Iraq, Ukraine Private Militias Complicate US Training Missions

© AP PhotoSecurity forces defend their headquarters against attacks by Islamic State extremists during sand storm in the eastern part of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, May 14, 2015
Security forces defend their headquarters against attacks by Islamic State extremists during sand storm in the eastern part of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, May 14, 2015 - Sputnik International
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Local private militias pose a challenge to US efforts to effectively train and establish a strong centralized government security force in both Iraq and Ukraine, experts told Sputnik.

The US Army is hoping to benefit from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine in perhaps one unexpected way: by collecting what they say could be useful intelligence about Russian military technology. - Sputnik International
US Repeats Iraqi Scenario by Training ‘Puppet Army‘ in Ukraine - UK Party
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Executive Intelligence Review weekly Senior Editor Jeff Steinberg compared Ukraine's military to that of Iraq, where "you have the official military, which is small, underfunded and under-trained, and you have militias that take their orders from elsewhere."

"There is no real Ukraine military to speak of," Steinberg said.

The publication's senior editor sees parallels between Ukraine and Iraq in terms of the United States trying to engage in a limited military training program while simultaneously negotiating with non-governmental armies and gangs.

"This [US training program] is more a matter of ‘showing the flag’ to support the government in Kiev, which faces both the pro-Russian insurgency in the East and the neo-Nazi criminal gangs, run by private oligarchs in the West," Steinberg added.

Johns Hopkins University Professor and military historian Michael Vlahos told Sputnik that the most accomplished military trainers on Earth cannot motivate Iraq’s regular army units to fight as effectively as the Shia private armies.

"[P]eople fight for their identity, their community, for everything they hold dear. That is why the Shia militias are so much more effective in battle than the so-called Iraqi Army, and always will be," Vlahos said.

On Sunday, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that the Iraqi army, which the US military helped train following the 2003 US invasion, lacked the "will" to defeat the Islamic State jihadist group that seized large areas of Iraq last year.

The major underlying issues as to why Shia militias outperform the regular army in Iraq, Vlahos argued, is the power vacuum in Baghdad and the alienation of Sunni fighters who lack trustworthy political leaders and commanders.

"An absent working fraternity of battle is indicative of a much bigger vacuum [in Iraq], that of a regime in which no one believes, and for whom all trust has been irrevocably lost," Vlahos said.

In March, Washington said it would redeploy up to 300 military instructors from Italy to the Ukrainian city of Yavoriv, near the Polish border, as part of a mission to train the Ukrainian National Guard. The United States committed $300 million worth of what it termed defensive weapons as part of its 2016 defense budget.

US and Ukrainian soldiers attend an opening ceremony of the joint Ukrainian-US military exercise 'Fearless Guardian' at the Yavoriv training ground - Sputnik International
Sectarian, Cultural Factors Sap US Military Training in Iraq, Ukraine
The US Congress passed and President Barack Obama ratified the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, allowing lethal supplies to conflict-torn Ukraine, in December 2014.

Russia has argued that the US legislation could provoke further escalation of violence in Ukraine. President Obama has currently not acted upon the legislation to send lethal arms to Ukraine.

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