Baghdad's Last Line of Defense

By MATT BRADLEY 

Aug. 8, 2014 

As Islamist insurgents close in, Iraq is desperately trying to rebuild its army. But are untrained recruits the right men for the battle?

Volunteers check in at the main army recruiting center to volunteer for military service in Baghdad on June 24. Associated Press

Sattar Jabbar stood at a Baghdad army recruiting station in June wearing nothing but a pair of blue boxer-briefs and a crooked grin. He was waiting for the medical exam required to join Iraq's army, he said, answering a call to arms issued by his spiritual leader, Iraq's senior Shiite cleric.

"I've been trying to volunteer for years, so now I'm seizing the opportunity," he said. "I'm doing this for the Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani and for the prime minister."

At 39 years old, the gray-haired, potbellied father of five doesn't look like the kind of vigorous young man usually sought by armies. But as Sunni militants led by the Islamic State push through Iraq, seizing towns and territory, Baghdad is desperately trying to rebuild its broken army with untrained, mostly Shiite recruits.

The recruitment drive, spurred on by Ayatollah Sistani's religious injunction, is one of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's main solutions for filling the army's porous ranks after thousands of soldiers fled their positions during the Islamist surge that began in June.

Iraqi volunteers climb on an army truck outside a recruiting center on June 13. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Iraq's ability to turn back the militant onslaught, which has gained more ground over the past week, will depend in large part on its ability to bolster its depleted troop ranks and shape a fighting force capable of standing up to the Islamic State.

So far, Iraq's military has struggled with the influx of recruits, who are proving to be far from battle-ready. Their military training has been perfunctory, even though many of the new enlistees had never before fired weapons. In June, when some were sent into battle in the northern city of Tal Afar, they were outgunned and outmaneuvered by the Islamic State.

"They came in without prior experience," said Gen. Mohammed Koraishi, who was in charge of the Tal Afar operation. "Most of them hadn't used a gun before. This was the first time the Iraqi Army had received recruits like this."

That the new reservists—some politicians claim that there are hundreds of thousands of them—have answered a call from a Shiite cleric to fight a Sunni Islamist insurgency has many Iraqis worried. They fear that Mr. Maliki's new army is little more than a well-armed Shiite militia that could make Iraq's already bad sectarian conflict even worse.

Without proper training, say many politicians, the recruits are more likely to harass, abuse and murder the mostly Sunni residents of the areas in which they will be deployed. That could push Iraq into the sort of sectarian civil conflict it saw in 2006 and 2007.

"We can't solve such problems with this sectarian mobilization," said Hamid al Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni member of parliament and a critic of Mr. Maliki. "We can't just include untrained fighters in a war on terror."

Iraqi officers say that the new recruits are just a stopgap measure to bolster manpower. Gen. Sabah al Fatlawi, the head of the Samarra Operations Command, said that most offensive actions are handled by experienced troops. "These huge numbers of volunteers have raised the morale of our armed forces," he said. "This has compensated for the huge losses that our military has seen."

To be sure, Iraq's military and especially its police forces have long been rife with sectarianism. The security services tend to be run by the country's Shiite majority, and the Shiite-dominated political leadership in Baghdad prefers Shiite military leaders.

But the recent uptick in enlistment marks a high point in sectarian recruitment for the Iraqi army, undoing years of American efforts to diversify the Iraqi army's religious identity.

Sattar Jabbar, 39, stands for a physical exam required to join Iraq's army. Matt Bradley/The Wall Street Journal

When Sunni militants led by the Islamic State seized Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, in a predawn raid on June 10, they sent three divisions of Iraq's army scurrying south to Baghdad. The mass retreat humiliated and shattered Iraq's military. The militants were able to quickly push south to within striking distance of Baghdad.

During Friday prayers a few days later came Ayattolah Sistani's fatwa. Religious experts say that it was the first religious call to arms by a Shiite cleric since they called Iraqis to repel British colonists in 1921.

Recruiters say that some 60,000 to 70,000 men have joined up since the June 13 religious edict—considerably less than the numbers thrown around by some politicians. The Iraqi government does not disclose troop levels. Retired U.S. Lt. Gen. James Dubik, who once led the training of Iraq's military, estimated the overall size of Iraq's forces at about 700,000.

