Defense Secretary Carter: Iraqi Forces Lack 'Will To Fight' ISIS
MAY 24, 2015 3:45 PM ET
SCOTT NEUMAN
Defense Secretary Ash Carter
testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington
earlier this month. In an interview on CNN Sunday, Carter complained that Iraqi
forces lacked "the will to fight" the self-declared Islamic State. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Defense Secretary Ash Carter says
that Iraqi forces lack the "will to fight" the self-declared Islamic
State and that they lost western Anbar province to the extremist group despite
outnumbering their opponents.
Speaking on CNN's State of the
Union, Carter said that although Iraqi forces, or ISF, "vastly
outnumber" ISIS in western Anbar, and in
their loss of the provincial capital, Ramadi, last week, "What apparently
happened is the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. They were not
outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force."
The capture of Ramadi was
followed quickly by the fall of the ancient city of Palmyra
to ISIS .
"We can give them training,
we can give them equipment — we obviously can't give them the will to
fight," Carter tells CNN.
As The Associated Press notes:
"The harsh assessment [raises] new questions about the Obama
administration's strategy to defeat the extremist group that has seized a strategically
important swath of the Middle East ."
The defense secretary's remarks
echoed those made by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, who said last week that "The ISF was not driven out of Ramadi ...
They drove out of Ramadi."
But Iraqi lawmaker Hakim
al-Zamili, the head of the parliamentary defense and security committee, fired
back at Carter's comments. He was quoted by the AP as calling them
"unrealistic and baseless."
"The Iraqi army and police
did have the will to fight IS group in Ramadi, but these forces lack good
equipment, weapons and aerial support," he told the AP.
The BBC reports that the Iraqi
government has deployed Shiite militias to the area and that on Saturday those
forces had retaken Husayba, east of Ramadi and that heavy fighting was
continuing in the area.
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