Why 'Sandhurst in the Sand' hasn't worked in Iraq The only problem, of course, is that it doesn't seem to have had the desired effect. A decade on from reopening of Rustamiyah, one might expect the Iraqi army might be the one institution in the country that is reasonably well-led. Instead, its continuing reputation for brutality and corruption were what sowed the seeds for June's Isil-led rebellion, when two entire Iraqi army divisions collapsed and fled. Hardly the sort of thing that would earn anyone the Order of Merit at Sandhurst in the Sand. Sandhurst trains the cream of the Iraqi army every year - but does it help? So what's gone wrong? Some of the answers, to be fair, are nothing to do with the academy. For a start, graduates from the academy, no matter how well trained, often find themselves in charge of tough and often demoralised squaddies, who have no British NCO culture to keep peace in the ranks. Further up the chain, meanwhile, competent commanders were often replaced by political henchmen during the rule of the now-deposed prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. But there a more general reason for the rot, and it's nothing to do with officers or squaddies. Put bluntly, the big weakness in Iraq's army - and indeed Afghanistan's - is logistics and supplies. You can have the best calibre soldiers in the world - Iraqis are nothing if not brave - but without regular deliveries of ammunition, wages, food and fuel, things go to pieces. Recruits at the Afghan version of Sandhurst in the Sand Time and again I saw this while reporting in Iraq myself during the occupation years. British or American officers would spent six months or a year mentoring an Iraqi army unit into shape, only to find it all go wrong whenever the Iraqi government, rather than the coalition military, took charge of keeping them supplied. Armies, after all, are big beasts, employing, feeding and sheltering thousands of people, and require efficient logistics chains to keep them going. A dysfunctional bureaucracy, which is a fair description of Iraq's government, can degrade and destroy such an army more comprehensively than any lighting Isil advance. And so it was that during the post-mortem into the Iraqi army's collapse back in the summer, we learned that it wasn't just due to bad leadership, but lack of proper oversight over the army supply chain. Commanders were siphoning off millions of dollars in pay, for example, claiming wages for "ghost soldiers" who didn't exist. Other troops quit en masse because they didn't have the ammunition they needed, or sometimes even their basic pay. It may seem odd an analysis of Iraq's slide into anarchy, to say that it's all down to lack of efficient military bureaucracy and back-room paperwork. But if we want to build an army that is capable of holding its own in Iraq - or indeed Afghanistan, which now also has a "Sandhurst in the Sand" - it is well worth bearing in mind. Who knows, maybe it should focus less on turning out heroic platoon commanders, and more on training up a few decent, highly-efficient Quartermaster Generals.