It wouldn't surprise me to see the Kurds/Pesh go meshugganah on ISIS in the wake of this.
It wouldn't surprise me to see the Kurds/Pesh go meshugganah on ISIS in the wake of this.
Does the Kurdistan Regional Government control (using the word loosely) any de facto or de jure paramilitary forces?Originally Posted by jcustis
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)
Dunno anymore, but when I was in N. Iraq in 2008-09, it was clear that the Kurds Pesh forces and the Kurdish-heavy Iraq Army echelons were maneuverable, well-armed, and professional compared to other forces in the kettle.
Fall of Mosul ISIS now heading back to Salahaddin
The Pesh are not in Mosul anymore. They are deployed to the east and north of the city. The ISF completely collapsed in Mosul last night and now ISIS is heading back towards Salahaddin province. It is repeating the same strategy that Zarqawi laid out before his death. To take Anbar, then urban centers, surround Baghdad, and then start fighting within the capital itself. Here are a couple reports you might be interested in to explain the current situation in Iraq:
Iraq's deteriorating security situation interview with Alexandre Massimo
http://musingsoniraq.blogspot.com/20...situation.html
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant Storm Samarra In Salahaddin
http://musingsoniraq.blogspot.com/20...ant-storm.html
Beginning of June 2014 Deadliest In Iraq
http://musingsoniraq.blogspot.com/20...t-in-iraq.html
Islamic State of Iraq Launches Battle of Ninewa In Mosul
http://musingsoniraq.blogspot.com/20...es-battle.html
Joel,
Thanks I knew you would have been watching events unfold.
Yassin Musharbash is a German SME and has a rapid commentary on what might come next:http://abususu.blogspot.de/2014/06/d...scenarios.html
Various Tweets indicating Black Hawk helicopters possiblty taken; just under 3k prisoners released (terror suspects and ordinary crimianls), US$425m in the banks seized (in local currency), Humvees and no doubt more.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 06-10-2014 at 08:31 PM.
davidbfpo
Things getting worse
ISIS has quickly moved south after taking Mosul last night. They have taken northern Salahaddin and reached the outskirts of Tikrit. Also taken areas of western Kirkuk. Seems like a total collapse of the ISF. Many reports that few are putting up a fight and are simply fleeing as soon as ISIS shows up. Baghdad in its infinite wisdom said they will hold a special session of parliament Thursday to discuss the crisis! ISIS is also posting lots of pictures of people in Raqqa, Syria celebrating the fall of Mosul. ISIS's ideal of creating a state is becoming a reality stretching from Syria into central Iraq.
ISIS seized huge stores of equipment from ISF
ISIS took a major army base and air force base in Mosul and also the Baiji repair/supply depot of the army. Has captured 2 helicopters and hundreds of humvees, trucks, etc. Also just took the Baiji refinery and power station two of the largest in northern Iraq.
I fully agree with these comments---the QRBJ, then the AQI, then the ISIS and actually the first true Iraqi Sunni Salafist grouping the Islamic Army in Iraq which was the largest group before Zarqawi/AQI came in 2004 all followed the same campaign plan and there never has been a second one. The IAI had by the end of 2003 had established major cells in all the major cities and rural areas in the Sunni triangle especially Mosul and Baqubah.
The ISIS stated in mid 2013 their newest campaign plan which had two single points 1) raiding prisons and releasing prisoners to join the fight and 2) taking territory and cities. By the end of 2013 they declared victory in point one and stated they were moving onto point two. During point one ---they attacked five prisons and released over 1400. They freed over 1500 just from the Mosul prison this week as well.
They were so successful at prison breaks and were on the move in Fallujah-- it even forced Malaki to close Abu Ghraib and move the prisoners there something even we were unable to do--shut down Abu G.
After Mosul comes Salahaddin, then Baqubah/Diyala---it is all about the Sunni triangle and then into the Sunni districts of Baghdad. Exact to the 2003 campaign plan which was released for all to see but no one believed it possible.
All captured HMMV 114s have been sent immediately into Syria to be used against the Syrian Army as well as some of the heavier weapon systems they were after---looks like they are rearming themselves with US weapons systems especially anti tank and heavy AAA.
This was taken out of an article in today's The Daily Beast about the loss of Mosul which was a major defeat of a US trained, supplied, and mentored 300K man army.
General Najim al-Jabouri, a former mayor of Tel Afar, which is a little more than 31 miles from Mosul, told The Daily Beast the bases seized by ISIS this week would provide the group with even more heavy weapons than they currently control. “The Iraqi army left helicopters, humvees, cargo planes and other heavy machine guns, along with body armor and uniforms,” the general, who is now a scholar at the National Defense University, said. He said he was able to learn about the equipment from soldiers and other politicians in and around Mosul with whom he keeps in touch.
General Najim is not alone in this assessment. Jack Keane, a retired four-star Army general who was a key adviser to General David Petraeus during the counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq in 2007 and 2008 known as the surge, said ISIS has now established itself as a formidable military force.
Malaki is in military trouble for the simple reason the two main Shia insurgent groups capable of going toe to toe with the ISIS were all packed up and were sent off by Malaki to support the Syrian Army/Hezbollah and the Iraqi Army while trained in our image never was trained to fight for the "flag" thus the high desertion rates---there were rumors of over 10,000 alone just in the Fulluja campaign.
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-11-2014 at 06:37 PM.
So can we all here at SWJ now finally declare COIN dead and buried--because the last time I checked a "total failure" in a delivered doctrine tends to in fact signal the doctrine was not valid?
