BAGHDAD — Top Iraqi officials ignored ample warnings of an impending attack on the second city of Mosul and grossly mismanaged the ensuing crisis that saw Daesh (the so-called IS) militants seize it, a parliamentary report obtained by AFP says.



The capture of Mosul in June 2014 by Daesh ould have been avoided if senior officers and officials had acted competently and paid attention to multiple detailed intelligence reports warning of the attack, the inquiry found.



The report names a number of top officials, including ex-premier and now-vice president Nouri Al-Maliki, as responsible for the fall of the city in Nineveh province.



“Those who were informed about the security situation in the province knew... that this situation would surely happen,” said the report, the product of a parliamentary inquiry that has been referred to the judiciary for possible legal action. “All the information clearly indicated that,” said the report, which has not been publicly released. “The only surprise was the speed with which the military units collapsed.”



“The poor performance of the security commanders who led the battle... destroyed the last hope for the city's resistance. These commanders made a number of grave mistakes that accelerated the security collapse.”



Maliki did not have an accurate assessment of the danger in Nineveh because he relied on “misleading reports” he did not bother to confirm, and left it up to commanders to decide how to proceed after military units collapsed, it said.



But the military leaders Maliki chose were not competent to make that decision, among other glaring deficiencies.



Maliki selected “incompetent leaders and commanders under whose leadership all types of corruption were practised,” the report said. This includes the practice of soldiers and police splitting salaries with higher-ups in exchange for not having to work, leaving units understaffed.



Commanders also did not hold members of the security forces to account for corruption, “widening the gap between the people and the security services”. — AFP