After almost eight months of fighting, the battle to liberate Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, from ISIS is nearing its end. The Iraqi army has taken over 90 percent of the city and, although resistance will be fierce in the last remaining pocket of ISIS resistance in the Old City, the fall of Mosul appears imminent. However, it is not yet clear what will happen after the city is liberated. The operation to oust ISIS from Mosul includes the Iraqi army, U.S.-led coalition forces, Kurdish Peshmerga – armed forces of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) – and Iranian-backed militias. The Cipher Brief’s Fritz Lodge spoke to Bilal Wahab, Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, about what comes after Mosul falls.
The Cipher Brief: Once ISIS is cleared from its last pockets in western Mosul, what will be the immediate effects on Mosul? What will we see in the weeks following?
Bilal Wahab: On the Iraqi side, there will be a boost of confidence to the Iraqi military, whose efficacy and competence came under dire scrutiny in 2014 after ISIS captured one-third of the country in a matter of days. Politically, Prime Minister Haider al Abadi and the government in Baghdad will try to maximize the political benefits of this victory. You can expect a show of force or a kind of “mission accomplished” grandiose political gesture.
This is very important for Abadi because he is preparing for his reelection campaign. He really needs this kind of victory because it will boost his image and leadership credentials. This is happening already but you’ll see a boost.
The Kurdish Peshmerga will also be celebrating because they contributed to this fight. You can also expect the Kurds and the Iraqis to celebrate together because the operation in Mosul was the fruit of Kurdish-Iraqi military coordination and cooperation, obviously with the help and brokerage of the United States.
You may have a sense of the country coming together to fight terrorism in the immediate aftermath of Mosul’s fall, but I think the celebration will be short-lived and the fault lines between the parties involved in Mosul and northern Iraq will re-emerge. The Kurdish-Iraqi cooperation, for instance, was what my colleague Michael Knights calls a “gentleman’s agreement” but the Kurds understand that agreement one way and the Iraqis another. Once ISIS is gone, the divergence between these viewpoints will reemerge.
One big problem is that anti-ISIS forces are retaking ISIS territory but they are not reoccupying the exact territory they used to control. For example, although the Kurdish Peshmerga is back in Sinjar, but it’s not in complete control of Sinjar. The Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) are new actors in northern Iraq, they never had a presence there before. The Syrian Kurdish YPG [Peoples’ Protection Units] is a new actor, as are local militias like the Yazidi, Turkmen and Christian militias – some supported by Iran, some by Turkey, some by Baghdad.
Once these forces do not have a common enemy, we are going to see conflict between and among these actors. Mosul will be a short-lived victory unless the United States expends political capital and makes sure that these looming conflicts can be resolved.
TCB: Which players are best-positioned right now to gain the most influence in the city of Mosul?
BW: In the city, it will be the Iraqi central government forces. The Kurdish Peshmerga did not enter the city and the PMF fought largely in the west of the province. The bulk of the fighting in the city was done by the Iraqi special operations forces, the Golden Brigades.
On the political question of who will emerge as the political ruler of Mosul, or the governor of Mosul, there is no clear plan for that yet. There are different ideas being tossed around, one is for the governor of Mosul elected by the Iraqi Parliament – who has remained outside Mosul while the fighting concludes – to return after the city’s fall. Another idea is for the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi to appoint a military person to take charge of the city. But this is all very vague and one of the biggest problems in Mosul is the fact that post-military plans are not really in place.
TCB: How about Nineveh province at large?
BW: It’s more complicated to talk about the province of Nineveh more generally because you have multiple actors: primarily the Iraqi Security Forces, the Shi’a PMF militias – many of whom take their cues from Iran – and the Kurdish Peshmerga. Between these forces there are many flashpoints, particularly between the Peshmerga and the PMF, and particularly in the area around Mount Sinjar. On the one hand, you have Shi’a militias promising to take Sinjar - which is a primarily Kurdish and Yazidi area – and then you have the Kurdish Peshmerga who were in de facto control of Sinjar in 2014 but they lost control of the area to ISIS, which lost them some goodwill. The Kurds have since recaptured the city of Sinjar from ISIS but many Yazidis still feel abandoned by the Peshmerga.
The other factor that turns the Iraqi issue into a regional issue is the presence of Syrian Kurdish YPG forces in Sinjar. They were instrumental in helping the Yazidi community in Sinjar to escape ISIS so they won some favor amongst the local population. The Turkey-based PKK – closely linked with the YPG – has also formed a local Yazidi force, the YBS, under the umbrella of the PMF, which means you have a PKK-trained and -commanded Yazidi force with Iraqi financing and legitimacy in the area. This really angers the KDP [Kurdish Democratic Party], which controls the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and still holds sway in the province, as well as the Turks who consider both the PKK and the YPG to be terrorist organizations.
It’s a minefield and it’s a question of how you navigate all these competing interests to avoid sparking a new conflict. There are reports that the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi government are planning some sort of joint force to take control of Sinjar, which is interesting because that would be the first time that the KRG has allowed the Iraqi government to have security forces inside Sinjar. But there is also talk of the Iraqi government and the YPG making some sort of agreement to control both that ground and the entire Syrian border. Yet Iraqi Prime Minster Abadi affirmed that no foreign force is allowed in Sinjar. In essence, this is a huge flashpoint because it could not only deepen historical disagreement between the Iraqi central government and the KRG, it could bring in Turkey and the PKK into an Iraqi conflict. The heavy involvement of PMFs at the border area is good news for Tehran’s land bridge to Syria. If things are not contained, you could have a very complex multilateral conflict that would be very hard to navigate.
Right now, with the Mosul operation going on, the United States has maximum leverage. But once the common enemy of ISIS is gone, we will be in for some very hard times if there is no plan to quickly deconflict and contain these flashpoints.
TCB: Do you see any hint of such a plan from the Trump Administration?
BW: So far, such a plan seems to be missing, or not made public. The think tank community is chipping in, offering recommendations to the Trump Administration. For instance, my colleague Michael Knights [a Lafer Fellow at the Washington Institute] has presented one such recommendation to create a trilateral force made up of American, Iraqi, and Kurdish troops that would patrol these disputed territories. This gives everyone a stake in these areas and worked well against al Qaeda. You have local Iraqi recommendations as well, but the fact that we have such disparate reporting on what agreement may emerge signals that there is real confusion on this issue.
At the end of the day, no, we have not yet seen a real plan for the aftermath of Mosul’s fall, neither from Washington nor from Baghdad.
