The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) aims this year to recapture Iraq’s second city Mosul, working with Iraqi government forces, and drive the jihadis out of Raqqa, their stronghold in northeast Syria, Arab and Western officials say.
If it succeeds, the coalition will have struck a crippling blow against ISIS’ self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
The strategy is to regain territory at the heart of ISIS’ cross-border state, take both its “capitals”, and destroy the confidence of its fighters that it can expand as a Sunni caliphate and magnet for jihadis, according to these Arab and Western officials, few of whom were willing to speak on the record on a matter of such strategic sensitivity.
The plan is to hit them in Raqqa in Syria and in Iraq at Mosul, to crush their capitals. I think there is some speed and urgency by the coalition, by the US administration and by us to end this year with the regaining of control over all territory.Iraqi Official
The war against jihadi insurgents in this turbulent region has had its twists and turns but there is a palpable sense in Baghdad that the tide has turned against ISIS.
Iraqi officials say 2016 will witness the elimination of Daesh (ISIS) and the Americans have the same idea – get the job finished, then they can withdraw and (President Barack) Obama will have a legacy. The day Mosul is liberated, Daesh will be defeated.Diplomat in Baghdad
Twin-Pronged Anti-ISIS Strategy
In the year after the jihadis’ summer 2014 surge back into Iraq from the bases they managed to build amid the chaos of Syria’s civil war, ISIS momentum as a rapid, flexible and brutal military force seemed unstoppable.
But in the past nine months, ISIS has lost swathes of territory and strategic towns. In Iraq, it was driven out of Tikrit and Sinjar in the north, the oil refinery town of Baiji in central Iraq, and Ramadi west of Baghdad in Anbar province, the heart of insurgency after the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam.
In northern Syria, US-allied Kurdish militia of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) have taken vital territory and border crossings below the frontier with Turkey, after breaking a long ISIS siege at Kobani and later taking Tel Abyad, north of Raqqa and a key supply line for the jihadi capital.
Daesh are losing their ability to hold onto territory in Iraq and to stage the kind of complex attacks that allow them to hold the towns they seized.US Official
The official added that the recapture of Mosul would start in 2016.
Lieutenant-General Sean MacFarland, Baghdad-based head of the US-led coalition, emphasised to a group of reporters last month the twin-pronged approach to operations against ISIS in Iraq.
In conjunction with something we might have going on over in Syria about the same time (and) see if we can put pressure on the enemy in two places at once and create a dilemma.Lieutenant-General Sean MacFarland
Hisham al-Hashemi, an Iraqi expert on ISIS who advises the Iraqi government on the group, points out that as a result of last year’s setbacks “out of seven strategic roads between Iraq and Syria, they (ISIS) now have one; they cannot move with ease and Turkey has tightened the noose on them.”
ISIS is under pressure across many other fronts apart from its ability to deploy. The collapse in oil prices has dented its revenue from oil smuggled, now through a less permeable Turkish border, from captured Syrian and Iraqi fields.
Covert Operations
Coalition air strikes recently incinerated a stockpile of cash from looting and kidnapping, taxation and extortion, forcing ISIS to cut wages. It is losing top cadres. More than 100 mid-level to senior leaders have been killed since May, according to coalition spokesman Colonel Steve Warren, who says that “works out to an average of one every two days”.
“The place where they were holding huge cash reserves was targeted and destroyed,” the diplomat said.
“Daesh will be defeated in Iraq. It is not a question of if but when,” added another senior Western diplomat in Iraq.
A top Iraqi official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the Mosul operation would require delicate collaboration between the US air force, the Iraqi army, local Sunni tribal forces, and Peshmerga fighters from the self-governing Kurdistan Regional Government east of the city.
In Syria, he said, the likely combination would involve coalition air strikes with special forces and US-led covert missions operating alongside mainly Kurdish fighters of the YPG and other Syrian rebels.
Most likely, coalition special forces will be embedded with the Iraqi forces and the Peshmerga will close on Mosul from the north and east. They have some special forces on the ground in Syria in Hasaka, on the outskirts of Raqqa with the rebels.Top Iraqi Official
An airstrip at Hasaka is being prepared by the United States for this purpose.
The official warned, however, of the need for coordination with Russia, which brought its air force to Syria last September to shore up the Iran-backed rule of President Bashar al-Assad, and is using an airstrip in Qamishli further north, but focusing most of its fire on mainstream and other Islamist rebels rather than ISIS.
(This) competition between the two superpowers is really very, very dangerous. There must be coordination (around) the complex operations that will take place.Top Iraqi Official
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