My daughter has just come back from Tikrit:
The Iraq Army are pretty stretched - and we are busy bombing shopping malls.
Meanwhile Stafford writes:
What's 'normal'? The world appears no less 'normal' today than perhaps it's ever been. Perhaps it's even 'more normal' today than during the past century when tens of millions were killed in (non-Muslim) wars and incredible destruction occurred throughout Europe and many other places.
Today, this very day, there's a Saudi-led 10-nation (sectarian Sunni Arab) coalition attacking Yemen.
And a US-led 60-nation coalition confronting the likes of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but with Iranian-backed (sectarian Shia Arab) militias.
And there's the potentially earthshaking nuclear accord that could lead to Iran providing its substantial economic and cultural (think also food) capacities to an anxiety-ridden, volatile Middle East. Today, this very day, is a deadline. Perhaps.
Some 50 years ago there was a popular folksong by The Kingston Trio
entitled 'The Merry Minuet'. You can listen to it here:
What is the purpose of degrading and destroying the likes of ISIS? If
armed action does not allow IDPs to return to their homes to rebuild and restart
their lives where they not only survive but thrive, then what good is it? What
will it take to reestablish the communities IDPs called home?
Removing the likes of ISIS is only a first step. There is, however, more
preoccupation with weaponry and less appreciation for meeting high standards of
planning and training -- too many assert that all that is needed is more
weaponry and the war will be won. There is also inadequate appreciation for
developing and maintaining high standard intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities.
How else to explain the failure of tens of thousands of anti-ISIS forces to
dislodge a few hundred ISIS fighters in Tikrit? Irregular Iraqi sectarian
militia forces unregulated by government far outnumber ISIS forces, some say
30,000 against 400. The militias are materially supported by the Iraqi
government but act outside government command and control. In effect, they are
public-supported, private (nongovernmental) militias (gangs?).
These militia forces are less organized, less disciplined, less trained and
lack ISR capabilities of well-established, well-trained, and well-led military
units. Numerous reports indicate they are guided by Iranians with assistance
from Lebanese Hezbollah.
Similar to the media confusion about what to call the likes of ISIS --
Daesh, ISIS, ISIL, or IS -- these sectarian (Shia) militia groups are sometimes
referred to as Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), or Popular Mobilization
Committees (PMCs), or Popular Mobilization Forces (PMFs).
Incidentally, during the mid-1990s in the Kurdistan Region a PMF was
established in Erbil to monitor an internal ceasefire. It was led by the
Turkish military and included local forces. Though this PMF had nothing to do
with the UN, the Turkish military wore the blue berets of UN peacekeeping
forces. This PMF was eventually disbanded.
If central/federal government supported forces are unable to retake Tikrit,
then how will they ever retake Mosul? And it's really not about retaking
ISIS-controlled territory. If successful, it's really about what happens AFTER
the retaking.
Sectarian militia forces threaten Sunni and other non-Shia inhabitants of
areas under ISIS control. Some Sunni areas retaken by these militias are
uninhabitable by the original inhabitants who are unable to return. In other
words, though ISIS has shattered what was left of the Iraqi state, the
heavy-handed, revengeful behavior of sectarian militias against the likes of
ISIS is reinforcing the shattering.
For example, Jurf al Sarkhar. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi
proclaimed its liberation to be "a key to liberate every corner of Iraq." He
called it a victory against ISIS, and said it was a morale booster for Iraqi
forces. But Jurf al Sakhar is a relatively small place that is now, after
"liberation", uninhabitable by its original citizens.
Under what conditions will IDPs be able to return to their homes? What
needs to be achieved to regenerate those conditions? What's the roadmap and
timeframe?
Degrading and destroying the likes of ISIS is only a first step.
The New York Times30 Mar
2015
Islamic State’s Grip on City Appears Firmer Than Iraqis
Acknowledge
By ROD
NORDLAND
TIKRIT, Iraq — Iraqi
officials insisted for weeks that Islamic State fighters had been all but
exterminated in Tikrit, confined to a few pockets in the city center. Yet on
Sunday, military officials in the city were reluctant to allow journalists to
head back to Baghdad by road — even though the highway skirts Tikrit well to the
west.
The supposed safer alternative was a general’s Iraqi Air Force
Cessna waiting at the Tikrit Air Base nine miles northwest of downtown. But
before takeoff, two mortar shells slammed into a grassy patch between the
airfield’s two runways, within 100 yards of the small plane. Iraqi military
escorts surmised that the person shooting had to have been within visual range —
and probably to the west, although downtown was southeast.
“Daesh are
everywhere,” one senior officer said, using the Arab nickname for the Islamic
State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
During a two-day visit to Tikrit, a
strategic city in Iraq’s central Sunni heartland, it was clear that after four
weeks of the government offensive the Islamic State’s fighters are more numerous
and still hold much more territory here than officials had previously allowed,
even with heavy American airstrikes added in.
