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24 October 2016

*** The Battle for Mosul Begins - Analysis

October 18, 2016
Editor's Note: The operation to recapture the key northern Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State is now underway. Attempts to build up the necessary forces and pave the way for the attack have taken more than a year. The operation is expected to go on for months, if all goes according to plan. What we are seeing now is the initial advance onto the city itself, which will be followed by the fight to actually penetrate the Islamic State's defenses. Arguably the most important aspect of the operation is what happens after the city falls. Mosul fits into our overall coverage of the Iraq-Syria battlespace, but because of the size and nature of the combined operation, we will track it independently in this space.

Oct. 17: The Battle for Mosul Begins
The long-awaited push to retake Mosul from the Islamic State has begun. On Oct. 16, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced on national television that the operation to recapture the country's second-largest city, which has been under the jihadist group's control since June 2014, was underway. Iraqi forces have been preparing for the offensive for months, gradually advancing north toward the city to put into place the logistics lines needed to support such a massive and lengthy endeavor.
So far, the Iraqi military and Kurdish peshmerga forces spearheading the operation have made considerable progress.As expected, the bulk of the fighters have concentrated their efforts on moving northward along highways 1 and 80, though supporting advances from the east and north by remaining Iraqi troops and peshmerga have seen significant success as well. The U.S.-led coalition has also provided air and artillery support to the operation, while the predominantly Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces have offered ground support on the outskirts of the city once they join the offensive.

But despite its early success, the campaign to dislodge the Islamic State from one of its last remaining Iraqi strongholds will be neither quick nor easy. The group is undoubtedly preserving its strength for conflict inside the city itself, which will be more difficult and more destructive than waging war in largely unpopulated areas. For now, the militants are likely relying solely on rearguard action, or defensive maneuvers made by a retreating force, while they wait for their opponents to converge on the city.

As the battle for Mosul unfolds, the danger of it causing a humanitarian crisis will increase. Some 750,000 Iraqi citizens still live in the city, and though Iraqi authorities and international aid agencies have set up refugee camps in preparation for the assault, they will not be able to handle a sudden, sizable influx of people. And as the Islamic State is expelled from the city, it will become more desperate as it weakens, taking bigger and bigger risks to try to regain the territory it has lost.





This article originally appeared at Stratfor.

American Hybrid Warfare: Somalia as a Case Study in the Real American Way of War in 2016
By Robert Chesney Monday, October 17, 2016, 7:06 AM







The front page of the New York Times carried a story this Sunday that would have commanded the news cycle many years ago. It describes in previously-unappreciated detail the complex nature and large scale of the U.S. military commitment to the ongoing armed conflict against al Shabab in Somalia, underscoring the extent to which the real Obama military legacy (at least vis-a-vis the blended problem of failed states and violent jihadist organizations committed to terrorism) is not the simple caricature of "drone wars" but, instead, a sophisticated hybrid model blending an array of light-footprint, light-visibility, and light-commitment elements. Alas, despite the prominent placement it is far from clear that many people are paying attention (and it is perfectly clear we will not be hearing anything from the presidential candidates about this model, just as we won't be hearing a peep from them about, say, their plans for Afghanistan). The least I can do, it seems to me, as highlight the elements in the story that I find particularly significant.

First, the piece documents a sophisticated approach that layers together a panoply of low-visibility (to the public both here and there) tools. Of course that includes the use of drones, including armed drones, but it also includes the use of SOF for a variety of purposes (training of host state and African Union proxy forces, but there also are vague references to "group operations" that presumably SOF SMU's carry out, as well as temporary involvement in interrogation), and--most intriguingly--private military contractors who not only are training host state forces but also embedding with them for operations. Combined with what must be a substantial outlay of funding for Somali and African Union forces engaging in this work, and one has a picture of a very sizable commitment--but also one that leaves a very light footprint.

Second, detention and interrogation make a remarkable appearance, one that is entirely predictable given the aversion to US control of such matters over the past 8 years. We are told US personnel directly engage in interrogations at temporary screening facilities, before detainees are left to their fate with the host state. It seems as if we have managed to preserve at least some degree of functionality along the lines of the rapid cycle of raid-exploit-raid that SOF developed in Iraq years ago, but modified here to account for the now long-standing US aversion to direct responsibility for detention.

Third, the story notes something we've posted on at Lawfare before: the uncertainty surrounding the ROE for US kinetic operations in Somalia, including especially the extent to which self-defense justifications have been extended as an umbrella for Somali and African Union forces. Relatedly, the story also makes the critical point that the mere act of inserting US forces into situations of potential hostilities does of course increase the occasions for reliance on self-defense rationales.

No doubt we will be hearing more as time goes by. Nice work by the Times in the meantime.  

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