CAIRO – The video, set to Muslim religious hymns, is chilling. Islamic militants are shown knocking on the door of a Sunni police major in the dead of night in an Iraqi city. When he answers, they blindfold and cuff him. Then they carve off his head with a knife in his own bedroom.
The 61-minute video was recently posted online by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an al-Qaida splinter group of Sunni extremists. The intent was clearly to terrorize Sunnis in Iraq’s army and police forces and deepen their already low morale.
That fear is one factor behind the stunning collapse of Iraqi security forces when fighters led by the Islamic State overran the cities of Mosul and Tikrit this week, sweeping over a swath of Sunni-majority territory. In most cases, police and military simply ran, sometimes shedding uniforms, and abandoned arsenals of heavy weapons.
Even after the United States spent billions of dollars training the armed forces during its 2003-2011 military presence in Iraq, the one-million-member army and police remain riven by sectarian discontents, corruption and a lack of professionalism.
