Defense Secretary Ashton Carter warned that Iraqi troops will not be able to defeat the Islamic State until they develop a “will to fight,” reflecting the frustration and surprise inside some quarters of the Obama administration in the wake of the Iraqi military’s collapse in Ramadi this month.
His comments, in an interview that aired Sunday, came after fighters with the Islamic State, which had appeared to be retreating in parts of Iraq, swept through the western city of Ramadi and were gaining ground in Syria.
President Barack Obama has described the losses as a “tactical setback” and said that the administration’s overall strategy in Iraq and Syria would not change.
Carter’s comments, though, suggested deeper problems with Iraqi forces. His remarks about the recent Iraqi defeats in Ramadi, a city where scores of U.S. troops were killed during the Iraq war, carried added gravity because they came over the Memorial Day weekend.
“What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight,” Carter said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “They were not outnumbered, but in fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force. And yet they failed to fight.”
U.S. officials have been saying for months that U.S. airstrikes were degrading Islamic State fighters in Iraq and that the radical Sunni group, under pressure from Iraqi forces, had lost as much as 25 percent of the territory that it gained during its blitzkrieg last year.
A large offensive involving Iraqi army forces, Sunni tribal fighters and American airstrikes was supposed to begin soon in western Iraq’s Anbar province, where Ramadi is the provincial capital.
The unexpected collapse of Iraqi forces in Ramadi, including elite counterterrorism troops from the Golden Division, suggests that the Iraqi forces might be weaker than many in the U.S. government had thought.
The recent battlefield setbacks also point to a broader challenge facing the Obama administration’s campaign against the Islamic State throughout the Middle East.
Obama has insisted that only local ground forces, bolstered by U.S. training and air power, can defeat Islamic State fighters who have gained ground and new recruits in Yemen, Libya, Syria and Iraq.
But finding local partners, especially Sunnis, in a region that is being torn apart by unprecedented levels of sectarian fighting has proved difficult.
“The really important question moving forward is: How do we find effective partners — not just in Iraq but in Syria and in Yemen and in Libya — that we can work with,” Obama said in a recent interview with The Atlantic magazine. “How do we create the … atmosphere in which people across sectarian lines are willing to compromise?”
Those questions have proved vexing in Iraq, where Sunni tribesmen have been largely unwilling to battle the Islamic State on behalf of a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad that they think is out to oppress them.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that more support from the U.S. military, in the form of additional U.S. special operations troops who would accompany Iraqi troops into battle, could bolster the will of the Iraqi ground forces.
Front-line combat advisers could strengthen the resolve of untested Iraqi troops, a senior U.S. official said.
“We call it the steel rod up the backbone,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak to the media and commented on condition of anonymity. “It is a remarkable thing to see.”
Special operations advisers also could direct airstrikes from American warplanes, improving their accuracy and effectiveness.
On Sunday, McCain said that 75 percent of U.S. air combat missions in Iraq and Syria return to base without having fired a weapon or dropped a bomb.
“It’s because we don’t have somebody on the ground who can identify a … moving target,” McCain said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “We need to have forward air controllers. We need to have special forces.”
Iraqi politicians hit back at Carter’s claims Sunday.
“(The Americans) want to make the Iraqi army look weak as a justification to invade Iraq again,” said Hakim al-Zamili, head of the Iraqi parliament’s defense and security committee. “Yes, there was a setback in Ramadi, but it was only a setback.”
