The Foreign Policy Essay: Harnessing Militia Power—Lessons of the Iraqi National Guard
Ariel I. Ahram and Frederic Wehrey
May 24, 2015
Editor’s Note: National governments seem to be failing throughout the
Middle East. The United States, unfortunately, does not usually have
the luxury of waiting until a strong government returns, and building a
strong state is often beyond what the United States is able or willing
to do. One option to fight terrorists and otherwise fill the governance
void is to work more with local militias. Ariel I. Ahram of Virginia
Tech and Frederic Wehrey of Carnegie draw on the U.S. experience in Iraq
and offer lessons for what to do—and what to avoid—when going down this
road.
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Faced with the breakdown of national armies in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen,
Arab states have increasingly turned toward alliances with armed militias to ensure security.
Popular, anti-government protests and insurgencies for the most part
precipitated the breakdown of regime military institutions, yet
pre-existing internal ethnic, clan, and ideological cleavages helped to
hasten the breakdown. The beleaguered state security forces have now
entered into a variety of alliances—tacit or active—with militias they
deem sympathetic to their interests, often organized on the basis of
entrenched ethno-sectarian or tribal identities. Such militia forces
supplement and at times even stand in for the weak or absent army and
police as providers of local security.
On the one hand, militia
forces have in certain circumstances proven effective at
counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. On the other hand, they have
also committed atrocities against civilians that hamper long-term
efforts to build trust and stability. Their greatest risk is that, by
eroding the central government’s monopolization on force, they
jeopardize the territorial cohesion of the state.
In Iraq, the rise of powerful communal militias has paralleled the growth of the threat from the Islamic State.
This has presented the United States with a quandary: how to combat the
Islamic State by mobilizing local Sunnis while at the same time
safeguarding the broader integrity of the Iraqi state and its security
institutions. The national guard concept, which successive Iraqi
governments have tried in the past, was seen as one way to do this. A
national guard force would retain the militias’ local knowledge and
roots, both unique tools necessary for a successful counterinsurgency
against the Islamic State. At the same time, the guard would (at least
in theory) be subject to increased oversight and control by the central
government.
Other fractured Arab states, most notably Libya, have tried to
implement a national guard model as a way to harness militia power, but
this too has failed. Variations of hybrid, provincially-organized
military forces exist in Yemen and Syria. While each case is different,
the failure of national guards bears certain similarities. Examining the
Iraqi case in particular can highlight the potential utility of
national guards but also the parallel political and institutional
reforms that are necessary to make the concept work.
False Analogies and False Starts in Iraq
The idea of creating a national guard in Iraq has been a centerpiece
of U.S. engagement since the dramatic advance of the Islamic State on
Tikrit and Mosul in 2014. President Obama specifically mentioned U.S.
support for a national guard as a means to help Iraqi Sunnis “secure
their own freedom” from the Islamic State. Much of U.S. thinking about
the Iraqi National Guard (ING) was guided by the example of the Sunni
Awakening of 2006 and 2007, when the United States actively recruited
and “flipped” Sunni tribes that had supported the al-Qaeda-inspired
insurgency. In return for guarantees of autonomy and military,
financial, and political backing, the Sunni tribes were able to turn the
tables on the insurgent fighters and impose a measure of peace and
stability. The 2014 initiative essentially sought to reproduce this
arrangement. The idea was that given proper incentives, the Sunni tribes
would again fight the radical Islamists who threatened their supremacy.
Over the long term, such national guard forces could be integrated
formally as auxiliary troops in a federal structure, comparable in many
ways to the U.S. National Guard.
Yet the Awakening analogy failed on a number of levels. The
Shi’i-dominated Iraqi central government had never been enthusiastic
about empowering Sunni tribes in the first place. With the dismantling
of the Iraqi army in 2003, security had effectively devolved to party,
tribal, and sectarian militias. Many Iraqis wondered why the United
States would seek to create new militias, especially ones recently tied
to al-Qaeda and other terrorists. As Iraq scholar Adeed Dawisha
described, the gains in security came “not because of the state, but in
spite of it.”
