Reclaiming Mosul: For Iraq Leaders, A Gap In Political Lessons Learned
Reclaiming Mosul: For Iraq Leaders, A Gap In Political Lessons Learned by Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor
Jihadist attackers of the Islamic State burned two humvees of Lt. Col. Helan Mahmoud Ali’s unit Friday morning, but did little to dent the Iraqi Army’s methodical advance on Mosul.
Backed up by US airpower, long-range artillery, Kurdish peshmerga forces and, further back, even Shiite militias, the Iraqi Army will inevitably expel the self-declared Islamic State from its last stronghold in Iraq, says Ali, echoing top Iraqi and American commanders.
Thousands of residents are reported to have been rounded up for use as human shields by IS – and some 200 executed for not following IS orders, according to the Associated Press. Jihadi tactics have so far included dozens of suicide car bombs, and booby-trapped towns criss-crossed with underground attack and escape tunnels.
The Iraqi Army has learned the military lessons of successive battles against IS, and is applying them to the Mosul fight – planning to deploy only federal troops inside the Sunni-majority city, for example, while the Kurdish peshmerga tackle outlying villages, and Shiite militias accused of past anti-Sunni abuses are kept well away.
But analysts warn that – in sharp contrast – few political lessons appear to have been absorbed by Iraq’s Shiite ruling elite about the need to resolve issues for Iraq’s disenfranchised Sunni minority, such as inclusive governance, that helped feed Sunni anger and the spread of IS in Iraq.
Unless these issues are resolved, analysts say, this disconnect could mean that militarily expelling IS from Mosul may not prevent a new variation of IS from emerging, leeching off continued Sunni bitterness…
