On Day One of the long-awaited offensive to retake Mosul, U.S.-backed Kurdish and Iraqi forces advanced swiftly through Islamic State-controlled territory around Iraq’s second-largest city — even as concerns mounted over the prospect of a chaotic battle that could unleash a wider sectarian and regional war.
Iraqi officials reported steady progress on a campaign that is expected to take at least several weeks, but political tensions soared Monday between the governments of Iraq and Turkey over Ankara’s role in the evolving campaign. In Washington, the bigger concern centered on Iran’s influence over Shiite militias involved in the offensive against the dug-in Islamic State fighters.
Flanked by top Iraqi commanders, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the beginning of the operation during a nationwide address early Monday, shortly after U.S. and coalition aircraft had carried out preparatory airstrikes on targets inside Mosul, a multiethnic city roughly 260 miles north of Baghdad.
Military and police units from Baghdad and elsewhere across the country — assigned to reinforce 12 Iraqi army brigades spearheading the assault — reportedly began moving into position as early as Saturday. Iraqi forces coming from the south and Kurdish peshmerga fighters from the east were “ahead of schedule” as the offensive’s first day came to a close, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters in Washington.
The peshmerga succeeded in reclaiming nine villages along Mosul’s eastern edge from the Islamic State, also known and ISIS and ISIL, and securing a key stretch of the main road connecting Mosul to the Kurdish region’s capital of Irbil, according to a statement from the General Command of the Peshmerga Forces of Kurdistan Region. By the end of the day, Kurdish forces had retaken some 80 square miles, according to the president of Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
Iraqi forces, with headquarters alongside U.S. forces at the American military outpost in al Qayara, 40 miles south of Mosul, also pressed deeper into Islamic State territory heading toward Mosul’s southern flanks.
But there were signs that the progress was being slowed by Monday night as the advancing units attempted to clear heavily mined approaches to the city, which U.S. officials say is occupied by 3,000 to 5,000 Islamic State fighters. The Islamic State-run news agency, Aamaq, said the group carried out eight suicide attacks against Kurdish forces and destroyed two Humvees belonging to the Kurdish forces and Shiite militias east of the city.
Obama administration officials cautioned that Monday was only the opening of what could be a prolonged and bloody fight. “We are in the first day of what we assume will be a difficult campaign that could take some time,” Mr. Cook said. “It’s [still] early, and the enemy gets a vote here. We will see whether ISIL stands and fights.”
At the White House, press secretary Josh Earnest characterized the operation as the “next test” of Mr. Obama’s theory that the Islamic State, which the president once dismissed as a “JV team” of terrorism — can be defeated on the ground in Iraq without U.S. combat troops. The Islamic State’s stunning territorial gains on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border in 2014 badly unsettled the Obama administration and governments across the region.
After an initial string of humiliating retreats, Iraqi forces successfully drove Islamic State fighters from Ramadi and Fallujah, with U.S. military advisers operating largely in the background, Mr. Earnest said.
Mr. Obama, who ended the formal U.S. combat mission in Iraq in 2011, has been forced to send thousands of troops and special operations forces back to the country since 2014.
“So this would be the next test of this strategy. And I think the president would be the first to acknowledge that this is a significant test, given the population size of Mosul, given the large geographic area that it encompasses,” he said.
Mr. Cook, meanwhile, said he could not rule out the possibility that U.S. commanders will send American troops into Mosul as the battle progresses. “I’m not ruling it in, I’m not ruling it out. We are on Day One,” he said. He declined to comment on where U.S. forces are deployed alongside advancing Iraqi and Kurdish troops, coordinating coalition air power.
“Nothing will happen with regard to U.S. forces that is not agreed to with the Iraqis. That’s the most important thing,” he said.
Simmering tensions
As Iraqi and coalition forces encircle the city, concerns loom large that sectarian and regional tensions among the various players in the coalition could undercut the effectiveness of the fighting force and set up difficult power struggles after the city is freed. The safety of some 1 million Mosul residents believed to be trapped inside the Islamic State-controlled city is also a major concern.
Officials at United Nations said Monday that the largest wave of displaced people is expected to begin next week as Iraqi forces enter territory where thousands are living, according to The Associated Press.
“The most critical aspect of the battle may not be whether ISIS is defeated; it may be whether Iraq’s deeply divided factions can find some way to cooperate if they win,” said Anthony Cordesman, a longtime military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “’Winning’ could all too easily divide Iraq on a lasting basis and/or turn into new forms of civil conflict,” with Turkey, Iran and other regional powers “jockeying for position in a divided Iraq,” Mr. Cordesman wrote in an analysis.
Speaking at a news conference just a few miles from the front line, Kurdistan region President Massoud Barzani called the Mosul operation a “turning point in the war against terrorism” but said there was not yet a plan for governing the region after the fight. Political and military officials in the Kurdistan region have said the peshmerga will not withdraw from any territory they retake, according to the AP.
Over the weekend, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it was “out of the question” that the roughly 2,000 Turkish troops based west of Mosul would not be involved in the liberation of the city. Ethnic Turkmen, with strong cultural and political ties to Turkey, make up a significant minority in Mosul. But Iraq is suspicious of Turkish designs, and Mr. al-Abadi said last week that a continued Turkish presence could trigger a regional war.
Separately, Iranian-backed Shiite militias conscripted by the al-Abadi regime to take part in the Mosul offensive are quietly gaining influence among Shiite enclaves around the city and the larger Nineveh province. Mosul is in the heart of Iraq’s Sunni area, and many there express deep fears of the Shiite militias.
State Department officials have expressed concern for months behind the scenes about the extent to which the various independent militias operating around northern Iraq — from Kurdish peshmerga to Shiite and Sunni tribal factions — may turn on one another in a battle over ultimate control of Mosul.
“Certainly we want these forces to recognize Iraqi government leadership and command and control, but also, Prime Minister al-Abadi has been very clear that he won’t accept any kind of sectarianism and that any credible allegations of human rights abuses will be investigated,” State Department Deputy spokesman Mark Toner said Monday.
Mr. Cook declined to comment on whether U.S. forces would continue to defer to Baghdad’s battle plans if they involved attacks against Turkey, a NATO ally.
“We have a common enemy in ISIL,” he said, adding that Turkey and Iraq “are partners in that fight, and we welcome them resolving whatever issues there may be.”
• Dave Boyer contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.
• Carlo Muñoz can be reached at cmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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