Iraq's Armed Forces: An Analytical History

by Ibra al-Marashi

From the publisher:
Iraq’s Armed Forces: An Analytical History presents a comprehensive study of the evolution of the Iraqi military from the British mandate era to post-Saddam Iraq.

Despite its prominent role in three major conflicts, no single, comprehensive work on the Iraqi forces has been published before. This new book is key to understanding Iraq today and also makes a major contribution to the field of civil-military relations. Based on captured Iraqi military documents from the 1991 Gulf War, this research was allegedly plagiarized by the British government prior to the 2003 Iraq war. It shows how the Iraqi armed forces, at one time the world’s fourth largest military, engaged in the longest conventional war in the twentieth century and challenged a superpower on two separate occasions.

Ibrahim al-Marashi shows how the insecurity that plagued Iraq after the 2003 Iraq war can be attributed to the failure to create a new military that does not serve as a threat to a future government, yet is strong enough to deter rival factions in Iraq. As the US is mired in the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq, reconstituting its armed forces will be a prerequisite for an American withdrawal from Iraq. While the Bush administration praises the progress of the new Iraqi army, immense challenges lay ahead, as these forces are being built from scratch in the middle of an intense insurgency.

This book will be of immense interest to all students of the Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003, Middle East studies, and of military and strategic studies in general.