Daesh resorts to ‘diversionary’ attacks in Mosul

baghdad — Dozens of Daesh fighters struck at dawn, storming government and security compounds in and around the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk last week, in a coordinated assault more than 160 kilometres from the front lines of the Mosul offensive.

Over the last two years, the extremists have adopted innovative tactics and launched diversionary attacks along the amoeba-like frontiers of their self-styled caliphate, and many now fear they have more surprises in store as Iraqi forces close in on Mosul, the militants’ last urban bastion in the country.

The Kirkuk assault was carried out by more than 50 militants who may have been part of so-called sleeper cells. They struck targets in and around the city, pinning down Kurdish security forces for two days and killing at least 80 people. A similar attack was launched on the western town of Rutba, hundreds of miles from Mosul, over the weekend.

Here is a look at some of the other tactics the group may employ.

Attacks on civilians

As it has suffered a string of battlefield setbacks over the past year, Daesh has increasingly returned to its roots as a brutal insurgent group, carrying out suicide bombings against civilians, mainly in and around Baghdad. The group has sought to reassure its supporters that its long twilight struggle will continue, regardless of whether it loses territory. Vastly outnumbered in Mosul, it may respond with attacks on so-called “soft targets” in Iraq or further afield, perhaps seeking to replicate the devastation of the 2015 Paris attacks.

Divide and conquer

The choice of Kirkuk likely reflected a strategic calculation on the part of Daesh to sow tensions within the unlikely alliance arrayed against it. The city has long been at the center of a territorial dispute between the central government and the autonomous Kurdish region, where the Mosul operation has seen federal forces deployed for the first time in 25 years.

The Baghdad government and the Kurds are united against Daesh, but the Kurds have little interest in Mosul, a potentially ungovernable city.

The Kurds have long prized Kirkuk, however, and could divert their forces, known as the peshmerga, from Mosul to other fronts in order to defend territory they value more.

Chemicals and drones

Closer to the front lines, Daesh may deploy new and unconventional weapons. Daesh used a homemade drone carrying C-4 explosives to attack French and Kurdish forces in northern Iraq earlier this month, killing two Kurds.

Suicide artillery

Suicide car bombs have featured in Middle East conflicts for decades, but Daesh might be the first insurgent group to deploy them against conventional forces on the battlefield as a kind of “smart” artillery. The group has already sent more than a dozen armored vehicles loaded with explosives careening toward front-line troops since the Mosul operation began.

Iraqi forces, with the aid of US-led coalition aircraft, have gotten better at blowing them up before they reach their targets, but the weapons still pose a huge risk. —