Here's Ash Carter on the start of Iraq's campaign to take back Mosul. pic.twitter.com/zxarBkTXvb
— Patricia Zengerle (@ReutersZengerle) October 17, 2016
Here’s the link to the strike press releases by Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve.
There will be more to come on this in the coming days. In the meantime here’s a link to the CJTF Spokesman doing a briefing – he’s one of my former students and an excellent Public Affairs Officer. Three other former students of mine are also with him at CJTF OIR.
Updated at 11:05 PM EDT
I missed it, but Secretary of Defense Carter issued another, very important press release today as well:
Statement by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter on the Liberation of Dabiq
Release No: 16-110 Oct. 16, 2016
Release No: NR-369-16
Oct. 16, 2016I welcome today’s news that Syrian opposition forces liberated the Syrian town of Dabiq from ISIL control, aided by strong support from our ally Turkey and our international coalition. This is more than just the latest military result against this barbaric group. Dabiq held symbolic importance to ISIL. The group carried out unspeakable atrocities in Dabiq, named its English-language magazine after the town and claimed it would be the site of a final victory for the so-called caliphate. Instead its liberation gives the campaign to deliver ISIL a lasting defeat new momentum in Syria. Again I want to congratulate the Syrians who fought to free Dabiq and thank our ally Turkey for the close coordination during this operation.
redshirt
I’m not even sure what to root for.
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: You don’t root for anything. You keep good thoughts for a quick, effective campaign that liberates Mosul with the fewest casualties and deaths as possible for the Iraqi regular and irregular forces and, especially, for the Iraqi citizens that live in Mosul and the surrounding areas.
Yutsano
I wish, I wish, I wish they would call them Daesh.
May those who are about to defend their homeland stand firm and be judged mercifully should they meet Allah.
debbie
According to this, the Peshmerga aren’t entering Mosul, they’re instead blocking possible escape. Is there a reason they aren’t more involved?
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve lost track of the players and the score at this point. I feel like I keep hearing of ISIS rollbacks but then stories like this keep happening, so I’m not sure what to believe.
philadelphialawyer
“Liberate.”
Villago Delenda Est
Cue up world famous military mastermind and strategerist Donald “Bone spurs!” Trump telling everyone who will listen to him how a strategic surprise would have been better, as if Daesh has no clue that Mosul is the next logical step on their eastern flank.
hellslittlestangel
It’s gotten to the point that when I hear about any major news, I think, oh great, here’s something else for fucking Donald Trump to blather about.
Villago Delenda Est
@debbie: Blocking a possible escape is, from a strategic perspective, every bit as important as the direct assault. No where to run, no where to hide.
Ken
I wonder if Trump was told of this operation in his intelligence briefings. Actually are they even wasting time with those any more, given (1) he stands almost zero chance of winning and (2) he obviously doesn’t pay attention?
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: Encircling?
Brachiator
It’s tragic. I just hope that this thing can be resolved someday, with a positive outcome from everyone.
And I suppose that questions about this will be part of the next presidential debate.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Yes. The Coalition brokered an operational agreement between the Pesh and the Government of Iraq to have them do this because of Iraqi Arab concerns that if the Pesh moved into the city wherever their lines wound up at the end of operation would be claimed by the Kurds as part of the Kurdish Autonomous Area/Iraqi Kurdistan. Mosul is a disputed city – both the Iraqi Arabs and the Iraqi Kurds have claims to it belonging under each side’s control.
MobiusKlein
@redshirt: root for the residents of Mosul.
Mary G
Is the dam OK?
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
I hate sounding like a marshmallow, but I wish they’d all set aside differences and focus on the bigger picture.
Anyway, the Family Guy was on the Trump bus tonight. Apparently Trump has much hate for Seth McFarland.
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: There’s two different things going on. There’s the Coalition backed Iraqi efforts in Iraq. Of which, the liberation of Mosul is the latest push, and likely the final one, to push ISIL out of a large population center as Mosul is the last one of those they hold in Iraq. In Syria the Coalition is backing Syrian irregular forces, including Syrian Kurdish Peshmerga, in their fight against ISIL. For updates, just go to the link I provided at CJTF OIR’s website. Those are the daily strike reports: what Coalition Air Forces are hitting. There are other links to press releases, leadership statements on what is happening, etc.
