Iraq military ‘needs more intelligence’ to fight against IS

Iraq’s military needs more intelligence and action from international allies against Islamic State (IS) extremists, the prime minister has said.

A meeting in Paris of top officials from Iraq and international allies, including the US and France but not Russia, Iran, or Syria, comes after IS conquered the Iraqi city of Ramadi and the historic Syrian city of Palmyra.

More than 4,100 air strikes by the US-led coalition have failed to stem the gains by IS radicals.

Prime minister Haider al-Abadi said the flow of foreign fighters across the border into Iraq has not slowed and the radical Sunni group is now mostly foreign. Less than a year ago, he said, it was 60% Iraqi. “They have brought hundreds of new fighters, foreign fighters, well trained, well-armed,” said al-Abadi.

“This is a transnational organisation. We need all the support of the world, the intelligence of the world and we are not getting it.”

No sharp change in strategy is expected to be announced, with both US and other officials insisting alternatives are limited and that Iraqi forces must step up.

Al-Abadi said he is investigating why commanders in Ramadi ordered troops to pull back without fighting IS extremists.

Iraqi forces outnumbered their opposition but fled the city without fighting, leaving behind large numbers of US-supplied vehicles.

This repeats a pattern in which defeated Iraq security forces have, over the past year, left behind US-supplied military equipment, prompting the US to destroy them in subsequent air strikes against IS forces.

“The Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight,” was the blunt assessment from US defence secretary Ash Carter on Sunday.

Al-Abadi disagreed, saying Iraqi soldiers seemed unaware of what they were up against, suggesting that a lack of intelligence from the coalition played a role in losing the city.

“Iraqi forces are prepared to fight,” he said. “If you don’t have enough intelligence, if you don’t have enough from airplanes seeing what’s happening in advance, how can you react?”

Al-Abadi’s Shia-dominated government is under pressure to increase the presence of Iraqi Sunnis. A measure to raise their profile in security forces has stalled in the legislature.

A senior US diplomat said the coalition of countries arrayed against IS will make it easier to get weapons to the Iraqi soldiers that need them. Deputy secretary of state Tony Blinken said Iraq was putting the plan into place. The US is shipping anti-tank rockets to Iraqi forces to use against suicide truck bombs.

Blinken said: “We will redouble our efforts.”

He said IS “stands for nothing and depends on people who will fall for anything’.