Is there a coming fight for Mosul?
While the Iranian backed Shia militias are working with the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to push ISIS out of Ramadi little has been said about the liberation of Mosul. Kurdish presidential Chief of Staff Fuad Hussein recently announced an upcoming meeting between the Kurdistan Regional government, Turkey and the United States to discuss strategy in the fight against ISIS. It is interesting to note that while Hussein said this would be with the full knowledge of the Iraqi government they will not be attending. Mosul is likely to be on the agenda and while Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq the Iraqi government has shown little interest in its emancipation.
Much has been made of the success of the Peshmerga and the YPG in their battles against ISIS. Much has been made of the failures and difficulties of the Iraqi security forces in combatting ISIS. President Barzani stated that the Iraqi army is not ready, militarily, to attack ISIS in Mosul but the Peshmerga would be there to help.
What needs to be understood in the forthcoming meeting is that the Iraqi Army, with or without the Peshmerga, will never be strong enough to wrest Mosul from ISIS. The Peshmerga would be the best chance, in conjunction with the ISF, to achieve this goal but the Peshmerga are not trained to do so. To fight in Mosul is to fight in urban terrain.
City fighting is bloody and costly and time consuming for any army. Most armies are trained in open warfare not in what the west calls “Military Operations on Urban Terrain” (MOUT). The fighting in Tikrit and now in Ramadi show not only the lack of capability of the Iraqi forces but also the problem with attacking a well-established force in a city. Going by official numbers, there are approximately 600 to 1000 ISIS fighters in Ramadi facing an Iraqi force of 10,000 supported by coalition air strikes.
The attempt to retake Ramadi is in its sixth month and only recently has there been what would be considered actual military operations. In the last month the city has been encircled and supplies cut off. Ramadi had, prior to ISIS occupation, a civilian population of 450,000. The current number of civilians remaining is unknown but likely around 75,000. In 2006 the predecessor organization of ISIS had taken Ramadi and it took a combined force of 7,000 US Army and Marines along with 2,000 Iraqi troops (pre Maliki destruction of the ISF, better then todays ISF) and a Sunni tribal force trained and equipped by the US, months to clear the city.
Mosul had a pre ISIS civilian population of 1 million and an estimated 600,000 today. Mosul is a much larger city than Ramadi and has been under ISIS occupation longer. Tikrit was almost depopulated allowing airstrikes on targets inside the city. Ramadi is proving problematic for airstrikes attempting to avoid civilian casualties. Fighting in Mosul will be done house to house with little air support as targets will be hard to detect and ISIS will mix in with and hid behind civilians knowing the US and coalition air forces will not knowingly bomb civilian targets.
Once inside the city Iraqi forces will find IEDs and other traps everywhere. ISIS fighters will be well concealed and in covered positions. As fighting proceeds street to street and house to house, every car may contain a bomb and every house may be rigged. As casualties mount the Iraqi forces may, and the Iranian backed Shia militias will, begin to slow and then stop fighting. Should the better trained and motivated Peshmerga forces be involved in fighting inside of Mosul, they will probably continue to fight before they are cut off and find themselves alone. It is most likely that the Peshmerga will be used as a blocking force to contain any ISIS fighters trying to escape Mosul. Peshmerga training and equipment is more designed for this.
The American, Turkish and Kurdish leadership is well aware of the probable outcome of an attack on Mosul. The Iraqi leadership knows as well, which is why they show no near term intent to even try. The most reasonable action, if any, to come from the tripartite meeting will be to leverage the recent Kurdish victory in Shingal to continue to isolate Mosul from ISIS and cut off supplies while forces in Syria continue to pressure Raqqa. Operations in Raqqa will also be mostly Kurdish as the YPG solidifies its gains and presses it defense.
Both Turkey and the KRG will have to impress on the US delegation that the liberation of Mosul and the destruction of ISIS will only be possible with a force well beyond the capability of Iraq or the KRG. The US must also be made aware that without a commitment of other forces Turkey has the only military capable of supporting the needed actions. Should Turkey begin to play a major role the continuing deterioration of the region will be exacerbated.
It is time for not only the west but regional powers to realize that a major military force must be used to destroy ISIS. A new strategy is needed and a new Middle East will emerge from it. The proposed meeting in Erbil is a good start in this realization but the new map cannot be drawn by Turkey and the United States. That was tried once and did not work out well.
Paul Davis is a retired US Army military intelligence and former Soviet analyst. He is a consultant to the American intelligence community specializing in the Middle East with a concentration on Kurdish affairs. Currently he is the President of the consulting firm JANUS Think in Washington D.C.