Iraq's military appeared ill-prepared to integrate the new recruits. Some soldiers were asked to buy their own uniforms in public shops in downtown Baghdad. Unable to provide food, the army took donations from wealthy benefactors, mostly Shiites.

"It was like a mowakib," said Khaled Johi, a recruitment officer, referring to the Shiite practice of distributing meals to the poor during Shiite religious holidays.

Ayattolah Sistani and Iraqi officials have taken pains to portray the fatwa as an appeal to all Iraqis to defend their country. Brig. Gen. Fadel Abdel Sahab Thabet, a recruitment officer at Al Muthana Air Base, said that at least 35% of the recruits were Sunnis—a figure that would exceed Sunni Arabs' proportion of the Iraqi population.

Sunni politicians like Mr. Mutlaq are worried that the accelerated enlistment of Shiites could lead to abuses as religious passion meets lax military discipline. Iraqi military officials acknowledge the risk but say they have no other choice for filling the ranks.

New recruits in uniform take part in training on June 19. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

In Samarra, the furthest point of Iraqi government control before the insurgent-held city of Tikrit, local residents say that they were frightened by young army volunteers who openly wore arm and headbands bearing the insignia for Shiite militias such as Asaib Ahl Al Haq, an irregular combat unit known for its cruelty. Last week, local leaders in Samarra demanded that the military deploy the recently enlisted volunteers to the city's outskirts after reports that they were harassing the local Sunni population.

Among the incidents that caused local leaders to recoil was the killing of a 2-year-old girl during a raid on a shepherd's home in a village outside Samarra on July 8.

Zedan Ouda, 48, said he had been asleep with his wife and four children in their mud-brick hamlet at around 1 a.m. when about 20 young volunteers burst through the door shooting. The machine-gun fire killed Mr. Ouda's daughter, Nour, and wounded his 3-year-old son Ahmed in the leg, Mr. Ouda said.

After the initial gunfire, the young men, some dressed in army fatigues and others in track suits, continued to hurl insults at the family, accusing them of being terrorists and Baathists—loyalists to the former regime of Saddam Hussein—while threatening to kill the rest of them, according to Mr. Ouda.

Shiite volunteers in the Iraqi army take part in weapons training in Najaf on July 18. Reuters

Another man from the village, Amir Hamid, corroborated Mr. Ouda's account, adding that he had heard reports of recruits raiding other houses to steal gold, cash and cellphones.

Gen. Fatlawi, who is in charge of military recruits in the area, said that he had no knowledge of the attack. He and other officials acknowledged that the truncated training regimen was thrusting unprofessional soldiers into the war zone without adequate discipline.

"Everyone knows it's dangerous," said Mr. Johi, the recruitment officer. "But because of the national duty, we have to fight for our country under such circumstances."

When Mohanad Mohammed, 24, and his two friends first heard about the uprising in Mosul, they were eager for a chance to defend Iraq. But they knew that they couldn't fight without approval from a high cleric, said Salman Al Gharawi, a school security guard and Mr. Mohammed's older friend. "So when Al Sistani's call came, I was delighted to join," he said.

The following morning, all three arrived at Camp Justice, a recruiting station near Baghdad. There, they registered, took a short physical exam and were given military uniforms.

For the next three days, the three men and about 150 others conducted perfunctory military training. They were taught hand-to-hand combat and shown how to run in a zigzag to dodge bullets, said Hikmat al Attabi, another friend of Mr. Mohammed's who enlisted with him. They trained with fake weapons—rifle-shaped pieces of wood, they said.

When the 150 volunteers were standing on the tarmac at Baghdad Airport preparing to board helicopters to the embattled city of Tal Afar, each was handed a loaded AK-47, the three men said. Many had never fired a weapon before.

Recruits get dressed in Baghdad on July 8. Reuters

The ethnically mixed city of Tal Afar had fallen to Islamist fighters on June 16, but its outskirts remained one of the last holdouts for government troops in the north. Mr. Maliki and military leaders hoped the new recruits would prevent a slaughter of the region's large Shiite and Turkoman populations.