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-11-2014 at 06:34 PM.
This makes it worse now for Malaki---the Turks are getting involved thus indirectly NATO/US as reported by the Russian Voice of Russia from today.
Militants stormed the Turkish consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Wednesday and kidnapped 48 people including the head of the diplomatic mission, a Turkish government official said. "48 Turks including the consul, staff members, guards and three children were abducted," the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. "All are doing well," the official said. The kidnappings came a day after the Mosul consulate said fighters from the powerful jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized 28 Turkish truck drivers.
http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_0...qs-Mosul-3074/
That's silly. It has been years since we left and years since we had much influence on how the Iraqi gov handled things both politically and militarily. From what I've read they've done a bunch of the idiot things we did in the beginning until we wised up.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
Iraq was a failure of policy at the executive level. Failed Presidential policy of regime change followed by rapid democratization lead to instability and insurgency. As long as the policy was a democratic Iraq, no amount of doctrine was going to make the impossible possible.
COIN was never the problem.
However, in fairness, it was never going to be the solution either.
Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 06-12-2014 at 12:10 AM.
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
---
I quote this not because I agree or disagree with your query, but because it is a good jumping off point for my rambling brain this morning.
I haven't thought long and hard enough to make a judgment on whether COIN failed in Iraq, but I would agree with others' points that the strategic policies and actions set the stage for events which had terrible implications: disbanding the army; fast-tracking CPA schemes under people who had no idea what they were doing; rebuilding an imbalanced ISF.
What is important is that the Taliban are watching the game reel of this, and they are taking notes. Make no mistake that Iraq and Afghanistan are not the same, and the conditions are very different. US actions in the wake of events in Mosul, Ramadi, and Fallujah will very much factor into the calculus Afghans use to look at Dec 31, 2014 and beyond.
Considering the wide capability gaps between the ISF and GIRoA security forces, I would bet a couple paychecks that the ANA and the ridiculous alphabet soup of other paramilitary units (which really just results in a disjointed, non-cohesive force) will certainly fair no better than Mosul's forces if the Taliban mobilize the pickup truck and motorcycle army upon our main body departure.
As I am inclined to say, what a sh*t show.
Best to get past fixing blame and start developing a policy, goals, and fixing the problem. Now.
Sounds similar to what was observed from 2007 to mid 2011. Accept responsibility for nothing and portray the conventional forces as conducting COIN. Let's not forget what actually occurred. The primary emphasis by the conventional forces was 'whack a mole' and the primary metric was SIGACTS. The primary training emphasis was training the ISF in a like image to the US conventional forces.
There was zero understanding of the realities on the ground, the conventional forces always had AQI/ISI 'on the run' and any deviation from the 'party line' coming from USF-I was ignored.
COIN was never implemented. The conventional forces treated it as a conventional fight. They were/are poorly trained, poorly disciplined, and poorly motivated for this type of fight. They did not/do not possess the intellectual capacity to grasp the situation and simply ignored indicators that did not fit the 'party line'.
What the situation indicated as far back as 2007 is do not attempt to implement a strategy with forces incapable of execution. I would expect more of the same (i.e. the US military attempting to shift any responsibility for the current situation) away from themselves and onto anything they believe the US public will buy.
At the tactical level it is frustrating to see the flood of displaced civilians trying to get out of Mosul. Claims of 500K are floating around. Take even 1/50th of that number and you get 10K males who could take up arms and defend their neighborhoods against these knuckleheads, but apparently most are just trying to get from in-between ISIS and ISF (which is proving hard to do if they are fleeing and changing clothes as fast as the reports say).
Perhaps it is just the fatalistic attitude I came to sense deep in the soul of the Iraqi Arab that convinces them it is hopeless to defend that neighborhood against extremists, and put a stop to violence that can serve no good for Iraq's long-term interests. Perhaps they see ISIS as a good thing for the Sunni cause in the triangle, and a counter-balance to Shiite power clustered in the center, the government and the security forces.
It's surprising that ISIS has been able to mass and strike distant targets from traditional areas of operation in the Sunni Triangle and have such significant effect, but I expected the security apparatus to be less than effective. The will to fight has always been a shabby one.
At the strategic level, the question David poses of "what next" is something a whole lot of actors are looking at.
The US is limited in what it can do to bolster the Maliki government and ISF, unless the relationship changes significantly. Even if he did an about face and came begging for help, geography, distance, and collections capability conspire against us, limiting responses to what I imagine will be "too little and too late". It does pose the peculiar possibility of US-Iranian cooperation--or at least looking the other way for the moment--to halt ISIS progress, and what strange bedfellows we will make. The right answer will ultimately be adversely influenced by partisan politics and ill-informed public opinion.
Even if ISIS does not attempt to hold on to gains, but rather foment a general state of instability that upsets Iranian aims in the trans Syria-Iraq belt, the fracturing that I expected 4-5 years ago has begun in earnest.
I think we need to try to look less at what happens next, and focus on what happens well after the next, deep down the planning horizon. What that scenario is I do not know, but somehow the old OIF coalition needs to decide if Maliki's government is too important to let fall, mend up strained relationships, and take action achieve policy goals in the region.
An now the Russians are signaling support for Baghdad via Interfax today.
This is a new layer of complexity not found in 2010/2011. They had offered recently to provide new arms shipments especially heavy weapons.
19:13 Moscow supports resistance of Baghdad to extremists in N. Iraq
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