Iraqi Army Reorganization

The Iraqi Army is continuing to increase in size, restructuring to fill its mission of external defense. Now the Iraqi Army appears to be redeploying/rotating most, if not all, of the Iraqi Army divisions to support training, operations, and to break any untoward local political or criminal influence.

In December 2009, the Kurdish press reported the planned transfer of the Iraqi Army’s 6th Division from Baghdad to Ninawa and the 10th Division from southern Iraq to Kirkuk. This indicated 2 planned rotations: 6th Division in NW Baghdad swapping areas with 2nd Division in Mosul and 10th Division in DhiQar swapping with 12th Division in Kirkuk. Both of these transfers would facilitate training by moving well trained divisions to hot zones for experience while moving divisions in hot zones to quieter areas where they could receive advanced training.

The Kurdish report was just the tip of the iceberg and not the first division planned to move. The Location Command at Tikrit recently held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new facilities. The 4th Division’s commanding officer was not reported at this ceremony despite this being in his headquarters area. The senior Iraqi Army officer present was erroneously described as the “commander of the Iraqi Army's 4th Brigade, 6th Army Division.”

Brigadier General Ali Jassim was the commander of the 4/6 Brigade prior to its renaming as the 25th Brigade by Iraqi Ministry of Defense order 151, dated 19 February 2008. He remained in command when, in June 2008, the 25th Brigade became the 17th Division, headquartered at Kalsu and responsible for southern Baghdad and northern Babil provinces.

Something I’ve long noted with interest is how the US military trained the Iraqi military in division operations.

No other military in the ME, outside of Israel, perhaps, is capable of fielding an operationally effective division. While on paper they all organize units by division, those are paper divisions. The highest operational unit size is brigade.

The difference is staggering. Comparatively speaking, a functional division can usually beat two to three times its number of separate brigades with equivalent arms and training. So division operations training is worth its weight in gold.

For years now, the US has been directing and evaluating division sized field training exercises in Iraq, so that they now have a “division operations familiar” command and general staff school. As an added bonus, we have even shown them some Corps Ops.

The icing on the cake is that the US military has pounded the concepts of maintenance, training, transport and logistics into the Iraqi military. Again, ill-used and under-appreciated concepts in the ME. So all that remains is the hardware itself. The Iraqis are now running their military school system from basic training all the way up to C&GS.

Once fully armed, fighting Iran would be a cake walk, and with their combat experience, if properly armed, they could even give Turkey a run for its money. The Turkish military are no dummies, so that is an unlikely scenario, however.

Iraq is going to be a very interesting place in about a decade.

Part of the reasons for shifting the divisions is so:

the divisions in the hot areas can get time for advanced training and

the divisions in quiet areas that have advanced training can get experience in the hot zones.

It is not just the HQs...

Note: 1/82nd is preparing to start IA Airborne training.

My bet is the 2nd Division moving from Mosul to Baghdad is the future IA Airborne Division.
One of the 2nd’s brigades [8/2] is already detached and in 1/82nd’s AOR.
They are probably training them so they can train the rest of the division...

The current orders of C-130s and AN-32s means they will have a airborne brigade lift capacity by 2014.

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