Category Iraq

1979 to present

We try to stay away from politics in this blog, which is hard to do when discussing national security policy. Still, there are enough political and opinion piece websites and blogs out there, that we do not wish to add to the noise! This article by Major Danny Sjursen borders on the edge of being overtly political but I found it very interesting regardless: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/165261

I have not read his book Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge but I did invest parts of two chapters in my book, America’s Modern Wars, discussing the surge in Iraq and its later adaptation to Afghanistan. His book will also be added to my growing reading list (right now I am struggling with getting the final edits to War by Numbers completed on time…and should not be blogging at all).

Anyhow, I do like his theme that U.S. involvement and policies in the Middle East fundamentally started shifted with the events on 1979. I think it is a useful timeline.

 

Mosul Airport is Retaken

Well, they had the airport in sight two days ago. At least half of it is now in Iraqi government forces hands: https://www.yahoo.com/news/iraqi-forces-push-mosuls-main-military-airport-062407500.html

Best quote from the article: “It’s not caution, they’ve learned, they’re smarter now.”

……

By the way, someone is offering flights to Mosul for $1,178: http://us.jetcost.com/en/flights/iraq/mosul/?gclid=CIz237q1p9ICFRZMDQodhqEHrg&gclsrc=aw.ds

I would advise against booking this.

 

 

 

Slowly retaking Western Mosul

But, it is going faster than some World War I fights: iraqi-military-says-troops-consolidate-gains-south-mosul

A few highlights:

  1. Have taken 50 square miles south of the city in the last two days.
  2. Have the airport in sight.
  3. Not the same level of violence as the fight for eastern Mosul, so far.
    1. Four car bombs attacked on Monday
    2. Eight troops killed and dozens wounded the past two days
      1. Compared to over 90 casualties in one day in east Mosul

How Many Troops?

Now things are getting interesting: pentagon-considering-recommending-combat-troops-in-syria

Hard to imagine that it would not be tens of thousands, as one has to provide a supply route and have enough force to engaged ISIL (which has been estimated to be at 20,000 or more guerillas). I gather the area of operations would cover half of Syria, parts of Northern Iraq (at least to Mosul) and the supply routes would be probably have to go through Turkey.

Of course, the Assad government in Syria has troops there, along with Hezbollah, Iranian volunteers, Kurdish volunteers and Russia. This could get very complicated.

Iraq After Mosul

As Chris mentioned last week, Lieutenant General Stephen J. Townsend, the Commanding General of Combined Joint Task Force – Operation INHERENT RESOLVE, which is working with Iraqi, Kurdish, and Syrian forces to defeat Da’esh, expressed optimism that the campaigns to retake Mosul and Raqaa, the Da’esh stronghold in Syria, would conclude successfully within the next six months. The recapture of Mosul has been a standing objective for the Iraqi government since the city fell to Da’esh militants in 2014. While the liberation of Mosul may be a foregone conclusion at this point, it seems unlikely to mark the end of political turmoil and violence in that country.

A New Sunni Insurgency?

The Institute for the Study of War recently warned that there are signs that that a post-Da’esh insurgency is brewing in Iraq among neo-Bathist Sunni groups and the lingering al-Qaeda (AQ) presence in the country. Da’esh militants also continue to perpetrate attacks in liberated eastern Mosul, as well as outside the city, and will likely transition back to insurgent tactics.

The absence of a political settlement among Iraq’s Shi’a, Sunni, and Kurdish political factions continues to feed the ongoing sectarian conflict driving the insurgent violence. AQ and the Neo-Bathist groups are positioned to exploit Sunni fears of Iranian influence over the Shi’a majority government and the Iranian-supported Shi’a militias (Hash’d al Shaabi).

Trump Administration Policy In Flux

The administration of Donald Trump has had little official to say regarding U.S. policy toward Iraq. However, recent comments by the president that the U.S. should have “kept” Iraq’s oil and the inclusion of the country in his travel ban have roiled Iraqi politics and undercut embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Some Iraqi lawmakers have demanded that  al-Abadi reduce cooperation with the U.S., limit U.S. troop deployments there, and impose a reciprocal travel ban on U.S. citizens. Hashd members have threatened to retaliate against U.S. troops in Iraq should Iran be attacked.

In a conversation with al-Abadi last week, Trump promised greater U.S. assistance against terrorism. While Trump has expressed a clear intent to ramp up efforts to destroy Da’esh, accomplishing that goal would have little effect on the underlying political divisions afflicting Iraq. Given Iraq’s military dependence on Iranian assistance, increased tensions between the U.S. and Iran would place al-Abadi’s government in an even more difficult position.

Timeline for Mosul and Raqqa

OK, we now have a new timeline for the taking of Mosul (and Raqqa): us-commander-mosul-raqqa-retaken-6-months

A few highlights:

  1. U.S. commander in Iraq, U.S. Army Lt. General Stephan Townsend, said “within the next six months I think we’ll see both (the Mosul and Raqqa campaigns) conclude.”
  2. Fight for the western half of Mosul to begin in days.
  3. “But on the ground inside Mosul, Iraqi troops said as they neared the Tigris, IS fighters launched few car bombs and largely fled their advances—unlike the heavy resistance they faced in the first few weeks of combat inside the city.”
  4. “ISIL morphing into an insurgent threat, that’s the future,” Townsend said.
  5. Concerning Raqqa: “What we would expect is that within the next few weeks the city will be nearly completely isolated….”

Anyhow……keep waiting for the point when ISIL realizes that an insurgency can’t hold ground forever against a conventional force and decides to go back to being an guerrilla force. This offensive is taking a very long time.

 

East Mosul Taken

By the way, amid all the discussion in the news on crowd sizes, Eastern Mosul fell, sort of. Article here: Iraqi-forces-complete-control-eastern-mosul

Highlights:

  1. “The deputy parliament speaker [of Iraq] announced the capture of the east of the city.”
  2. “Mopping-up operations were still under way on Monday….”
  3. “The west side of Mosul could prove more complicated to take than the east as it is crisscrossed by streets too narrow for armored vehicles.”
  4. “Iraq forces estimated the number of militants inside the city at 5,000 to 6,000 at the start of operations three months ago, and says 3,300 have been killed in the fighting since.”
  5. Took 100 days from the start of the campaign. Two weeks to get there and twelve weeks to clear the east side of the city.

Economics of Warfare 8

Examining the eighth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

This lecture is focused on estimating deaths in a conflict, which is a subject that has produced some unusually high figures through faulty analysis. For example, he starts with a figure of 6.9 million killed in the Congo (slide 2). This leads Dr. Spagat into a discussion of “excess death rate,” which is basically estimating how many additional deaths occur if there is a war going on vice if there is peace (starting slide 4). From slide 4-12 he questions the Congo estimate. He does not offer an alternative figure, but it is clear that the real figure might be considerably lower, in particular as the IRC (International Refugee Committee) used an estimated baseline rate of deaths figure that was probably too low for Congo.

On slide 13 he starts discussing Iraq, where he has done such an estimate (provided on slide 14). His figure is 160,000 excess deaths for Iraq in 2003-2011, which is a lot lower than some of other estimates out there (I think I have seen them as high as 600,000). He then discusses the problems with his estimate (slide 15). From slides 16-30 he discusses further aspects of estimating excess deaths, including looking at regional variation and the impact of war on health (child height) . This may be getting a little bit to much into the weeds for most of our readers.

Anyhow, the main takeaway from all this is to be wary of over-estimates of total losses in wars. Sometimes they can be way too high.

The link to the lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%208.pdf