently redoubled its efforts to "stand up" Iraq's security forces.
Due the demanding conditions on the ground, and perhaps because U.S. security assistance programs were not configured for wartime conditions, the train-and-equip program operated outside of traditional, established security assistance programs. Officials administering the program focused on rapidly dispersing equipment using ad-hoc funds, and often did not follow standard U.S. procedures -- procedures codified by law in established security assistance programs -- for weapons accountability. Gen. David Petraeus, who administered the train-and-equip program at the time, admitted that rapidly equipping the Iraqi forces fighting the burgeoning insurgency was considered more important than keeping thorough records of equipment distribution. According to Petraeus, "[U.S. commanders] occasionally likened it to building the world's largest aircraft while in flight and while being shot at. . . . But we gradually started putting those procedures into place."
