BAGHDAD, IRAQ – A confidential Pentagon memo on the fighting in Iraq suggests that problems in the Iraqi Army have reached the point where it is now even running desperately short of deserters.

The memo, written by the U.S. military's Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, says that Iraqi desertion levels "have plunged to dangerously low levels. Rather than running away in battle, many Iraqi units are now only able to walk away at a brisk but determined pace." Instead of whole battalions breaking and running, the memo says, a typical Iraqi division is lucky to field even a single platoon able to flee in terror.

When militants from the Islamic State overran Mosul in 2014, thousands of Iraqi soldiers shed their uniforms and fled into the desert. By contrast, when the Islamic State overran Ramadi in May, just 300 Iraqi soldiers were observed hijacking cars and motorcycles in a desperate bid to escape.