Posted on 10/18/2016 11:19:10 AM PDT by Lorianne
Podcast 18:59
If the Islamic State digs in and defends Mosul, the fight is expected to be bloody. More than 6,000 Islamic State fighters are thought to be in the city. It has deployed thousands of mines and has dug an elaborate network of tunnels and trenches across Mosul in preparation for a protracted urban fight. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped in the city as the Islamic State has prevented them from leaving. However, during recent battles in major Iraqi cities such as Ramadi and Fallujah, the Islamic State withdrew the bulk of its troops and left a smaller rearguard force to bleed the Iraqi military and militias.
The forces in the fragmented anti-Islamic State alliance, a mix of Iraqi special forces and regular troops, the Kurdish Peshmerga, and Sunni and Shiite militias who number a total of 60,000, are each positioning themselves to reap the benefits of a post-Islamic State Mosul. The most dangerous element among these forces is the network backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC).
The Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella organization of Shiite, Sunnis, Christian, and Yazidi militias formed following the fatwa of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in 2014 to drive the Islamic State from Iraq, is controlled and dominated by IRGC-backed proxies. In an effort to rein in these militias, Prime Minister Abadi has created a parallel military organization for the PMF in the security apparatus outside of the command structure. However, the PMF remains riddled with Iranian-supported militias, and its key leaders are beholden to IRGC-Qods Force’s commander, Qassem Soleimani.
These forces and their Iranian advisers will participate in the operation for Mosul, as affirmed by Harakat al Nujaba head Akram al Kabi. Soleimani is expected to play “a major role” in the operation for Mosul, a PMF spokesman said two months ago, though this has not been confirmed yet.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/10/the-siege-of-mosul-draws-close.php
This is going to be a mess, before, during and after the battle.
It is time to revisit the siege concept.
Identical scenario to the battle of Manila, Feb-March 1945.
The shining moment in Islam’s creation was the Battle of the Trench. The Muslims built a trench across Medina to confound the Meccans who came to siege them. Due to bad weather and the trench, the Muslims survived the siege. After that, they went on the offense and the rest is bloody history.
Yeah, it looks like one group of bad guys will just be replaced by another group of bad guys.
If we were to arm those civilians, would they fight against their captors?
It's always a risk supplying arms to these Mideast nutjobs, but maybe worth it?
No.
This will go very well at least through the election. The military goal is to raise Obama’s ‘favorables’ to benefit Clinton.
Afterwards it will prove to be a strategic disaster.
Nope, not worth it.
Whoever gets the upper hand in any particular geographic region is going to use it against other sects of Islam or tribes they don’t like .... and any Westerners or Western interests.
It’s pretty predictable if you read history.
Estimates are up to ~8k IS psychos in Mosul. To put things in perspective, the U.S. military took on half that number of jihadis in the two battles of Fallujah. The U.S. military had a force of over 10k composed of 101st, 82nd, 1st ID, 3rd Armored, 1st Special Forces, 5th Special Forces, multiple SEAL teams, Blackwater mercs, AC-130’s, F-16’s dropping 2000 lb. bombs, etc. and even before they went in they vacated the city of civilians and blasted AC/DC and Metallica 24/7. Still, both battles took 6 weeks to pacify and U.S. had over 120 KIA and over 600 wounded.
Put this in perspective. The world’s most powerful military took 6 weeks to pacify a vacated with 4k ragtag jihadis were holed up and 2k ended up being captured (i.e., didn’t fight to the death). Here you have 8k total psycho IS fighters who aren’t the surrendering type, who know they won’t be surrendering to a military which is UCMJ compliant with embedded JAG lawyers. And on the other side of the ongoing Mosul operation you have poorly trained ISF who love victories but hate fighting for them. Peshmerga are much better than ISF but have a small fraction of the efficiency of the U.S. military.
I don’t know. If IS stays and fights it out it might be a long fight.
“the fight is expected to be bloody”
So be it. Any captured ISIS fighters should be sent across the minefields to detonate mines.
OTOH, we supplied the Taliban with weapons to be used against the Russians. That was not so successful.
As I said, it's always a risk. Maybe light, close-in weapons like handguns and no Stingers this time...
Excellent analysis.
Resistance groups during WWII were not warring with each other by religious sect, tribes, family grudges, local warlords, etc. At least I have never read or heard that they were.
The problem we don’t know who is the ‘resistance’ in these place ... or what they are resisting.
The alternative is siege or frontal assault on a fortified position, very messy. If the locals can thin the ranks and keep ISIS worried about their 6, taking the city would be easier. Assuming that's what we want...
We can probably do a better trench now. There is nothing keeping us from any victory over there except politicians.
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