The Trump Administration has inherited a complex set of problems in Iraq. Most pressing among them is the ongoing campaign to recapture Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, from ISIS. The operation to liberate Mosul has met fierce resistance, but Iraqi forces – with coalition aid – control the eastern half of the city and have now begun their final assault on the last pocket of ISIS forces in the west. Helping those forces liberate the western half of Mosul is one of the first challenges that President Trump and his administration face in Iraq. However, perhaps more important will be the political race for influence in the city – and much of northern Iraq – by the region's power players. The Cipher Brief’s Fritz Lodge spoke with former Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General Jack Keane, to see where the battle for Mosul stands, and what the Trump Administration will need to do to secure the city afterward.
The Cipher Brief: Where does the battle for Mosul currently stand?
Retired General Jack Keane: The battle for Mosul is in two primary phases. Phase 1, retaking the eastern part of the city, has been completed, although it took considerably longer than the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) thought it would and was much more costly in casualties as well. Phase 2 is beginning as we speak, to reclaim the western part of the city. The west is considerably more densely populated than the east so the fight to reclaim this part of the city will certainly be every bit as demanding as Phase 1. There will likely be even more casualties, and the battle will take weeks or possibly months to complete.
TCB: Do you have a sense of why the ISF were so wrong in their original assumptions about how difficult the battle would be?
JK: Well it largely depended on ISIS. ISIS did not defend in place in Ramadi and Fallujah. They put up initial resistance, withdrew their command-and-control unit, and then eventually withdrew the main body of their forces. In Mosul, ISIS command and control is still in place, and the main body of ISIS fighters is defending in place. That, in of itself, has made the battle significantly harder. Specifically, ISIS has also used human shields to their advantage in order to disarm the American air power advantage, and they’ve done that very successfully.
TCB: In December, there was a break in the advance, after which Iraqi forces pushed ISIS out of eastern Mosul and pushed right up to the east bank of the Tigris. Do you have a sense of what happened during that break in the fighting? What kind of reinforcements did they bring up and what changes did they make to their strategy?
JK: There was a tactical pause during Phase 1 because of the casualties that the specially trained Counterterrorism Service (CTS) was taking – some estimate these casualties rose as high as 50 percent. These were the primary assault forces so reinforcements were then brought up to thicken their ranks. Those casualties were the primary reason for the pause.
TCB: What is the makeup of the attacking forces as they now stand?
JK: CTS still provides the primary assault force, along with other infantry organizations within the ISF. All of this is facilitated largely by U.S. advisors and U.S. air ground controllers, who are facilitating the use of coalition air power to support ISF advances. U.S. advisors are now down with the ISF fighting units.
TCB: Shi’a militias called the Popular Mobilization Units have largely been kept out of the city itself, but they are operating in the region around Tal Afar to the west. Are you worried at all about their participation?
JK: I think everyone is concerned about the PMU, particularly the Iranian-backed Shi’a militias, which are part of that organization, because when they have been used in the past they have committed genocidal acts against local non-Shi'a populations. The Iranians insisted that the PMU be part of the assault on Mosul, and because of Iranian influence with the government of Iraq, they were permitted to take part but have been kept to the west of the city and outside of it. As long as that remains the case, then we are not likely to see the kind of ethnic cleansing and genocidal acts that we witnessed in the past.
All that said, the political make-up of the organization that will be stabilizing and securing Mosul after ISIS is driven out is still a challenge. If that organization does not have political unity and is unable to govern a reclaimed Mosul, then the city is likely to be destabilized and violence will recur. This is something that the government of Iraq is very concerned about.
TCB: Could you go deeper into that issue? Who are the various interested political parties in Mosul’s future, and where do they currently stand in terms of influence?
JK: It’s sort of a microcosm of Iraq’s problems writ large. That is Sunni Arabs, Shi’a, and Kurds all vying for influence. External actors are also major players in this, particularly Iran and the United States. In the northern part of the country, the region around Mosul, Turkey also plays a role.
So it’s very complicated, and the political plan to govern Mosul and the surrounding territory after ISIS is equally as challenging as the military effort to reclaim that territory.
TCB: Do you think that Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi is politically powerful enough to reestablish control over Mosul and Nineveh Province in the way that he and the central government in Baghdad would like?
JK: I know he intends to do it, but whether he has the political influence remains to be seen. Abadi is a weak leader in terms of his political support inside Iraq. He is also unduly influenced by the Iranians. The Americans unfortunately ceded that influence to Tehran when they politically disengaged from Iraq in 2009 and militarily disengaged in 2011. When ISIS invaded Iraq in 2014, it took nine months for the American President to respond with any kind of military action to help the Iraqis, who were begging for support. The Iranians were supporting immediately. And our political engagement in Iraq, from 2014 to the present, has been inadequate in comparison to the Iranians, who are attempting to make Iraq essentially a client state.
TCB: That brings us to the current President, Donald Trump. What direction do you think he’s looking to take in the battle for Mosul and, perhaps more importantly, in developing the political aftermath of Mosul’s liberation?
JK: Overall, the Trump White House wants to reestablish and restore the historical and traditional relationship that the United States has had as the most influential extra-regional country in the Middle East.
As a matter of priorities, the Trump White House wants to defeat ISIS, and they also want to counter the Iranians’ geopolitical ambitions to dominate and control the Middle East. All of that is good news for the government of Iraq because the reality is that the previous administration withdrew from the Middle East and accommodated the Iranians, and the Trump White House has, at least in these early signals to the Middle East, indicated that it will do quite the opposite.
TCB: Moving on to some of his more controversial statements and actions – especially the executive order temporarily banning immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iraq – is there a political backlash against that in Iraq? Does that weaken the Administration’s policies there or weaken Abadi?
JK: Well I agree with the executive order. If any president believes that there are certain countries – in this case mostly failed states – where we don’t have the vetting process in place that we would have in more established countries, I think it’s his prerogative to ban immigration until better vetting processes are put in place.
However, I never have understood why Iraq was on that list. Iraq is an ally and we’re fighting side by side with them. We have many people from Iraq that come to the United States for military training, or come after having served as interpreters or worked with us in some other way as friends of the United States. I think I would have found another solution as opposed to putting everyone in Iraq on this list of literally failed states such as Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and certainly Syria, where there’s a raging civil war.
All that said, the Abadi government has not taken a strong position against the U.S. ban, and has just chosen to look past it and work with the United States to get rid of ISIS.
