ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A malaise of distrust in Mosul enabled ISIS to easily take over more than two years ago, but now the US has an opportunity to help build trust there and contribute to stabilizing Iraq once the city is liberated, said a former US intelligence officer with experience in Mosul. Michael Pregent, currently an adjunct fellow at Hudson Institute and a former intelligence officer who served as an embedded advisor to the Peshmerga in Mosul in 2005- 2006, traces the roots of ISIS’s rise back to the early years of the 2003 Iraq War. Discussing his time in Mosul with Rudaw English, Pregent noted that even then people there did not trust Baghdad, the United States and the Peshmerga forces. This “inherent distrust of everyone among locals in Mosul reached a point where it was easier for insurgent-jihadist groups to enter Mosul and attack these forces,” he recalled. Even today, the analyst explained, “Mosul feels disenfranchised, has a very young population, a lot of young kids who are now teenagers, like there was probably – before ISIS came into Mosul – half of the population male. Meaning a large group of people who felt they didn’t have a voice.” “So if you’re charismatic Sunni leaders, it’s easy to come and say: “We have to work together,” meaning against Americans, Iraqi Army and government. I think it’s too easy and I don’t see that changing,” he added. Pregent argues that the United States needs to maintain a formidable presence in the Kurdistan Region in order to keep an eye on Mosul. “We need to maintain special operations, intelligence capability and lethal capability in Erbil to be able to do something in Mosul, and use leverage against Baghdad,” he explained. “When Baghdad asks why we’re here we’ll say, ‘You’re violating US law by using American money to fund militias like Kata’ib Hezbollah and Asaib ahl al-Haqq’. We can talk to Iran, through the PUK [Patriotic Union of Kurdistan] on issues of mutual interest, but if Iran tries to make Iraq the next Lebanon then we have to oppose that.” “I think the best leverage we can have is to tell Baghdad that we’re staying here in Erbil and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he added, “You can work with us or we’re just going to stay here.” Back in 2005-06 the US did not foster the trust needed among the local communities to decisively counter jihadists. Americans would simply carry out patrols and then return to their bases. “It’s like turning lights on, everyone hides. Then turning them back off, everyone comes out again,” Pregent remarked. This changed briefly during the surge when the Americans “went out and protected the population, stayed with them. This helped build trust among the population, who gave us information to help us fight al-Qaeda.” However, after the American units relocated to Baghdad and gave control to the Iraqis, the Iraqi units stayed on their bases and the jihadists returned. When then Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki came to power he effectively undid all the progress the surge had made by “disarming and dismantling” Sunni tribesmen who worked with Baghdad and the Americans against al-Qaeda and “let them be targeted by al-Qaeda and the Shiite militias.” Despite the deep feeling of betrayal felt among these Sunnis by the Americans, Pregent believes Washington still has an opportunity “since ISIS and the militias are so bad that these Sunnis are looking to the US to do something.” “I don’t know what that is, since we’re not going to send another 100,000 troops here,” he said. But if we send 10-30,000 we can do something. We need to send back advisors who were here before. But how can that work if Baghdad can’t be trusted?” Pregent is also heartened that the Peshmerga and the Iraqi Army have reported that locals in Mosul have passed them information concerning where ISIS militants are in the city. “This can be a slow operation, where you go in based on intelligence rather than destroying entire neighborhoods and punishing 1.5 million people to take out 2-5,000. This isn’t a strategy,” he said. Pregent pointed out that when battling al-Qaeda militants in Fallujah in 2004-05 the US quickly learned that destroying an entire city isn’t the way to defeat such a group. “Yet, in 2014-16 we’ve allowed the Iraqi Army, with US air power, to destroy cities like Ramadi and Fallujah. However, in each case we allowed ISIS to escape it. You don’t kill it if you move it, you only kill it when you remove its center of gravity, which is disenfranchised Sunnis they can coopt and then take control over. You can only defeat ISIS when the Sunnis have been empowered to defeat them.” Nevertheless, Pregent doubts that ISIS can ever retake territory after it loses the current towns, “unless they can shoot down American aircraft or take out Iraqi tanks. So they would need a foreign government to support them for that to become viable.” Consequently, he anticipates ISIS morphing into a more al-Qaeda like group which focuses more on striking its enemies in terrorist attacks wherever it can rather than conquering and trying to control territory.
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