Hurling Dervish
When they go in, will they say the words, “radical Islamic terrorism”? Because otherwise, they’re just wasting their time, from what I hear.
Pinacacci
It’s hard to believe anybody’s left in Mosul; it’s been a center of struggle for so long.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie:
What is “this stuff?” What is “the bigger picture?”
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: So we are already at war in Syria?
Why doesn’t the news talk about this? Instead of repeating Trump lines about ISIS?
Mike in NC
Trump sez he knows more about ISIS than all of the generals combined. He could retake Mosul in a day, two at most. He has all the best people!
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: There’s a lot of between ethnic group scar tissue. Its been built up over a long time and its not going away any time soon.
Omnes Omnibus
@Pinacacci: People lived in Berlin and Tokyo in the mid ’40s. People lived in Warsaw during the same time frame. And Stalingrad.
cinesimon
@philadelphialawyer: ISIS run the city now. So yes, liberate.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Adam, Adam, Adam: if we’re publishing daily strike reports that means the enemy KNOWS what we’re striking, daily, how dumb, how stupid…I have a secret plan to push ISIS (note, not ‘ISIL’) out of Mo-soool, and it’s better than the generals, most of who will be new generals on Nov 9th.
BELIEVE ME.
Achrachno
@redshirt: What’s the uncertainty? Isis/Daesh has been getting rolled back for over year now, but they’re not totally rolled up yet. Step by step. They lost Debiq yesterday, now the big push into Mosul has apparently begun. If the Iraqi fighters can dislodge Daesh from there, it’ll be near the end for the clearest bad guys on the field. Keep your fingers crossed for minimum bloodshed and damage (neither of which will probably be slight) and hope that the Iraq government does the right thing after they win. Maybe a way will be found to put the country back together.
Pinacacci
@Omnes Omnibus: yeah I know, it’s just my heart breaking
ETA I hope this succeeds
Fair Economist
@debbie:
There have been some conflict between the Arabs and the Kurds as both claim some areas of mixed ethnicity, including Mosul. The Kurds are the least bad of all the major actors but they’re not saints and there have been credible accusations of low-grade ethnic cleansing. They’ve developed a strategy of having allies actually do the occupation of urban areas that aren’t heavily Kurdish even when they’re doing the heavy work, as in Manbij.
dogwood
@redshirt:
It’s being covered. It’s in the news.
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: We have been conducting air strikes on ISIL targets in Syria for a very long time (about two years). Here’s the link to CENTCOM’s Press Releases, which will allow you to stay up to date if you like.
http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/
Glidwrith
@hellslittlestangel: So we give him something else to blather about. Adam has mentioned on occasion that the Orange Sniffer has a badly deviated septum, possibly due to being beaten up at some point in his life. Has anyone considered with the number of women he has assaulted that one of them beat the living shit out of him for his transgression? It is a dead certainty he would never allow it to be public if this is the case.
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Adam L Silverman
I just put an update up top: SecDef Carter has also announced that the Coalition backed Syrian irregular forces have liberated Dabiq, Syria. This is, to quote VP Biden, a Big Fucking Deal!
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@debbie:
Marshmallow, huh? Isn’t this where Shomi is supposed to sign in to call you a pants wetter?
I agree, it would be fabulous if all humans could use reason and honesty to settle conflict, but that’s not really the world we inhabit.
Another Scott
Just spitballing here, but didn’t Mosul fall quickly because the Iraqi forces ran? Wouldn’t it make sense for Daesh to slink away now than try to defend their gain? Or counter-attack once Mosul is liberated? Or counter-attack elsewhere?
Daesh isn’t (as I understand it) an army-like force. They’re a band of criminals and enforcers who rule by intimidation, not by crushing an opposing army by going mano-a-mano.
Taking back Mosul is important and long over-due, but it’s hard for me to think that this means that Daesh (or its follow-ons) are going away. There are too many guns out there, too many easy to make explosives, too much money to be made, and too many young men who are looking for a “higher calling” who also have no prospect for a decent job and a family to call their own in a modern society.
tl;dr: What will it take to “defeat Daesh” if, as it seems clear to me, killing al Baghdadi and liberating Mosul and Raqqa and the other areas they presently control doesn’t do it?
Cheers,
Scott.
Nodakfarmboy
@debbie: think of it as a hammer and anvil. The Iraqis are the hammer, the Peshmerga the anvil.