Mr. Mohammed and his friends said that they were told their mission was to reinforce the city so it could be safely evacuated. They said that they weren't told they would be landing at an airport under siege from insurgent mortar fire. "I was afraid I would die before I even did anything," said Mr. Mohammed.

A convoy of armored personnel carriers brought the soldiers to a barracks near the airport. They joined about 100 local tribal fighters from Tal Afar, experienced Iraqi soldiers and fighters from a Shiite militia known as the Hezbullah Brigades, after the Shiite insurgent army based in southern Lebanon, said Mr. Gharawi.

Mr. Mohammed was handed a PKM machine gun, a 4-foot Russian-built automatic weapon designed for laying down covering fire. Mr. Mohammed had never handled the huge weapon before.

He and his company advanced by foot toward Tal Afar until they reached a deserted marketplace where a group of Islamic State fighters were lounging on the hood of a car. A soldier from Mr. Mohammed's unit fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the car while Mr. Mohammed sprayed bullets at the fleeing insurgents.

His shots took down one of the fighters, he said. "I felt relieved," he said. "It was like winning over the devil. I never considered him human."

Over the next week, the new recruits and Iraqi soldiers fought to regain Tal Afar. Mr. Mohammed said that the new recruits, bolstered by the military, tribal fighters and Shiite militia, repeatedly gained ground against the Islamist State fighters. "They aren't that tough," he said. "They fled like rats."

Soldiers and volunteers chant slogans against the Islamic State inside Baghdad's main recruiting center.Associated Press

The Iraqi military, however, tells a different story: Progovernment forces in Tal Afar were outmaneuvered by the Islamic State. Militants shared pictures of public executions in Tal Afar on Facebook and Twitter.

Gen. Koraishi, who was in charge of the operation, said that the new recruits were incapable of fighting and spent most of their time guarding the airport. "They were supposed to be mujahedeen who are ready to fight," he said. "They couldn't stand the pressure, so we sent them back."

Mr. Mohammed, the recruit, said that on the final day of fighting in Tal Afar on June 23, he saw tribal forces who had been crucial to the fight flee in hundreds of pickup trucks to the safety of Sinjar, a city in nearby Kurdistan. Army commanders told Mr. Mohammed and his unit of new recruits to wait in a barracks less than a mile from the airport.

As the enlistees smoked cigarettes and waited for instructions, they spotted transport helicopters landing. Mr. Mohammed said the career soldiers were already at the airport waiting to be airlifted back to Baghdad. He said that he believes he and his fellow enlistees had not been told of the evacuation to prevent them from trying to rush the transport helicopters.

Gen. Koraishi said no orders had been given to retreat, but that some new recruits had run to several arriving transport planes demanding to board. When the pilots refused, he said, some recruits forced the pilots at gunpoint to let them return to Baghdad.

With the insurgents closing in, Mr. Mohammed said, "I felt like I had been betrayed and abandoned." He said many recruits called their parents in Baghdad to tell them that the army had left them to die. Mr. Mohammed and his cousin made a pact to die together.

Others dialed Gen. Koraishi and his unit. The general said that he was surprised to learn that all of the enlistees hadn't managed to get on the transport planes and were hiding in the brush near the runway. He said he led a small force to rescue them the following morning—an operation that cost him one of his best men.

Gen. Koraishi said that he regretted the pell-mell process of recruitment that contributed to the disaster at Tal Afar.

In a final act of defiance as they were leaving, Mr. Mohammed said, he hanged by the feet the corpses of those believed to have been insurgents. Many of the bodies, which they strung up on the fighters' own gun barrels, were burned beyond recognition in missile attacks earlier that day.

After a few days in Kurdistan, Mr. Mohammed was back in Baghdad. He and his friends haven't heard anything since from their ad hoc unit, he said. But if he did, he would probably refuse to re-enlist. He feels betrayed.

"I want to defend my city of Baghdad. I'll fight, but not as a soldier," he said. If needed again, he said, he would likely join the Shiite militias—highly sectarian forces that have been known to commit atrocities against Sunnis.

—Laith al Haydar contributed to this article.