According to Iraqi military
officials and fighters on the ground in Tikrit, ISISstill dominates or controls
about 20 square miles of the city, everything from the edge of Tikrit University
in the north, to the far end of the New Ouja neighborhood in the south, a
distance as much as eight miles north to south. That encompasses most of the
populous parts of the city, which generally lie west of the Tigris River; all of
its main downtown and business districts; the government quarter and the former
palace of Saddam Hussein.
Government forces remain mostly east of the
Tigris, an area that is predominantly rural and agricultural, or on the suburban
or rural outskirts of the city on the western and southern sides. The city’s
population used to be more than a quarter million, but most residents have
fled.
The army headquarters for the operation are situated at a campus
building not far from the front line with ISIS — though here, front line is a
relative term. Eight mortar tubes were set up around the headquarters to provide
defense, and they were pointing not just south toward the center of Tikrit, but
also to the north and northeast.
Those mortars were all fired relatively
frequently Saturday and Sunday, their shots alternating with the ground-shaking
blasts of bombs being dropped from time to time by coalition
aircraft.
Lt. Gen. Abdul al-Wahab al-Saadi, the commander of the Tikrit
offensive, said that while the Iraqi military’s positions around the city had
not changed significantly, special operations forces and elite police units were
carrying out reconnaissance in force into the city and had penetrated to within
600 yards of the government complex in the city center.
He said the going
had been slow because at first Iraqi forces wanted to leave space for civilians
to flee the city, and then wanted to proceed in a way that kept casualties among
the military and its allied Shiite militias as low as possible.
Despite
weeks of fighting, he insisted that the pro-government forces had sustained few
fatalities, and estimated that ISIS had 450 to 750 fighters left in the city,
and had lost an equal number killed.
Shiite militias were losing about an
average of eight fighters a day killed, according to cemetery workers in Najaf,
where most Shiite martyrs are buried. While that was a nationwide estimate, most
of them would have been fighting in Salahuddin Province.
But Wafiq
al-Hashemi, director of the Iraqi Group for Strategic Studies, an independent
research organization that often provides advice to the Iraqi government, said
his estimates of ISIS fighters still active in Tikrit were in the range of 2,000
to 3,000. He also said that not only did ISIS still dominate the 20-square-mile
area between Tikrit University and Ouja, but that the Iraqi military still had
not succeeded in taking control of Highway 1 north of Tikrit, between Tikrit and
Mosul, where ISIS has its major base in Iraq.
The militants in Tikrit
have been able to keep using that supply line to the north even though they are
surrounded within the city, using tunnels to evade government lines and keep
access to the road.
“The government cannot do it unless the international
alliance keeps up these airstrikes,” he said.
According to Gen. Lloyd
Austin, who as head of the United States Central Command is in overall charge of
the coalition in Iraq and Syria, the Iraqi military has about 4,000 troops under
its command in Tikrit — far less than the 30,000 figure Iraqi officials had
cited, although that included militia forces as well.
He insisted that
the Shiite militias were not involved in the Tikrit battle any longer, after the
American military told congressional leaders last week that it had agreed to
support Iraqi operations in Tikrit with airstrikes only after being assured that
Shiite militias, many of them with Iranian advisers, had been pulled out of the
fight.
There was considerable confusion in Tikrit, however, over the new
terms of engagement. While some of the militiamen said they would pull out of
the fight, many others could be seen on the front lines of it. In addition, many
new militia fighters, officially known as the popular mobilization forces, were
seen arriving in significant numbers in Tikrit on Saturday and
Sunday.
However, Iranian advisers who had been working with some of the
militias, in particular, have no longer been reported on the battlefields around
Tikrit and elsewhere in Salahuddin Province.
“The popular mobilization
did not withdraw, they are still here,” General Saadi, who is in overall charge
of the Tikrit offensive, said in an interview over the weekend. “Some of them
were sent to do different duties inside our area of operation.”
None of
them, however, were removed from the battle when the coalition began bombing,
the general insisted. “The people who are here with us are still here, they
didn’t leave, some were just moved to another place.”
General Saadi said
that while no military wants to be dependent on militias and irregular forces,
Iraq had no choice. “If we were a complete army I would say no, but we need the
popular mobilization forces. The battle requires them to be with us.”
On
Sunday, about 60 Shiite fighters arrived at General Saadi’s headquarters from
the Shiite heartland around Karbala as part of a militia called Qataba Imam Ali,
wearing black uniforms with body armor and carrying a mixture of light and heavy
weapons.
Their commander was Lt. Col. Salim Mizher, who said his men were
eager to join the fight. But when an Iraqi officer, Brig. Gen. Abbas Khudair,
explained that the militiamen were being incorporated into the army and would
not operate independently, answering to Iraqi generals, Colonel Mizher
objected.
“We answer to Sheikh Maithan and no other person,” he said,
naming one of the militia’s religious leaders.
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