Cowardly Collapse of Iraq Security Forces in Face of #ISIS Barbarity

Following up from earlier, "Extended Civil War Likely in #Iraq."

I exchanged tweets with Louise Mensch:

WSJ: Iaqi soldiers dressing in civies beneath their military uniforms "in case they have to flee" #Baghdad http://t.co/CHhvn007ga
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 13, 2014

@AmPowerBlog such cowards as they are. I read 10k of them fled 800 men.
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) June 13, 2014

@AmPowerBlog I despair of modern men at times. Masculinity, honour is dead
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) June 13, 2014

And now see the Minneapolis Star Tribune, "Fear, sectarian divisions, low morale lie behind collapse of Iraqi forces in face of militants":

CAIRO — The video, set to sweetly lilting religious hymns, is chilling. Islamic militants are shown knocking on the door of a Sunni police major in the dead of night in an Iraqi city. When he answers, they blindfold and cuff him. Then they carve off his head with a knife in his own bedroom.

The 61-minute video was recently posted online by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an al-Qaida splinter group of Sunni extremists. The intent was to terrorize Sunnis in Iraq's army and police forces and deepen their already low morale.

That fear is one factor behind the stunning collapse of Iraqi security forces when fighters led by the Islamic State overran the cities of Mosul and Tikrit this week, sweeping over a swath of Sunni-majority territory. In most cases, police and soldiers simply ran, sometimes shedding their uniforms, and abandoned arsenals of heavy weapons.

Even after the United States spent billions of dollars training the armed forces during its 2003-2011 military presence in Iraq, the 1 million-member army and police remain riven by sectarian discontents, corruption and a lack of professionalism.

Many Sunnis in the armed forces are unprepared to die fighting on behalf of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite-led government, which many in their minority community accuse of sharp bias against them. The Islamic State has exploited this by touting itself as the Sunnis' champion against Shiites.

Shiites in the armed forces, in turn, feel isolated and deeply vulnerable trying to hold on to Sunni-majority areas.

Desertion has been heavy the past six months among forces in the western province of Anbar, Iraq's Sunni heartland, where troops have been fighting in vain to uproot Islamic State fighters who took over the city of Fallujah, said two high officials — one in the government and the other in the intelligence services.

The militants who early this week swept into the northern city of Mosul included former Sunni army officers who had deserted out of frustration with al-Maliki's government, the two officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence reports.

As the militants approached, the two officials said, many of the top army commanders in Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, fled to the autonomous Kurdish region...

Continue reading.

More at Atlas Shrugs, "Heads of Iraqi Policemen And Soldiers Line Streets of Mosul, Brutal Sharia Imposed" and Bare Naked Islam, "IRAQ: ISIS terrorists’ mass executions and beheadings of Iraqi soldiers and civilians (WARNING: Graphic)."