LONDON – The Baghdad government has limited options for using air power to combat Islamist forces that have seized Mosul and a successful counter-offensive will inevitably depend on Kurdish Peshmerga forces, according to Western defence analysts.
The United States, which last week handed over the first of 36 F-16 fighter jets ordered by Baghdad, pledged to continue supplying weapons and other advanced military equipment to Iraqi security forces. The State Department said it was deeply concerned by the takeover of Iraq’s second largest city by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Western experts nevertheless believe that Kurdish ground forces, rather than sophisticated air power, are the best hope of stemming the jihadist tide as it spreads beyond Mosul.
“You don’t recapture cities with aeroplanes,” said Professor Chris Bellamy, a former soldier and military analyst at London’s Greenwich University. “For work in cities, you need infantry and helicopters, and even then you have to bear in mind the risk of collateral damage from the air,” he told Rudaw.
He said there was a theoretical role for aircraft such as F-16s to control surrounding countryside and attacking ISIS convoys on the ground.
However, that option will remain theoretical for some months until the aircraft come into operation. “For the moment, F-16s will have no impact whatsoever,” according to Douglas Barrie, an air warfare expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “They haven’t been handed over yet.”
He said there was a role for air power in counter-insurgency operations, but questioned whether Iraqi pilots would be up to speed with their training. “Air power in not going to win or lose. With the best will in the world, there will always be civilian casualties. You don’t want to win the fight and lose the battle.”
The Bashar Assad regime in neighboring Syria has drawn widespread international condemnation for the use of indiscriminate air strikes against opposition groups, including ISIS and other jihadists.
Kurdish history has made Kurds wary of the role of air power in the hands of its rulers and powerful neighbors. During the British mandate, when Iraq was the only British-ruled territory to be administered by the Royal Air Force, Kurds suffered the world’s first aerial chemical gas attacks.
The Kurds of northern Iraq only began to establish their freedom from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein with the imposition of no-fly zones by the Western allies.
During the 1980s, the exiled Kurdish leadership, headed by Massoud Barzani, successfully campaigned to persuade the British government to abandon a prospective sale of 63 Hawk trainer aircraft to Saddam on the grounds they could be armed with chemical weapons to attack the Kurds.
Jordan Perry, Middle East and North Africa analyst with the political risk consultancy Maplecroft, echoed fears previously expressed by Kurdish officials when he said the targets of Baghdad’s advanced weaponry might not be confined to jihadist insurgents.
“The Hellfire missiles and Apache helicopters that the US Congress has approved for Iraq can be used against ISIS,” he told Rudaw. “But they can also be used against the moderate Sunni opposition, and that is a big concern.” He said Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, had a record of using force to shut down the Sunni opposition.
Perry said the capacity of the Iraqi forces in the face of the insurgency was clearly limited. They lacked discipline and in the past had been easily outgunned by Sunni tribal militias. In Mosul, Iraqi soldiers had been reported donning tracksuits and running away.
“The Peshmerga clearly have much stronger discipline and an incentive to protect Kurdish areas,” he said. “The fightback will be spearheaded by the Peshmerga. Their deployments may initially be quite conservative – focused on Kirkuk and the Syria border, their own land.”
He said that, in the wider narrative, the crisis could favor Erbil in its dispute with Baghdad. “Maliki is accepting the reality that he needs Peshmerga help.”
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