ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The current US strategy against the ISIS militants in Iraq is “rushed” and “flawed” and could ultimately lead to the resurrection of the militants in the near future, an American analyst has warned.
The coalition strategy which “relies on proxies” in the fight against ISIS is a “flawed” way to fight the militant group, Michael Philip Pregent, former US intelligence officer and fellow at the Hudson Center said in a conference put on by the Rudaw Research Center in Erbil on Wednesday.
“The majority of American servicemen who are in Iraq today have never been here before,” he added, “New Americans come every year so no relationships are built up.”
Over reliance on air power in support of proxies on the ground, Pregent argued, has seen a situation where whole cities are leveled to oust relatively small numbers of ISIS militants. The result is that urban centers are being emptied while militants are not decisively defeated.
Pregent pointed out that there are over a million people in Mosul and only a few thousand militants. Leveling Mosul now he said, will just force “ISIS into Tal Afar and eventually Raqqa in Syria.”
“This will simply give rise to another group, an ‘ISIS 2.0’ by 2018,” Pregent warned, arguing that Sunni reconciliation is crucial to prevent such an evolution.
The Peshmerga Ministry’s Chief of Staff Jabar Yawar believes that any potential ISIS return, or reincarnation, will “depend on what happens in the areas they occupy,” after those areas are liberated.
“What is important is how the Iraqi government solves the grievances of Iraq’s Sunnis. If that problem is not solved another group like ISIS might emerge,” Yawar warned, echoing Pregent’s sentiments.
Pregent took time to praise the role of the Kurdish Peshmerga during the Iraq War which he saw firsthand during his service in Iraq.
“The Peshmerga was the most effective force against al-Qaeda and rogue militias in Iraq,” Pregent said. During that war, he explained, the Peshmerga provided intelligence to the Americans about al-Qaeda and were instrumental in helping to stabilize Mosul in 2007 to the extent that Americans could confidently redeploy to Baghdad.
When the Obama administration came into office in 2008, Pregent believes that was the beginning of the end, saying that Obama signaled to America’s enemies in Iraq and regional countries that the US would soon withdraw.
General Jawad Jihad Yuonis, a military analyst, shared a similar perspective of how ISIS’ rise is tied to the US drawdown.
“The Americans overthrew the Iraqi regime and forced the Baathists underground by disbanding the army,” Yuonis explained.
“American operations played a big role in combatting al-Qaeda in Iraq during 2006 and 2007,” he added. “When they withdrew from Iraq in 2011 they left large amounts of weapons to the Iraqi Army.”
"Sunni Iraqis opposed to the Nouri al-Maliki government demonstrated in places like Mosul, Fallujah, Ramadi, the Baathists took advantage of this,” he recounted.
Then ISIS was able to overrun Mosul amid this instability and seize vast quantities of American-made weaponry from the new Iraqi Army.
Yuonis added that he hopes the current coordination between the Kurdistan Region and the Iraqi government against ISIS continues since controlling Mosul is important. Continued coordination will make “the security situation in Mosul easier to control.”
