Iraq, allies begin ‘liberation process’ in Daesh stronghold
Coalition includes 200 Canadian special forces
OTTAWA— Airstrikes and heavy artillery fire on the outskirts of Mosul marked the start of a long-awaited offensive as Iraqi and coalition forces launched an attack Monday to reclaim the urban stronghold held by Daesh insurgents.
But as they moved forward from south and east of Mosul, they faced a determined enemy: Between 3,000 and 5,000 fighters for Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, are holed up in the city. They responded with suicide attacks and roadside bombs.
It’s a battle that could stretch on for months, raising fears of street-by-street fighting in the Iraqi city of more than one million residents, as well as concerns about civilian casualties and an exodus of refugees fleeing for their lives.
Still, local leaders cheered the success of the first day’s effort to recapture the city overrun by Daesh more than two years ago. By day’s end, Kurdish peshmerga forces said they had cleared nine villages over an area of 200 square kilometres and helped secure more of the main road between Mosul and Erbil.
“Today at 6 a.m., we began the liberation process and it is successful so far,” said Masoud Barzani, president of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region.
U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter called the Mosul offensive a “decisive moment in the campaign to deliver ISIL a lasting defeat.”
Preparations for the attack have been underway for months as Canadians, Americans and other coalition nations have been helping train Iraqi and Kurdish security forces in the tactics needed to confront Daesh fighters.
Those coalition troops include slightly more than 200 Canadian special forces soldiers, who have been deployed in northern Iraq, working with peshmerga troops. The Canadians have also set up a field hospital in the region.
Peshmerga were active in Monday’s fighting, according to reports, moving to squeeze Daesh positions east of Mosul.
Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said Monday he was pleased that a military operation “of this size and magnitude” had been launched by Iraqi security forces.
“I’m very proud of the fact that the Iraqi security forces are actually at this stage, and I’m especially proud of the fact that our Canadian Armed Forces have played an important role in this,” Sajjan told reporters on Parliament Hill.
Sajjan suggested that Canadian soldiers advising the Kurds would be away from the front-line action.
“They will always be . . . behind the front lines to conduct their work . . . but they will always have the right tools and abilities to be able to protect themselves if needed,” he said.
Yet the exact role of the Canadian soldiers was unclear. The military declined Monday to make a commander available to talk about Canadian involvement in the offensive.
Lt.-Gen. Stephen Townsend, an American who commands the coalition operation, said it is providing “air support, artillery, intelligence, advisers and forward air controllers.” Part of that job was to help target Daesh fighters and minimize the impact on civilians, he said in a statement.
“But to be clear, the thousands of ground combat forces who will liberate Mosul are all Iraqis,” Townsend said.
Bessma Momani, a political science professor at the University of Waterloo, predicted that Iraqi forces and their coalition allies would be fighting a counter-insurgency style of urban warfare, not a conventional war, once the offensive reached Mosul.
“I don’t think it’s going to be fast. It’s a street-by-street battle,” said Momani, an expert in the Middle East.
She said Daesh will be desperate to keep its hold on the city, not because it’s a spiritual centre, but for the revenue it provides through taxes and fines levied on its residents.
“ISIS has really wanted to keep Mosul because it provides a lot of money. In fact, it’s the No.1source of revenue at the moment,” she said in an interview.
Brig.-Gen. David Anderson, a Canadian who commands a coalition team that is helping Iraqis build up their forces, has said the fall of Mosul is “inevitable.”
Yet he grimly predicted that the recapture of the city will not signal the defeat of Daesh, but instead herald a new, more dangerous phase of the conflict as extremists resort to terror tactics
“So it’s definitely not over; if anything, it’s going to be more difficult,” Anderson told a briefing earlier this month.
The United Nations expressed concern that civilians could be caught in the crossfire or used as human shields by Daesh, and stepped up contingency plans to house those who flee the fighting. Emergency camps established outside the city can accommodate 60,000 people and construction was underway to house a further 250,000. But there are worries those arrangements could be easily overwhelmed.
“Humanitarian partners will be doing everything possible to support the people who may be displaced and affected by this military operation,” said Stephen O’Brien, the UN’s undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator, in a statement. He appealed to all parties to protect civilian lives. That was echoed by the Norwegian Refugee Council, which said the more than one million residents in Mosul face “grave danger.”
“We fear the humanitarian consequences of this operation will be massive,” Wolfgang Gressmann, the council’s director in Iraq, said in a statement.
“It’s a street-by-street battle.” BESSMA MOMANI POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR