Are Iraqi soldiers too scared to fight?

Iraqi Army soldiers are paying officers their full salaries to let them quit unreported. Source: AP

IRAQI soldiers are so terrified by the brutality of the Islamic State that they are now paying their superiors to allow them to leave the military.

The acts of bribery, known locally as the "astronaut phenomenon", have grown so rampant that at times, nearly half of a platoon will be missing when called into battle, according to the Daily Beast.

The name comes from the idea that once a soldier abdicates his duties, he is in space, away from the world while it crumbles under war.

Officers are often paid full salaries to let soldiers quit and make sure the absence goes unreported.

Iraqi officer Kadhim al-Shammari told the Beast, "The astronaut phenomenon is destroying the Iraqi army. There are senior officers who are making deals with dozens of their men, giving them vacations for months in return for part or all of the men's salaries."

ISIS' brutal tactics have struck fear into the Iraqi Army. Source: Supplied

This shouldn't be much of a surprise considering that after hearing of the Islamic State's impending invasions last summer, much of the Iraqi army abandoned their weapons and uniforms and fled their posts.

Hundreds then donned plain clothes to try and escape, with some succeeding while many others were caught and executed.

One soldier said he chose to become an "astronaut" because the militant group is known to spare no one both during and after combat.

Abbas al-Saadi, now a taxi driver, said, "If I was killed, who would look after my wife and three children? I love the military but I am worried about the ISIS. They not only kill soldiers in battle, they behead them and burn them.

"That's why I decided to give all of my salary to the officer in charge of our unit so that he would register me absent with leave."

Combined with the soldiers who fled their posts during raids, there are currently hundreds of Iraqi soldiers making a living elsewhere while their salaries go to their military superiors.

The militant group is notorious for carrying out mass executions of captured prisoners. Source: Supplied

Al-Shammari added, "A military unit should number 500 men but instead the astronaut phenomenon might mean that it only numbers 300. This means that the workload on other soldiers increases and that they have less vacation time and more responsibility."

A soldier used to need 21 days of work to get a week's vacation. That number has increased to 40 as the astronauts have multiplied.

A new penal code was implemented in the Iraqi military in 2007 that made punishment much harsher for soldiers who went AWOL.

But a member of Iraq's Parliamentary committee on security and defence says that the code has so far gone unenforced and therefore has had the opposite effect.

He said, "Our security forces have a big problem when it comes to non-enforcement of military law. This makes members of the military are unafraid of doing illegal things — such as being absent without leave, illegal killing and otherwise not carrying out their military duties."

A great deal of the astronauts have promised to return once the Islamic State is vanquished, and they are assigned to deal with more civil enemies.

This article originally appeared on Elite Daily and was republished with permission.