Flying Iraq's Unfriendly Skies

The new Iraqi air force, re-formed in 2005 after being completely destroyed during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, is growing by leaps and bounds, according to its top trainer, U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Robert Allardice.

In the last six months the Iraqi air force has stood up an officer academy, a technical school and a boot camp; and quadrupled its arsenal to more than 50 aircraft, including C-130s, surveillance planes and armed choppers. It went from flying just 30 sorties per week to 180.

“Six months ago, they were having very little operational impact,” Allardice said yesterday during a Pentagon-arranged teleconference. “Last week was a neat week for us, because Iraqi air force C-130s (pictured) were involved in humanitarian flights from Al-Muthanna delivering supplies to fight a cholera outbreak." That mission was the first planned and executed entirely by Iraqis.

Despite these improvements, the Iraqi air force is still years away from being able to secure the nation’s airspace. The first armed fixed-wing aircraft — most likely propeller-driven attack planes — won’t arrive until next year. And Allardice said he would be "shocked" if Iraq were able to field jet fighters before 2011.

So even after U.S. ground troops withdraw, the USAF will guard Iraqi air space. But that raises all kinds of questions, according to Columbia U prof Richard Bulliet, writing for Al Jazeera:

Will the United States shoot down Iranian helicopters if they come to the aid of an Iraqi Shia government? Will it fire on Turkish fighter-bombers if they attack PKK camps in Iraqi Kurdistan? If a Shia government cozies up to Iran more closely than the Saud family can stomach, will American forces retaliate against a Saudi launch of American-supplied precision weapons into Baghdad’s Green Zone?

More broadly, Bulliet asks, what do continued U.S. air patrols mean for Iraqi independence?

Could an Iraqi government that is denied air sovereignty be considered independent? A treaty ceding the country’s air defense to the United States might solve the problem in legal terms, but such a treaty would be universally regarded as symptomatic of the puppet status of Iraq’s government. …

The better alternative would be for Iraq and its neighbors to negotiate an agreement to reconfirm Iraq’s air sovereignty while demilitarizing its airspace. The return of air sovereignty would bolster the Iraqi government in the eyes of its neighbors and complete the [eventual] withdrawal of American forces. Moreover, it would provide an arena for collective security discussions among neighboring countries that do not otherwise have shared interests in Iraq.

Visit the Iraqi air force in my C-SPAN vignette: