Political Analysis : US Syria-Iraq plan a Mirage in the Desert

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Mosul
Two recent announce­ments by US offi­cials regard­ing oper­a­tions in both Iraq and Syria sug­gest sig­nif­i­cant inroads are being made to reverse the gains ISIS has made. The US and Turkey signed an agree­ment 19th Feb to train and equip Syr­ian oppo­si­tion fight­ers. The US embassy in Ankara con­firmed that both coun­tries would train and equip rebels, after they have been vet­ted using infor­ma­tion from gov­ern­ment data­bases and the intel­li­gence of regional powers.[1] On the same day the US Cen­tral Com­mand, which is respon­si­ble for mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in the Mid­dle East, unusu­ally, gave details of the US led plans to take back Mosul. In the brief­ing a mil­i­tary offi­cial con­firmed the launch­ing of an offen­sive by April or May 2015, with an Iraqi secu­rity force con­sist­ing of 20,000–25,000 troops.[2] Con­sid­er­ing how Iraqi forces capit­u­lated against ISISin June 2014 this is a sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment, made even more sig­nif­i­cant as the Iraqi gov­ern­ment launched a huge 27,000 troop assault on 1st March to take back Tikrit, in its largest oper­a­tion yet.[3] But on closer inspec­tion most of this is mere noise as seri­ous prob­lems exist in the capa­bil­i­ties of both Iraq and Syria.
The US cen­tral com­mand high­lighted a force con­sist­ing of 20,000–25,000 troops to advance from the Mosulsouth to retake Mosul while Kur­dish pesh­merga forces con­tain the city from the west, north and east. But all the fac­tions who will be part of the inva­sion have raised doubts about their own capa­bil­i­ties. Iraqi com­man­ders, sol­diers and police offi­cers who would play a cen­tral role in any offen­sive have stated the Iraqi army has strug­gled to recap­ture even smaller towns that pose less of a chal­lenge than Mosul. Bayan Sami Abdul Rah­man, the Kur­dish rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the US con­firmed: “The Iraqi Kurds were “sur­prised” by US Cen­tral Com­mand announce­ment that an attack on Mosul could take place in April or May,” she cau­tioned that the Iraqi army wouldn’t be ready and that Sunni tribes weren’t united in how to deal with the after­math if Iraqi forces do man­age to take back Iraq’s sec­ond largest city.[4] The Kur­dish Prime Min­is­ter Nechir­van Barzani said he did not think the Iraqi army would be ready before May to take back Mosul. In an inter­view with Reuters, he said the two best Iraqi divi­sions are cur­rently pro­tect­ing the cap­i­tal and there were not suf­fi­cient sources to replace them should a Mosul offen­sive begin.[5] Such skep­ti­cism resulted in US offi­cials admit­ting it is unlikely to be able to train enough troops in time.[6]
The US-Turkey deal is also pre­car­i­ous. The deal is actu­ally an expan­sion of the CIA-led train­ing of Syr­ian rebels, which the US began covertly in March 2013 in Jor­dan. In Octo­ber 2014, it was announced that the project would be esca­lated and a par­al­lel Pen­ta­gon pro­gramme established.[7] The Turkey deal for­malises plans for one of four known sites to be used in a broader pro­gram to train Syr­ian rebels along­side loca­tions in Saudi Ara­bia, Qatar and Jor­dan. The plan is to train about 5,000 Syr­ian fight­ers a year for three years under the pro­gramme. Turkey, Saudi Ara­bia, Jor­dan and Qatar will select the Syr­ian rebels fol­low­ing its own vet­ting process to train 1,500–2,000 rebels per year for three years. This is not the first time that theUS has involved itself in the train­ing of Syr­ian rebels. The US and the regions rulers have already car­ried out smaller train and equip pro­grams through the CIA. The results, how­ever, have been poor. The rebel groups the US backed were over­run by or decided to join the Islamic fight­ers who dom­i­nate the con­flict.The groups the US, Turkey, Saudi, Qatar and Jor­dan have sup­ported have either been eclipsed by the fire­power of Bashar al Assad’s forces or Jab­hat al-Nusra. The new Pen­ta­gon pro­gramme aims to redress this.
The Iraqi gov­ern­ment offen­sive to take Tikrit is in real­ity an Iran­ian oper­a­tion. Most of the troops involved are Iraqi Shia mili­tia — organ­ised, trained, armed and advised and mostly led by Iran­ian offi­cers. Gen Qasem Soleimani, com­man­der of the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards’ (offi­cially an inter­na­tional ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion that orga­nizes pro-Iran armed groups out­side Iran) is over­see­ing the operation.[8] The attack on Tikrit began March 1st when 27,000 troops and mili­tia advanced in three columns. After three days the attack force moved into the sub­urbs of Tikrit and recap­tured some vil­lages. The main bat­tle will be in Tikrit itself, for which the Iraqi army is no in posi­tion to han­dle due to large-scale urban war­fare. The Iran­ian mili­tias are mostly trained for guer­rilla war­fare that means tak­ing a lot more casu­al­ties to advance. These mili­tias are trained to view this war as a Sunni-Shi’ah war in which mar­tyr­dom is vic­tory. As ISIS are also trained in the same way an epic blood­bath will most likely take place, made even more hor­rific by mass mur­der of civilians.
The way the US con­structed the archi­tec­ture of Iraq after the over­throw of Sad­dam Hus­sain means that the dif­fer­ences between the Sunni, Shi’ah and Kurds con­stantly threaten it. The Iraqi gov­ern­ment which is dom­i­nated by Shi’ah fac­tions fears that the Kurds plan to take con­trol of Mosul once ISIS is dri­ven out. The Bagh­dad gov­ern­ments para­noia has resulted in it with­hold­ing the Kur­dish share of oil income and weapons the gov­ern­ment is receiv­ing to help fight ISIS. It should be remem­bered that the tribes in Anbar province sup­ported ISIS ini­tially against the Malaki gov­ern­ment, due to the oppres­sion they faced. The Abadi gov­ern­ment is try­ing to win them over, but lit­tle progress has been made. Like theUS pre­pared the Sunni awak­en­ing coun­cils to destroy Al Qaeda in 2006, it will need a sim­i­lar strat­egy this time and this announce­ment of tak­ing back Mosul was in all like­li­hood the first aspect of this strategy.
Despite some suc­cess in the north­ern Kur­dish areas and around Bagh­dad the Iraqi forces, be they the nation’s army or the Kur­dish forces, have no abil­ity to launch large scale con­ven­tional oper­a­tions. The Kur­dish forces are a mere 24 kilo­me­tres north of Mosul but and do not want to advance fur­ther, recog­nis­ing their lim­ited capa­bil­i­ties. The sit­u­a­tion of the nation’s army is far worse. Too often the Kurds have seen the army flee when fight­ing ISIS leav­ing nearby Kurds to take care of the mess. Add to this cor­rup­tion, insuf­fi­cient train­ing and incom­pe­tent com­man­ders and you have a mess that will take years to fix. This explains why the US has not invested more real estate in both Syria and Iraq and main­tained largely an air pres­ence. Any capit­u­la­tion of ISIS would result in a big­ger mess as each fac­tion attempts to pick up the pieces. In the end despite these grandiose announce­ments a war involv­ing so many dif­fer­ent fac­tions will take years to resolve; bat­tle­field capa­bil­i­ties delay and can­cel any poten­tial push in both Syria and Iraq.

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