Yesterday the Peshmerga beat back a complex, daring attack by ISIS, led reportedly by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi himself. Some 24 members of the town’s security forces (Asayish) lost their lives, as did some 38 ISIS terrorists.
The attack was clearly complex and well-planned, using some 500 terrorists in boats, who crossed the Tigris and Zab rivers to attack on nine fronts under the cover of darkness and poor weather.
This would be a horrendously complicated and difficult operation to coordinate for conventional professional armed forces.
But it highlights that ISIS still retains a significant tactical capability, as well as a military proficiency that was not gained from the bomb-sites of Syria. The foreign fighters plainly have imported expertise of a high order.
More importantly the operation was led apparently by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi himself. And that is without doubt of great significance. Why risk the highest profile member of ISIS on such an attack? Clearly, if it had succeeded, it would have been a major propaganda victory.
Gwer lies on a key north-south line of strategic communication and is only some 60 kms from the capital Erbil. ISIS badly need and want a propaganda victory to counter the reverses that are seeing on an almost daily basis across northern Iraq.
We would therefore likely to have been subjected to an outpouring of hate-filled vitriol – spewed across every conceivable medium – about how the so-called Islamic State had conquered the Kurds. And his speech would have been delivered only 60 kms from Erbil.
So ISIS must have felt confident of victory, and this suggests from long experience that there may well have been a second operation also planned to capitalise upon and reinforce the success of the first. The question is of course, where?
So, the strategic intent was not only to try to retake ground that ISIS lost last summer, but to gain ground in the psychological operation that ISIS is waging against the Kurdish people – they want people in Erbil to feel unsafe.
Finally, the timing of the operation, coming so soon after the tragic attacks in Paris, claimed by al-Qa’ida, suggests that Gwer might have been part of the perverse struggle for “leadership” in the half-world of the wider phenomenon of Sunni extremism. The defeat of the ISIS attack by the Kurds therefore carries an even greater importance and significance.
We should thus be thankful for the bravery of Gwer’s Heroes on many more levels than just a simple frontline action that saw ISIS being comprehensively beaten by the Kurds, whose decisive actions forced the ISIS leader to turn and run away.
Anthony Franks OBE is a Partner in Mars Omega LLP, a specialist intelligence consultancy analysing key issues in the Middle East and Africa. He is a former British military intelligence officer and Arabist who has been involved in the region since 1984.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
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