As the U.S. began withdrawing from Iraq in 2009 and 2010, then-Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki quickly moved to dismantle the
Awakening-associated militias. Only a handful of former militia fighters
received their promised positions in the police, army, or civil
services. Some former militia leaders were arrested on seemingly
politically-motivated charges of terrorism or subversion. Efforts to
enact a Sunni-dominated super-region comparable to the federal status of
the Kurdish Regional Government in the north were rebuffed, despite the
provisions of Iraq’s constitution that allowed for the creation of such
an entity. Politically marginalized, some Sunnis returned to their
alliance with the radical mujahideen.
The election of the new prime minister Haydar al-Abadi in 2014 raised
the promise of renewed Sunni-Shi’i reconciliation. Abadi expressed
support for the national guard initiative and forwarded a bill to
parliament in 2014. Thousands of volunteers came forward from the Sunni
tribes in the west and U.S. and Iraqi officials met with tribal leaders
to help solidify support. The United States began to enlist support from
Iraq’s Sunni neighbors to provide training and support for the ING.
Yet resistance within Abadi’s own political coalition stymied these
efforts. The National Guard bill foundered in parliamentary committee,
with open questions about the extent of control vested in provincial
governors and the chain of command subordinating the ING to the
ministries of interior, defense, or the prime minister himself. Officers
of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) regarded the militias as unfit for
duty and as rivals for budget and resources. Iraq’s constitution
specifically prohibited the formation of militias outside the framework
of the armed forces (with an exception of the peshmerga forces of the
Kurdish Regional Government). Moreover, there was concern that once the
Sunnis were authorized to organize a militia, other ethno-sectarian
communities, such as Christians or Turkomen, might try to follow suit
out of fear of falling under the mercy of their more powerful neighbors.
The ING, then, could undercut any pretense of the Iraqi state
possessing a monopoly over the use of force.
At base, though, many of Iraq’s Shi’i leaders simply believed that
they didn’t need Sunni support. With the ING initiative stalled in
parliament, the Shi’i factions have actively cultivated Shi’i militias
as part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi).
The origins of the PMF can be traced to a statement by Grand Ayatollah
Ali Sistani, Iraq’s senior Shi’i cleric, which explicitly called on the
faithful to take up arms to defend Iraq in the face of the Islamic State
onslaught in 2014.
Muqtada al-Sadr’s Jaysh al-Mahdi, the Badr Organization, and other political factions quickly took the
opportunity to reconstitute or expand their private armies.
Backed by Iran’s expeditionary al-Qods Force, PMF militias played a
prominent role in the spring 2015 offensive against the Islamic State in
Tikrit. By spring 2015, PMF counted around 60,000 men under arms.
Still, the performance of these militias has been less than stellar. In
the spring 2015 offensive on Tikrit, PMF forces failed repeatedly to
dislodge Islamic State resistance, despite enjoying superiority in
numbers. U.S. air support proved critical to allowing the offensive to
proceed. Some PMF units quit the fight instead of working under American
air cover. Others were involved in a campaign of terror against Sunnis,
looting, kidnapping, and killing those suspected of collaborating with
the Islamic State.
Awakening Again?
The prospects for the mobilization of Iraq’s Sunnis are not dead—yet.
A handful of Sunni tribes joined the PMF during the Tikrit offensive.
In Anbar, likely the next front in the campaign against the Islamic
State, U.S. and Iraqi officials have cultivated ties with local Sunni
tribes and organized some 8,000 men into Sunni PMF units. Some tribes
have made their service conditional on guarantees of greater autonomy
and the removal of Shi’i militia forces. Yet the intake for training
programs remains slow and drop-out rates high. On the one hand,
tribes continue to resent the central government. On the other hand, they fear retribution should the Islamic State return.
Abadi’s visit to Washington in April 2015 focused on expanding and
enhancing security cooperation with the United States. The United States
has insisted that the PMF be brought more fully under the control of
the Iraqi Security Forces and that PMF units reflect the demographics of
the provinces and districts in which they operate. This would mean that
in ethnically-mixed areas, such as in Nineveh or Babil, each ethnic
group would have its own militia proportional to its size in the
locality. The Iraq Train and Equip Program (ITEP) is slowly coming
online, funneling American money and weapons to various local militia
forces as well as ISF.