Mosul has always been disputed territory. Having the Kurds stop outside it is actually a good sign of cooperation between two groups that have come to blows in the past.
redshirt
@efgoldman: You were quickly corrected.
JJ
@Yutsano: I didn’t understand the importance of calling them Daesh before your comment. I’ve just read why. Thank you.
catclub
@Ken: I figure they tell him the status of the invasion of the Duchy of Grand fenwick.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: Like, centuries. The situation in Iraq/Syria/Eastern Turkey is every bit a morass of ethnic/religious goo as the situation in the former Yugoslavia remains. The difference is just about everyone but the Serbs got the political boundaries they wanted.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: You can’t kill an idea. What you can do is degrade ISIL’s organizational and institutional structure – its ability to take and hold territory, command and control fighters both within areas it holds and in other parts of the world, and deny it territorial gains. Once that is done, then the actual hard work has to be done. Iraq and Syria will need significant Military Support to Governance in order to establish the conditions to win the peace, which will include marginalizing ISIL’s theology/doctrine and pushing it to the extremes of both Syrian and Iraqi societies where it is only able to be a limited nuisance. This will take a lot of hard work, it will not be quick nor will it be easy.
japa21
@efgoldman: Correct, just in displaying his/her superior intellect, not realizing that there are, in fact, some military experts here.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: Yep.
OT: How you doing?
Dmbeaster
@debbie: They are not as heavily armed for urban assault
Villago Delenda Est
@shomi: I got my DD 214 right here, guy. Mind you, most of this time was spent assigned to brigade headquarters or higher, or in direct support of a brigade headquarters or higher.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: Holding up pretty good, actually. My sister is bearing up under a bigger burden, as I long ago ceded all the cleaning up after the fact matters to her.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Debbie, not sure if you saw this when I posted it two weeks ago:
https://balloon-juice.com/2016/10/03/a-quick-note-on-toms-post-the-strategering-of-mosul/
sigaba
@philadelphialawyer: Liberate tutamet ex infernis.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: We’re keeping good thoughts for you all.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: Given that the Syria situation, and therefore a good chunk of the Daesh situation, can be tied directly to “Acts of God” (that is, drought and famine, gosh, the sort of shit the Pentagon is worried about but Donald insists is all a Chinese ruse), yes, it’s a huge problem. Syria’s civil war is a direct result of the Assad regime being unable to address those things totally beyond their control.
Major Major Major Major
@redshirt: I made an actual shomibot. It’s about what you would expect.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: Yep, no argument here.
Schlemazel
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, exactly! WTF would you know about military operations?
Seriously, I think this is just tat “R” guy. He knows that his side is getting its ass kicked in a couple of weeks but still wants to be ‘clever’ and disrupt our happy home away from home
Villago Delenda Est
@Glidwrith: I’m more prone to go along with the diagnosis of Carrie Fisher, PhD in Bolivian Marching Powder, who has some expertise in these matters.
redshirt
@Major Major Major Major: Figures you would on Ball Juice, pantaloons wetter.
Major Major Major Major
Did y’all see this article about a guy making fake Wikileaks docs to fuck with Trumpists?
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: Dunno. Daesh seems to have been downplaying the importance of Dabiq.
BBC:
Sure, Daesh is more than happy to scream about how powerful and invincible it is, but it’s not stupid enough not to cut its losses to fight another day.
I wonder how much the fall in oil prices – and the continuing rather low prices even with the OPEC attempt to drive them up recently – has affected Daesh’s prospects. Airstrikes on oil facilities that Daesh controls can’t help them, either. Mercenaries fight better when they get paid…
Cheers,
Scott.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: I mean blocking the way back to the rest of Daesh. The hammer/anvil analogy is best. You can’t really “encircle” something like Daesh, but you know as well as I if you block their primary line of communication back to spook central, it’s bad for the boys in Mosul.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Scott: Sort of like how Donald is playing down the importance of most of the states.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: Methinks the DAESH spokesman doth protest too much!
Major Major Major Major
@redshirt: more or less.
Dmbeaster
@Another Scott: Daesh is army like with significant weaponry. They could put up a huge urban fight if they wanted to. Whether they do or not will be revealing.
