History
The armed forces of Iraq as a modern country began to be formed by the British after they assumed mandated control over Iraq after 1917. During the March 1921 Cairo conference, it was agreed that an Iraqi Army would be created along British lines, with training and equipment provided by the UK. King Faisal wanted an army of 15-20,000 men. The army actually grew from 3,500 in 1922 to 7,000 in 1927 and then to 11,500 in 1932. The army became a modernising influence in the country. In 1931, the Iraqi Air Force was founded with a small number of pilots. Six Army coups took place, with one in 1936 being led by Bakr Sidqi and the last being the Rashid Ali coup of 1941. Following the persecution of the Assyrians, which culminated in the Simele Massacre of 1932, a conscription law was introduced, which strengthened the Iraqi Army at the expense of the tribal sheiks. In 1938-1939, Iraqi Army forces were concentrated near the Kuwaiti border, as the military portion of a policy by then-King Ghazni to encourage its union with Iraq. British forces later defeated the Iraqis in the short Anglo-Iraqi War of May 1941, during the Second World War. The Iraqi Air Force used British aircraft until the 14 July Revolution in 1958, where the new Iraqi government began increased diplomatic relationships with the Soviet Union. The Iraqi Air Force used both Soviet and British aircraft throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In 1961, Iraqi forces were again amassed along the Kuwaiti border, and Iraqi again threatened to invade. A quick British deployment of troops, aircraft, and naval vessels, called Operation Vantage, deterred any move though. Iraqi forces fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, a first war against the Kurds from 1961–70, and then in the Six Day War of 1967.
Iraqi participation in the Six Day War was limited, principally owing to the slow reaction of the Iraqi 3rd Armoured Division, which had been stationed in eastern Jordan. The 3rd Armoured Division did not organise itself and reach the front line before the Jordanians ceased operations. Therefore, Iraqi participation was limited to a Tu-16 bomber raid on Israel, which did not locate its targets, and a return Israeli air raid on the H-3 airbase, which was around 435 kilometers from Bagdad in western Iraq, near the H-3 oil pumping station. The Israelis reportedly destroyed 21 Iraqi aircraft for the loss of three of their own.
After the first Kurdish war ended with a Peshmerga victory, the Iraqi military began to implement a number of changes. First, they concluded that Soviet equipment and methods did not suit their needs. The Soviet Union was trying to influence Iraqi policy by holding up arms deliveries, and the Iraqis had concluded that Soviet weaponry was inferior to Western equipment. Despite the significant amount of Soviet equipment that Iraq continued to receive (shown by the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, Iraq 1973–1990), Iraq actively attempted to buy Western military equipment. Purchases from France and the UK included 64 Mirage F1 fighter-attack aircraft in 1976, 200 AMX-30 tanks in 1977, and 200 Cascavel APCs from the UK in 1978. That same year, Iraq ordered ten frigates and corvettes from Italy. While Iraqi generals supported a complete changeover to Western equipment, Western countries were reluctant to sell large amounts of weaponry to Iraq. Western weapons were more expensive that Soviet ones, and they took longer to train personnel on, so there was a reluctance to make a complete equipment reversal. However, more Western weapons were bought and a reliance on Soviet doctrine reduced. In most cases, the Iraqis went back to British doctrine, while in others, they melded British and Soviet doctrine. Iraq's logistics capability was also improved, with 2,000 heavy equipment transporters bought.
Iraqi participation in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 took the part of a 60,000 strong Iraqi Army expeditionary force which operated on the Syrian front. However, the force did not perform very well, and the Iraqi Air Force did not do well either, losing 26 of the 101 fighter aircraft sent to Syria without shooting down any Israeli aircraft.
The Kurds started the second Kurdish war of 1974-75, but the war ended in a Kurdish defeat after the Iranian-Iraqi Algiers agreement cut off Iranian support to the Kurds. From 1973 to 1980, Saddam largely relieved the armed forces of internal security functions by creating new paramilitary forces, such as the Iraqi Popular Army. He also guaranteed the military's loyalty to the regime by promoting loyal officers and purging questionable ones. However, this had the effect of filling the senior officer ranks with incompetents. (Pollack 2002, 182-183)
Read more about this topic: Iraqi Armed Forces
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