I keep hearing the terms regular and irregular army personnel in Iraq. What is the difference between the two? How is their enlistment/conscription different? What is the mission difference between the two? Is there a pay difference between the two?
Regular troops are the official Iraqi army and “elite” republican guard. They are paid (very poorly) and usually have uniforms and weapons. Irregular troops are things like fidayeen(sp?) militia and other civilians who have chosen to take up arms.
Thanks, friedo, I’d been wondering this myself.
friedo your definition makes it sound like the irregular army are volunteers, but I am sure I heard on the news of conscripted irregular army troups. So just who of the regular and irregular troups are conscripted and who are volunteers?
I know that in certain middle eastern countries there is a mandatory military service for men, does Iraq have that?
Regulars are the full-time, paid, soldiers maintained by a state or pseudo-state.
Irregulars are either “part-time” soldiers of the militia variety or sometimes the term is used to apply to any light skirmisher/guerilla unit that operates outside of or in parallel to the traditional command structure of an army ( i.e. not the same as a commando unit that is under the direct command of the regular army ). So elements of the Feydayeen Saddam could be referred to as either paramilitary ( i.e. auxillary to the military, like special security or police forces ) or in combat conditions units might be referred as irregulars.
Yep, lots of conscripts in the Iraqi army.
More usually irregular forces aren’t conscripts, at least not those maintained by most countries. But under the looser definition of lightly armed skirmishers not under central control or part of a regular army that I mentioned above, one can get conscripted irregulars. Like for instance in some rebel/guerilla forces that control a chunk of territory in some country and use forced conscriptions to replenish their ranks.
- Tamerlane
Also, to clarify, there is the Republican Guards and the Special (most often referred to as Elite) Republican Guards (Where Special/Elite is used as part of their name, not as an adjective)
Many people confuse these two types of Iraqi military, or think that the elite is an adjective for the ‘regular’ Republican Guards.
Here are links on them, which are very informative.
Republican Guard (RGFC)
Special Republican Guard (SRG)
From the second site:
So does this mean that regular personnel in the Iraq Army would be comparable to our full time active duty service members?
And that irregular personnel in the Iraq Army would be comparable to our Reserve and Air National Guard service members (weekend warriors) who are only called up to full time active duty during a national emergency or war?
deb trying to understand the difference 2world
Yes.
No.
Reseves are just that - reserves of the regular military. As such when inactivated they are just regulars that are not in active duty.
The National Guard is a little different in organization and might technically squeeze into the category of a paramilitary organization. However while they are administered separately in peacetime, once called up they fall under regular military authority and de facto function as a separate reserve force. Also as such they are trained as “conventional” military units and would probably never be classified as irregulars.
Hope I’m helping and just making it more opaque ;).
- Tamerlane
…and not just making it more opaque.
I’m not trying to deliberately confuse :).
- Tamerlane
If called up under war-time circumstances that is. Obviously if called up by a governor to control looting somewhere, the chain of command is a little different. It’s a kind of complex relationship, really - But you can think of the National Guard as a sort of dual-purpose military/paramilitary force.
- Tamerlane
I think the Fedayeen that is being referred to is not part of the military structure. It is more of a part of the state security apparatus. I think of it this way: take Mussolini’s blackshirts and add AK-47’s and RPG’s and some other military hardware. They mostly have been used internally to intimidate and execute real and perceived dissidents and to protect Saddam’s family. One of Saddam’s sons organized it, and it has members in every district. For more information on the Fedayeen, click here. For more information on Iraq’s internal security and intelligence organizations, click here.
There is no equivalent in the US military or intelligence organizations. The Fedayeen are a very crude instrument of internal control that happens to now be shooting at real soldiers.
Are the irregular troups always politically based (at least at inception)?
What I am hearing is that the irregulars is a politically based militia whose purpose is to keep the regime in power. Is this correct? Are there other groups of irregulars that are not connected with this goal?
psst…Tamerlane yes you are helping, I just have more questions.
deb this is alot harder to understand than I thought it would be 2world
Heh, and I thought one group got plenty of fiber and the other is desperately seeking Metamucil. 
Welllll…You could say any soldier is political at inception ;). But if you mean are they always a purely ideological weapon - Then, no, not necessarily. They can just be any supplemental lightly-armed adjunct to a regular army.
Let’s try this - Here’s an in-context description of irregulars, from the ( pre-Soviet invasion ) Afghanistan entry of World Armies ed. by John Keegan ( 1979, Facts on File, Inc. ) :
*The strength of the Afghan armed forces in 1977 was 110,000 mean, a 10% increase on the previous year. The army numbered 100,000 men, the bulk of them being conscripts. The army’s trained reserves total 150,000, while those of the aire force total 12,000. There is a paramilitary force of 30,000 gendarmie, under the control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and a force of at least 200,000 tribal levies, fierce but ill-trained and equipped…
The bulk of the army consists of conscripts, who are called up between the ages of 22 and 28 for 2-years’ service in accordance with the Conscription Act of 1954…
Conscription theoretically applies to all Afghan males of military age, but certain tribes are in practice exempted in return for agreements to provide tribal levies in time of war…
The organized reserves total 162,000 men, and are adminstered by General Reserve Headquarters in Kabul. Conscripts are placed on a reserve list upon discharge, and are liable for 2 month periods of refresher training any time during the next 22 years…The several hundred thousand tribesmen living near the Pakistan border who would be available as irregular auxillaries in an emergency have a loose reserve organization to direct them…*
The numerous ( no doubt confusing ) emphases mine.
So here you have an example of a ( now defunct ) military organization that made deliberate use of a largely non-ideological force of tribal levies to back up its regular army ( actually it is more complex than that and as more occasioned by the reality of with internal Afghan politics, but you get the picture ). These levies would be termed “irregulars” in combat. Lightly armed, mostly not arrayed in traditional conventional formations and only loosely subject to the dictates of the the regular army’s command structure.
- Tamerlane