Villago Delenda Est
@Dmbeaster: What sets Daesh apart is, if you scour the archives of the site for all the Adam posts, it’s got a cadre of actual military professionals who used to work for…wait for it!…Saddam Hussein, and were, brilliantly, I must say, cast into the wind by the super-geniuses of the deserting coward malassministration. What fueled their rapid rise was that they had actual military leadership and expertise at hand, which made them more of a threat than say the Bundy Bunch.
Major Major Major Major
@Villago Delenda Est: the neocons were so weird. If we just get rid of the bad guys liberal democracy will spring up fully formed from the head of Zeus. Trotskyites with cruise missiles.
Lizzy L
@Major Major Major Major: Wow, that is some ferocious rat f**king.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: And between 1,000 to 4,000 hardened Chechen guerrilla fighters/jihadis. In fact the ISIL military commander in Mosul is Omar al Shishani (Omar the Chechen):
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/analysis/2014/08/31/Meet-ISIS-new-breed-of-Chechen-Militants-.html
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/chechnyas-isis-problem
Its these guys and the Naqshbandi Order guys from the old Iraqi Army that I worry about.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: I get it.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@JJ:
I just read an intriguing explanation, too. From now on, I will refer to them as Daesh. The term mocks and de-legitimizes them.
Another Scott
@Villago Delenda Est: All of that is true, but they don’t have the capacity of a modern nation-state to manufacture advanced weapons, keep an air force flying, and all the rest. They can do lots of damage through guerilla-type attacks, and they can terrorize and brutalize a population, but they’re not a match for a modern military (even though many of them used to work in a near-first-world military). Their strength is in their reputation for brutality, not in their logistics and the like.
I, personally, don’t expect them to put up much of a concerted fight to keep Mosul. Daesh doesn’t seem to like to play defense. It’s different than, say Assad’s flattening of Aleppo. (The Mustache of Understanding wrote a fairly good book (at least it seemed to me at the time) with a section about Assad’s father destroying Hama – Assad the younger seems to be trying to do the same in Aleppo, with Putin’s help.)
Like the rest of you, I hope Daesh is driven out of the city and greatly weakened in the process, while sparing the civilians. I fear that Daesh will lash out elsewhere to try to prove that they’re still relevant after Mosul and Raqqa fall.
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
Srv
Poor shomi and its ball juice. At least I don’t get ignored.
Adam L Silverman
@West of the Rockies (been a while): The reason the US government, including the military, calls them ISIL is its the English acronym for the translation of the full name they use for themselves: “al-Dawla al-Islamiya fil Iraq wa al-Sham” This translates as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Al Sham literally refers to the land of the sun, which is the Arabic phrase to refer to what we call the Levant: parts of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, Israel, and Jordan. This is why ISIS doesn’t make sense as that would be al-Dawla al-Islamiya fil Iraq wa al-Suria. Suria is Arabic for Syria.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m a little surprised Le Not-So-Grand L’orange has not begun insulting individual states… “California is for losers. Oregon is a total disaster. Connecticut is a catastrophe….”
Dmbeaster
@Another Scott: What has been immediately crippling is the destruction of transport for moving the oil. I doubt they are getting much oil revenue
JJ
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Right !
Adam L Silverman
@srv: Well that looks exciting!
mike in dc
How close are the FSA and Syrian Kurds to staging the final assault on Ar Raqqah? My impression is that it’s a matter of a few months away. By the time a new president is inaugurated the physical “caliphate” may be almost gone.
Major Major Major Major
That’s uncanny. Which srv is real???
Anoniminous
It’s all about logistics. Daesh has a very limited ability to manufacture munitions and with the losses they’ve taken in the past 2 years they have to be running out of cannon fodder. Also their heavy and battalion support weapons have been degraded since the last time the Iraqi Army ran away and left tens of billions of dollars worth of stuff lying around.
And that’s the key. There’s no evidence the Iraqi Army is a creditable fighting force.
IF the Iraqi Army actually – ya know – fights Daesh will have to abandon Mosul or face Yet Another decimation of their armed forces, forces that, supposedly, they are not replenishing at the necessary rate.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Adam L Silverman:
What’s in a name? That which we call a despot by any other name would smell as foul.
JR in WV
@debbie:
Preventing escape from the city is important for the next battle. The only fighters who would be allowed to use the escape tunnels would be senior staff, leaders and commanders. Keeping them from becoming part of the next battle is strategically important.
Eric U.
