General: Battle for Mosul hard; Raqqa to be harder
WASHINGTON — Iraq’s battle to reclaim Mosul from the Islamic State is progressing despite “stiff ” resistance from resilient and creative fighters, but a coming offensive to oust them from their main Syria stronghold at Raqqa poses tougher political challenges and could take longer, the U.S. commander of anti-Islamic State coalition forces said Wednesday.
Army Lt . Gen. Stephen Townsend also said American intelligence has detected signs of Islamic State plotting against the West from Raqqa, adding urgency to coalition plans to encircle and eventually assault the city.
“We know they’re up to something, and it’s an external plot,” the general told reporters at the Pentagon, speaking from his headquarters in Baghdad.
“We don’t know exactly where” they intend to strike, he added. “We don’t know exactly when. We know this plot-and-planning is emanating from Raqqa. We think we’ve got to get to Raqqa pretty soon.”
As the Islamic State group’s two main hubs, Mosul and Raqqa have long loomed as potentially decisive battles. The group has lost considerable territory elsewhere in both Iraq and Syria over the past year, and the U.S. and its coalition partners see clearing its last major strongholds as key to extinguishing extremist claims to a caliphate.
Townsend and other coalition leaders are struggling with the timing for the Raqqa fight, not only because of the demands of the large Iraqiled Mosul operation but also because the political and military landscape in Syria is more complicated. Townsend said more Syrian opposition fighters need to be rec ruited, trained and equipped for the Raqqa battle, but he and other officials have said in recent days that the Mosul and Raqqa operations will overlap.
“I think it will be within weeks,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in Brussels.
Unlike in Iraq, where the coalition has a coherent gov- ernment to work with, the U.S. and coalition partners in Syria rely on a hodgepodge of local Arab and Kurdish opposition groups, some of whom are fierce rivals. Tensions are exacerbated by the presence of Russian and Syrian forces on one side and Turkish forces on another.
“It’s probably fair to say with the complexity and the fact that we haven’t really got it underway yet that it’ll probably take longer than Mosul,” Townsend said, referring to the Raqqa offensive.
Townsend acknowledged that a ground offensive in Raqqa is politically fraught, given the diverse and competing ethnic groups in Syria and demands by Turkey that the Syrian Kurdish fighting force known as the YPG, which the Turks regard as an enemy, not assist in the Raqqa assault.
Police arrested the pilot of a SkyWest Airlines plane on suspicion of being under the influence of alcohol Wednesday before the passenger jet could leave a South Dakota airport. Rapid City police were notified shortly after 8 a.m. Wednesday that the pilot smelled of alcohol. Police said they determined the 38-year-old pilot from Salt Lake City was in violation of a South Dakota law prohibiting the operation of an aircraft with a blood-alcohol content above 0.04 percent. The pilot was arrested in the Rapid City Regional Airport, police spokesman Brendyn Medina said. No passengers were yet on board the 50-seat plane, SkyWest spokesman Layne Watson said. SkyWest was operating the flight as a Delta Connection from Rapid City to Salt Lake City, Watson said. The flight, with a passenger list of 45, was delayed two hours.