Ron Mark: Have we underestimated ISIS?

Iraqi security forces and allied Shiite militiamen collect ammunition from the remains of a vehicle used in a suicide attack after clashes at the front line near Fallujah, west of Baghdad. Photo / AP

In many ways Iraq reminds me of Yugoslavia. Both countries were created after the First World War from a collection of ill-fitting provinces filled with religious and ethnic tension.

Both needed a ruthless strongman to keep a lid on these tensions and when those strongmen left the scene, be it Tito or Saddam Hussein, those tensions boiled over.

While I have called the current Iraqi army cowards, I have not used that word to describe the Shiite Militias, Shia Popular Mobilisation Units and the Kurdish Peshmerga. All of whom show fight. Most chillingly of all, so does Sunni ISIS.

On the Paul Henry show, our Prime Minister inelegantly tried to explain these complexities: "Two options available to [al] Abadi the Prime Minister. One is to solely use Iraqi forces and the second is to use Shia militia who are well trained but not necessarily sort of under his control but not completely. He has decided to use the Shia militia so that is quite a high step obviously backed up by the Iraqi forces, so on the back of all that, the probability of them retaking Ramadi will be quite high I would have thought."

Yet Professor Barry Posen, the director of security studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, does not share Mr Key's confidence and frankly, neither do I.

Posen writes that the "Iraqi Army" no longer exists. This puts a different complexion on my belief that training them is mission impossible. In 2014, the Iraqi Army was fourteen divisions strong but up to five were destroyed in Mosul and another put to flight from Ramadi.

Professor Posen rightly asks where are the rest? Why are the Shiite militias being used by the Iraqi government in order to try retake Sunni dominated Ramadi? Most importantly, he adds, "if the Iraqi Army is really cover for a collection of local militias and palace guards, then the US 're-training' mission in Iraq is vastly more difficult than we have been led to believe".

That's our mission too.

Unlike Defence Minister Brownlee and the Prime Minister, I have seen service in the Middle East. I have also served alongside officers with experience east and west of Suez and Professor Posen is spot-on. We see ISIS as thuggish martyrdom-seeking zealots, but brutal and disgusting though they be, its actions as a fighting force belie any belief they are oafish bandits. ISIS can not only fight but shows strategic and political sophistication. We have underestimated ISIS militarily and economically, as it continues to trade oil, capture dams and is reducing the flow of the Euphrates River.

In the cold light of day, ISIS' reverses at Kobani and Tikrit seem like limited operations to refine tactics, especially how to negate allied air attacks. Or perhaps non-attack, given about three-quarters of all air missions do not release their weapons. Professor Posen also asks if the "victory" at Tikrit may have been a diversion given that it left the door open to Ramadi and Fallujah. In military circles this is known as an economy-of-force operation bolstered by much abandoned Iraqi army kit.

So what does this mean for our "mission impossible?" Is it worth the life of a single New Zealander trying to build a new Iraqi Army, with no guarantee this one will show any spine?

Of most concern, Mr Key doesn't register that an Iraqi government reliant upon Iranian backed Shia militia fighting deep inside Iraq's Sunni Triangle, is only going to benefit ISIS. This is more likely to complicate, if not inflame the Middle East.

Ron Mark is the defence spokesperson for New Zealand First and is a former army officer who served 20 years in the military, including deployments in Israel, Egypt and the Gulf of Oman.

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