Cooperating with the United States has been a delicate balancing act
for Abadi. While Kurdish and Sunni leaders see U.S. military support as a
means to their own ends, Abadi’s own Shi’i political camp—as well as
his allies in Tehran—are far more wary. When the U.S. Congress passed a
bill in May 2015 effectively mandating the Defense Department to bypass
Baghdad and provide support for Sunni and Kurdish fighters directly,
Abadi protested that this constituted a grave violation of Iraqi sovereignty.
Still, reliance on the ragtag PMF alone is not sustainable in the
long term. Operating far from home and with limited training, these
overwhelmingly Shi’i forces cannot be expected to become an army of
occupation in Sunni areas like Tikrit or Fallujah. Ultimately, local
partners will be necessary to build and maintain peace and stability.
The national guard, then, may well re-emerge as a more sustainable
structure for administrative and security devolution.
Lessons Learned From Failure
While analysts and policymakers naturally focus on cases of success,
there are important lessons to be learned from Iraq’s failures. For
countries like Iraq where central armies have more or less broken down
and a bevy of militias has emerged in its stead, as in Libya, Yemen, and
Syria, the national guard could represent a path to reconstituting
fragile state authority.
But for this to happen, several broad principles need to be heeded:
National guards cannot simply be conceived as short-term, improvised
solutions to immediate security crises. Rather, the creation of national
guards is part of the impetus of security-sector reform (SSR) and
post-conflict demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration (DDR) of
armed groups.
National guards must overcome the legacies of past authoritarian
experiences where pro-government militias were often seen as mere thugs
for the regime, not a disciplined professional fighting force. In
particular, the older officer class of regular forces may see them as
competitors. To build trust among the population and other military
institutions, national guards should be accompanied by revisions to
chain of command establishing clear relationships of authority between
the guards, the police, the army, and other security agencies, and
subordinating all security services to civilian authorities.
National guard initiatives must also be accompanied by moves toward
political power-sharing arrangements. The success of national guards
ultimately depends not just on their short-term tactical effectiveness
but on the degree of local buy-in. Constitutions can provide a structure
for bolstering confidence between a central government and subnational
militia forces. Since militia membership and cohesion is often based on
geographic linkages—to town, municipality or province—national guards
may well be a part of federalist power devolution, especially in
countries with overlapping ethno-sectarian and regional cleavages.
Western governments can assist in setting up and training national
guards, but they must ensure that proper political and institutional
reforms are also undertaken. In many cases, Western states provide
models for how decentralized, federally-organized military forces can
complement national armies and local police. The United States, for
instance, has a great deal of experience with its own federalized
national guard structure and can draw on this example in its
train-and-equip programs. There are other potentially useful models as
well, including the British Territorial Army, a part-time, volunteer
force that was integrated into the British Army in the early twentieth
century; the Danish Home Guard, which incorporated anti-Nazi resistance
militias into a national command structure after World War II; or the
Italian Carabineri, which is often discussed as a potential model for
dealing with Libya’s unique security challenges.
Outside assistance to national guards must avoid exacerbating
existing communal and political fault lines. Helping peripheral and
minority groups set up their own armed forces can, on one hand, embolden
these groups to resist the central government and, on the other hand,
spur resentment from the central government and fear of future
disloyalty or rebellion. These concerns become even more acute when
national guards are seen as proxies for outside powers. With this in
mind, the U.S. and outside powers should calibrate their assistance to
both regionally-based national guards and central government forces to
ensure rough parity between the two. This could entail making funding,
equipment and training for the central security services contingent on a
proportional commitment to strengthen the guards.
National guards are political institutions, not just military
instruments. They can have far-ranging consequences for political
stability and cohesion. While no panacea for the challenge of building
effective states, they can play an important role in addressing security
concerns and moving toward more meaningful power sharing.
