Current Iraq SF insignia

Managed to acquire hundreds of coalition and Iraq army insignia. Here are a few shots of some of the SF airborne that I have. It's interesting, the Iraq armed forces have almost no standardization in insignia or placement for that matter, tho it seems to be slowly changing.

Of special interest, some of these patches are novelty types, ie not for a specific unit and yet I have pics of most of these in use on uniforms. Of special interest is the punisher skull patch with the misspelling "SPACLEL FORCAS".

A neat area







Chris

Those are Very Cool , and I would bet in a few years be worth a small fortune similar to ARVN insignia from Vietnam ! Just give it time !

Chris

Very Nice Collection:

Lorenzo

Well, a bit late, but wanted to weigh in as I'm doing some research on a few Iraqi uniforms I have, and feel I can contribute a little here about the Iraqi "SF"

As far as the "New Iraqi forces" (post Saddam, 2003-2013), pretty much all units were "special forces" and "airborne", but in name, or rather, insignia, only. I never knew of any of them that actually recieved any airborne training, had ever jumped out of an aircraft, or had very much specialized training, but the vast majority of them wore some variant of airborne wing patches, and some form of an elite unit patch, often copied from US units. Both of my team leaders were airborne qualified and would relentlessly bust their stones for wearing wings and having never jumped.

It definitely seemed like their biggest concern was looking cool; they would often show up to do patrols with us wearing every piece of gear they could lay their hands on, and would literally stuff pouches with newspaper to make then appear as if they were full instead of actually carrying the crap they were supposed to (especially magazine pouches, which was frustrating for obvious reasons) They also had a tendency to wear multiple pair of knee pads, one on the knees and then a pair or two aroumd their lower legs. I once saw a dude wearing 3 pair of knee pads around his lower legs, I kid you not.

Generally speaking these dudes were completely useless (there were a few exceptions) and we did everything we could to avoid having them on missions with us. We also had the "pleasure" of training them on a firing range once a week while our vehicle crews did maintenance on the Strykers. We would recieve several tall 81mm mortar cans full of loose 5.56 (probably 2-3 thousand rounds) that we were supposed to let them shoot, but we learned very quickly to give them each 2 magazines, make them shoot it as quickly as possible, and kick them the -F- off the range and shoot the rest of the ammo ourselves. I struggle to find the words to fully articulate how insanely unsafe their firearms handling was. Despite our best efforts they just didn't seem to take it seriously or care; being on the firing line with these dudes was super sketchy.