@Major Major Major Major: the person that does the PPP twitter account has some fun with the people that believe that HRC sent them money.
amygdala
@Adam L Silverman: I guess ISIL/ISIS/Daesh will have to rename their propaganda rag, now that they’ve lost Dabiq. Have you seen this New Yorker piece on the anticipated humanitarian crisis in Mosul?
I don’t know how one goes about prepositioning supplies in that hostile an environment, when resources got past their breaking point years ago. Argh.
Villago Delenda Est
@Anoniminous: It’s ALWAYS about logistics, and for a short period, Daesh was in a good situation logisically because, as you indicated, the Iraqi Army gave shit away.
The Iraqi Army isn’t that much better a fighting force than they were when they lost Mosul, but Daesh isn’t as lavishly equipped and doesn’t have the element of surprise, either. So different outcome.
trollhattan
@West of the Rockies (been a while): @efgoldman:
Well you two, you’ve gone and done it now!
Adam L Silverman
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Oy vey.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Scott: Yup, they can’t sustain a force without help, and the help they did get wasn’t the result of some state power deliberately supporting them. No air power REALLY sucks especially in that environment.
Adam L Silverman
@amygdala: I’ve seen it. This is what we have a Coalition for.
Peale
I thought that Turkey troops weren’t invited as they were likely to be fighting the Kurds instead of freeing the city. Or maybe that was in Syria.
If we do liberate Mosul and ISIS is done in Iraq, what next? Do we ask the Iraqi Kurds to go across the border into Syria?
Adam L Silverman
I’m to bed. You all have fun!
Adam L Silverman
@Peale: No, we are working with Syrian irregular forces in Syria. This includes Syrian Arabs and Syrian Kurds. The various Kurdish clans, Iraqi and Syrian, will support each other, but only to a point. They don’t necessarily agree on who who should be in charge, where a prospective Kurdistan should have its borders. If there should even be one, united, contiguous Kurdistan vs Iraqi Kurdistan and Syrian Kurdistan – largely because none of the leadership wants to cede any power.
Anoniminous
@Villago Delenda Est:
Did you watch the YouTube? Talk about a bunch of fuckups.
The Lodger
We’re using the term ISIS (or ISIL, or Daesh) to refer to three wildly different things:
– The military organization which is getting kicked out of Iraq and Syria;
– The terrorist group which carried out organized operations in Paris, Brussels and Nice;
– The inspiration for lone-shooter mass killings in San Bernardino and Orlando.
Pretending they are all the same makes about as much sense as conflating the St. Louis baseball team, the Arizona NFL team, and the Roman Catholic Curia because they’re all known as the Cardinals.
Davebo
@Adam L Silverman:
I tend to think, with no real knowledge of the region other than what I can glean from thousands of miles away, that one, united, contiguous Kurdistan would be the best solution. Am I nuts?
patrick II
@Davebo:
There is a large Kurdish minority in southern Turkey that would want to join “Kurdistan.” Another civil war is not really what the area needs, and Turkey is already having enough problems.
Fair Economist
@mike in dc:
The FSA, aka the Turkish proxy rebels, are a long way off and advancing slowly. At the rate they’re going they’re at least a year off, if they’re even interested in going that far. The Kurds are close but seem to have lost interest since it would be a painful assault and they’ll get nothing for it, since it’s Arab territory. They also probably want to be ready to defend themselves against Turkey and – the FSA.
Fair Economist
@Davebo:
I don’t know about nuts, but it’s not in the cards. Iraq, Assad, Turkey, and Iran are all opposed, Turkey VERY violently. And what kind of government would the Kurds use? The Iraqi Kurds have a routine corrupt democracy. The Syrian Kurds are Communist – the real thing, sort of Maoist. Autonomy within countries is the best they’ll get for the foreseeable future.
NotMax
My understanding is that Daesh began altering their propaganda weeks if not months ago in anticipation of being ousted from Dabiq, using that occurrence as a call for recruits and severely toning down or veering away from any mention of prophecy.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
I picked a bad time to fall asleep on the couch. Thanks, I did see this. I understand and support the need to drive ISIS/ISIL/Daesh off the face of the Earth. I just think the various factions (Shia, Sunni, Kurd, etc.) have let their squabbles (which I don’t think are unbridgeable) get the better of them. Until they can set these things aside and work together, there will be no real change.
Joel
@Major Major Major Major: Neither