Iraq: Out of the desert into Mosul (closed)

[OUTLAW 09]

Took no offense my only concern is that the Army has gotten so wrapped up in the COIN debate they lost sight of really what is going on in such environments ie Iraq and Syria. The discussion of COIN failure is extremely important but more important is the discussion of a national UW and counter UW strategy as the next 20 years will be about UW as it is the center piece of both the new Russian and Chinese strategies. COIN died in Iraq and although it died--it was attempted to "win" with it in AFG because no debate concerning failure took place.

If one looks at the WH decision to not support the more "moderate" of the Islamists in Syria with heavier weapons in order to effectively counter Assad as well as ISIS--in hindsight this was a massive mistake and Syria was lost as well as the Sunni triangle.

Secondly, there is an interesting link that ISIS has been treated far "differently" by Assad forces than the other Islamist groups---and this might in fact be correct if one looks at the history of AQI and other Sunni groups selling HME to the JAM/SG/Mahdi groups and AQI purchasing EFPs from JAM/SGs. If one remembers the introduction of the Russian hand held and thrown RGP 3 anti tank grenade in about 2006/2207 that caused a lot of damage--it was initially introduced by AQI then transferred to the IAI ---all indicators initially pointed to it coming into Iraq via Iranian smugglers.

And then the recent reporting of how Iran protected and moved AQ personnel in and through Iran in order to fight against the US in Iraq.

I do know from first hand debriefs that IAI did not like AQI protecting Iranian SF agents that did come and go as early as 2005 into Iraq and were protected by AQI.

Reference AQI in Iran---this was from a CSIS Jun 2011 AQI study.

Following the 2001 U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan, Zarqawi led his men—now under the banner of al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (TwJ)—out of Afghanistan to set up camp in Iran.16 Arrests of Europe-based TwJ operatives in early 2002 alerted Western authorities to Zarqawi’s presence in Iran, forcing him to leave and establish new smuggling routes through Syria.

So AQI was not some unknown item in Syria after 2002 and especially their rat runs from 2004 onwards.