Its expansion could not have occurred had it not been for external efforts that directly and indirectly sought to strengthen and use it as a card in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
All of these factors are obvious points of weakness. Fixing them requires a firm Iraqi political desire to dissociate the intelligence, police and army services from the political quota system while working toward building truly national intelligence and security agencies that utilize scientific principles and adopt a philosophy that gives precedence to the interests of the country over those of political parties and external factions.
There are also administrative, organizational and technological deficiencies that must be addressed. It is evident that the intelligence agencies are currently incapable of taking advantage of or implementing the phenomenal technological advances enjoyed by other regional and international intelligence services.
In fact, the performance of Iraq’s intelligence apparatus has seemed lacking even in comparison to that of IS, which has cleverly exploited methods of communication, investigation and surveillance to recruit members.
Iraq's technological paucity is due in part to agency leaders ignoring the need for constant modernization and training in the use of up-to-date technologies. It is also a result of their unwillingness to recruit people with competencies in this regard from outside their partisan, sectarian and ethnic quotas.
The Iraqi intelligence services are handicapped by their inadequate information-gathering capabilities, especially from inside organizations. This lack of reliable assets stems from the intelligence services’ inability to win over the local populations of such places as Fallujah, now seen as supportive of IS. In October 2014, Hamid al-Hayes, head of the Anbar Salvation Council, described Fallujah as a terrorist hub and implicated local sheikhs as accomplices.
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