Mosul siege extends Islamic State fight

Civilians at risk as militants’ resistance remains firm.

MOSUL, IRAQ — Iraqi forces are steadily closing in on the remaining pockets of territory held by the Islamic State group in Mosul, inching toward a victory that U.S.-led coalition officials say is “only a matter of time.”

But unlike in past urban battles against the Islamic State in Iraq, the Iraqi forces — instead of trying to simply drive out the militants — have put them under siege.

The decision to surround the remaining Islamic State holdouts is prolonging an already grueling fight, according to Iraqi commanders, and is punishing civilians being held by the Islamic State as human shields.

In the fight for Fallujah and Ramadi, cities that were also overrun by the Islamic State in 2014 as the group seized vast swaths of territory in Iraq, there was a tipping point in the battles — the moment when the militants’ hold on a city had shrunk to only a handful of neighborhoods. At that point, senior Islamic State fighters began to flee in greater numbers and the extremists’ command and control dissolved.

But in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city after Baghdad, resistance has remained stiff.

“We are noticing that the closer we get to the Old City, the greater the resistance,” said Brig. Gen. Haider Fadhil of Iraqi special forces.

The militants are holed up in a neighborhood called the Old City — a warren of tightly packed homes and roads that shrink to the width of footpaths that holds special significance for Mosul’s residents and the Islamic State. The district is home to much of Mosul’s ancient heritage, including the iconic leaning minaret of the al-Nuri Mosque where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared an Islamic caliphate stretching across Syria and Iraq in June 2014.

U.S. defense officials say “taking the time” to surround Islamic State strongholds is part of a new approach in the war against the Islamic State under the Trump administration, aimed at preventing militants from regrouping after territorial losses and foreign fighters from fleeing.

“The foreign fighters are the strategic threat, should they return home,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said at a Pentagon briefing on May 19. “So by taking the time to de-conflict, to surround and then attack, we carry out the annihilation campaign so we don’t simply transplant this problem from one location to another.”

While the slow military approach may be helping Iraqi and coalition forces kill and capture more Islamic State fighters, it has put trapped civilians at greater risk, according to residents who recently fled neighborhoods still in the militants’ hands.

A woman from al-Rifai neighborhood, who fled with her daughter after their house collapsed in an explosion, said her two sisters and their families were still inside the Old City.