Iraq, the Kurdistan Region and the United States are girding for their joint assault on Mosul to liberate the last Iraqi city still in the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS). But all three parties who will fight jointly for Iraq’s second-largest city will be stepping into the battle with their own domestic issues. President Obama's special envoy to the US-led coalition against ISIS, Brett McGurk, told Rudaw on Tuesday that the operation is "coming together," pointing to the recent advances of both Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces on the battlefield. Partnership between Baghdad and Erbil for this operation, McGurk stressed, "is the only way to defeat Daesh (ISIS) and get Daesh out of Mosul. I think we've made a lot of progress in that regard." McGurk also told Rudaw that he is "fairly confident" the coalition and its allies can begin the operation before the end of the year, but said that ultimately depends on the timeline set by the operation's military commanders. In a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi at the United Nations (UN) on Monday US President Barack Obama said that he is confident the Iraqis and the US military can capture Mosul “fairly rapidly,” but conceded that the operation will “be hard. It’s going to be challenging. It will require resources.” Also on Monday there was a meeting between Baghdad, Erbil and Washington hosted by Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani, where they “agreed on mechanisms of cooperation between the three forces.” But how prepared are these powers to undertake this operation in the coming months – many US officials say it will begin as early as October – given the respective domestic issues they have been facing? Baghdad has been effectively paralyzed by a domestic political crisis over powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s demands for a parliamentary overhaul and the storming of the Green Zone by his supporters on April 30. Abadi did successfully manage to quell protests by launching the Fallujah operation in May, urging protesters to remain at home while security forces were combating the ISIS threat and forcing ISIS from that city by the end of June. However, Mosul is much further away from Baghdad and is a far bigger city and of much more significance to ISIS, both strategically and symbolically. Abadi has said that removing ISIS from there will effectively destroy their self-styled caliphate, since it was from Mosul where the militant leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared that the group had become a state. While Baghdad has made advances against the militants in Iraq’s northwest south of Mosul – notably in July and August with their capture of Qayyara airbase and the oil-town of the same name – it is still nevertheless grappling with internal issues. It hasn’t had a standing defense minister since the end of August, when parliament passed a vote of no confidence in Khaled al-Obeidi after he publicly accused other members of government of corruption -- something which raises questions about its current ability to mount a large-scale offensive into Iraq’s second-city. In the Kurdistan Region the Ministry of Peshmerga has been effectively shut since the Kurdish parliament closed back in August 2015, over internal disputed among the main political parties. Since then, the focus has been on the war, defending the Kurdistan Region and pushing ISIS further back from its borders. Due to the financial crisis Erbil has been facing for about two years now, the salaries of the Peshmerga have remained unpaid for months at a time. The US provided the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) with $415 million in July to help them pay their soldiers, who are presently manning front-line positions closer to Mosul than any other force. Furthermore, both the KRG and the UN have warned that they not have adequate funding to host the hundreds-of-thousands of displaced people from Mosul they expect to flee the operation to neighboring Kurdistan. In the United States the presidential elections are not necessarily affecting the campaign: the US is still sending more troops, training its allies and providing air support. Instead, there is the prospect of the incumbent president aiming to see ISIS routed from Mosul before leaving office in January 2017. Even though Washington invariably says it is following Iraq’s timetable on this matter, it is aware that Abadi has promised to remove the militants from Mosul by the end of 2016 and believes that is possible.
Kurdistan17-06-2026President Barzani, Baghdad governor discuss closer cooperation between Erbil, Baghdad cities
