AHC Iraq wins the Iran-Iraq war

The deepest legacy of the Iran-Iraq War was a lost-generation of Iraqi soldiers who had been conscripted when they were too young to learn civilian skills. During the war, they lost limbs and suffered psychological injuries. After the war, they returned home to an almost bankrupt Iraq. Many of this lost-generation could not find jobs in the Iraqi economy.

So Saddam needed to find ways to employ this million-man lost-generation. One way was to launch a political war against neighbouring Kuwait. When I say "political war" I really mean a distraction for all the idle young Iraqi young men.

The problem is you had a youth that was young angry and already religiously radicalizing nurtured by Saddam. Iraq was headed because of the Iran/Iraq War and then the Gulf War down a dark and ugly path that needed in part a short Iran/Iraq war to prevent.

A short Iran/Iraq war would have been better for all involved, then again the lesson Saddam if he won quick might simply be he is an unstoppable force leading to a sooner Gulf War.

Either way the low level Iraqi Army officers of the late 80s and early 90s are now fighting each other today. The Iran/Iraq War and then the Gulf War was their formative experiences that shaped their worldviews.

BAGHDAD — While attending the Iraqi army's artillery school nearly 20 years ago, Ali Omran remembers one major well. An Islamic hard-liner, he once chided Omran for wearing an Iraqi flag pin into the bathroom because it included the words "God is great." "It is forbidden by religion to bring the name of the Almighty into a defiled place like this," Omran recalled being told by Maj. Taha Taher al-Ani.

Omran didn't see al-Ani again until years later, in 2003. The Americans had invaded Iraq and were storming toward Baghdad. Saddam Hussein's fall was imminent. At a sprawling military base north of the capital, al-Ani was directing the loading of weapons, ammunition and ordnance into trucks to spirit away. He took those weapons with him when he joined Tawhid wa'l-Jihad, a forerunner of al-Qaida's branch in Iraq.

Now al-Ani is a commander in the Islamic State group, said Omran, who rose to become a major general in the Iraqi army and now commands its 5th Division fighting IS. He kept track of his former comrade through Iraq's tribal networks and intelligence gathered by the government's main counterterrorism service, of which he is a member. It's a common trajectory.

The group's second-in-command, al-Baghdadi's deputy, is a former Saddam-era army major, Saud Mohsen Hassan, known by the pseudonyms Abu Mutazz and Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, according to the intelligence chief. Hassan also goes by Fadel al-Hayali, a fake name he used before the fall of Saddam, the intelligence chief told The Associated Press. Like others, he spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence.

A former brigadier general from Saddam-era special forces, Assem Mohammed Nasser, also known as Nagahy Barakat, led a bold assault in 2014 on Haditha in Anbar province, killing around 25 policemen and briefly taking over the local government building.

"Most of the army and intelligence officers serving with IS are those who showed clear signs of religious militancy during Saddam days," the intelligence chief said. "The Faith Campaign ... encouraged them." In the run-up to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Saddam publicly invited foreign mujahedeen to come to Iraq to resist the invaders. Thousands came and Iraqi officials showed them off to the media as they were trained by Iraqi instructors. Many stayed, eventually joining the insurgency against American troops and their Iraqi allies.

http://www.militarytimes.com/story/...-dominated-ex-officers-saddams-army/31332975/
 
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