ABSTRACT
The Iraqi Armed Forces suffered a devastating defeat during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Because of the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the lack of interest on the part of the following administrations to compile an accurate account of Iraqi casualties during the invasion or afterwards, it is impossible to account for the number of officers and soldiers who died in the hostilities and the ensuing civil conflict. The remainder of those forces melted away immediately after the invasion. Soldiers and officers dropped their weapons and abandoned their units in a mass desertion similar to that of 1991, following Iraq’s defeat in Kuwait. But this time, no call was made upon them to return to their units. The country remained without any native security force for the balance of 2003 and well into the following year, except for the hastily formed militias. The foreign troops, mostly US and British forces, played a very minimal role in keeping any order in a country whose size is similar to that of California, with a population of approximately 30 million. The one exception is the northern region, which has been autonomously governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) since 1991. The KRG maintains a sizeable security force, the Peshmerga, which ensures law and order in the three northern governorates: Dahok, Arbil, and Sulaymaniya.
