Unfit for two battles, Iraqi army chooses Anbar over Mosul

BAGHDAD—An Iraqi military official says that the army’s priority is to take the city of Ramadi from Islamist militants and that Mosul has been put on the backburner because they cannot run two battles simultaneously.

Shakhawan Abdullah of the Iraqi security and defense committee told Rudaw:

“The reason to postpone the Mosul operations is the army’s inability to fight two battles at the same time,”

Abdullah maintained that the army continues fighting the Islamic State (ISIS) in Anbar but that it is a long and slow fight.

The reason, he said, is the many landmines and roadside bombs laid by ISIS.

“The coalition forces bomb ISIS positions to allow the Iraqi army to advance, but the vehicles the army has are not fitted to stand the mines and explosives in these areas,” said Abdullah.

He added that they are in dire need of armored vehicles and the right bomb defusing devices.

The US central command (CENTCOM) announced late last month that the Iraqi army had made no progress in retaking Ramadi despite heavy concentration of troops around the city.

“In terms of the Iraqis around Ramadi, again, we've seen them taking their positions and -- and preparing for seizure operations, but in terms of why they have not moved, that's a question that we're discussing with Iraqis, again, encouraging them to move as quickly as possible, to move in on ISIL and take the city,” CENTCOM Spokesperson Col. Pat Ryder told reporters in the Pentagon.

ISIS militants overran the city of Ramadi in May and within days reached the outskirts of Baghdad.

This constant threat to the capital and “its closeness to Baghdad” as Abdullah puts it, could be the main reason Iraqi government has thrown its weight behind the operations in Anbar.

Among other reasons for the slow march north is that for months the army and Shiite militia have been bogged down in fierce battles in the town of Baiji and around Tikrit, brining their Mosul plans to a grinding halt.

Abdullah believes that ultimately the task of retaking Mosul from ISIS might fall to new recruits and police forces in Nineveh.

Ali Khudhair, a member of the Mosul provincial council believes that the Americans have shifted focus from Anbar to Mosul because it is ISIS’s main power base on the Syrian border.

Khudhair says that taking Mosul would deprive ISIS militants of their major hideout.

Khudair’s colleague, Hassan al-Sabawi also thinks that the US and western coalition have put Anbar on the backburner “as if they want the Iraqi army to deal with it,”

Al-Sabawi said Baghdad didn’t seem sincere about fighting ISIS out of Mosul in the first place and instead punished the civilians in that city by cutting the monthly salaries of civil servants and pensioners still living in the ISIS capital.

He believes that the war against ISIS has become politicized.

“The whole issue is more political than military,” he said. “If the leaders in Baghdad had put aside their differences and focused on the people ISIS wouldn’t have been able to exploit their inner fight,”

Al-Sabawi is confident that the Americans will recapture Mosul from ISIS, but he urges Baghdad to have its own plans for the overall war.