Mosul

[AZGAL]

Iraqi government forces have......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Iraqis push toward IS-held Mosul in long-awaited operation
.to retake Mosul, the de-facto capital of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in Iraq.

Up to 1.5 million civilians remain in the city, according to the United Nations, amid fears that the vastly outnumbered ISIL fighters could use them as human shields as they seek to repel the assault on its last major stronghold in the country.

Why is Mosul important?
Mosul is Iraq's second largest city and the last urban centre still under ISIL control in Iraq after a series of government offensives to reverse the group's seizure of territory in 2014.
Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr reports from the Khazir frontline
This is a very complicated operation, simply because of the mix of forces that are taking part. There is the central government in Baghdad, the Iraqi forces, Iraqi counterterrorism units and there is also the Kurdish Peshmerga who are allied in this fight but who do have a lot of differences.
There is also the question of Iranian-backed Shia militias - a very controversial issue because the people of Mosul are mainly Sunni. They fear that if the Shia militias actually take part and enter the city there will be reprisals. But what we understand from the government is that they are going to be staying at the perimeter of Mosul and they will not be advancing towards the city centre.
"The hour has come and the moment of great victory is near," Haider al-Abadi, Iraq's prime minister, said early on Monday in a speech broadcast on state TV, surrounded by the armed forces' top commanders.
The bid to retake Mosul comes after the military, backed by armed tribes, militias and US-led coalition air strikes, regained much of the territory the fighters seized in 2014 and 2015.
"We are proud to stand with you in this historic operation," Brett McGurk, US envoy to the coalition against ISIL, said on Twitter at the start of the Mosul offensive.Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from Khazir, just east of Mosul, said preparations for the offensive had long been under way, with forces amassing around the ISIL-held city's outskirts.
"Now that the formal announcement has been made, we are expecting the US-led coalition to carry out air strikes in support of what is expected to be a ground advance from a number of front lines around the city," she said.
But the launch of the operation marks only the start of a battle that is likely to be the most difficult in the war against ISIL.

 

[AZGAL]

TEHRAN (FNA)- Russian President Vladimir Putin said the actions of the US and France in Iraq’s Mosul should be very careful to minimize the death toll among the civilian population.
“We hope that our American partners and, in this case, French partners will act selectively and will do everything to minimize and better to have no victims among the civilians,” Putin said, TASS reported.

“Of course, we are not planning to fan hysteria about this as our partners in the West do because we understand that there is the need to fight against terrorism and there is no other way than an active fight,” he added.

The president agreed that there are parallels between Mosul and the actions of Russia in Aleppo where Russia’s troops try to prevent a humanitarian crisis and are criticized by the West for that. “The parallel is obvious,” he said.

“Of course, now we can point to our partners to Mosul and say that many civilians live there, hundreds of thousands of people, and using airpower and artillery is very dangerous in regard to possible victims,” Putin added.

 

[waltky]

Mosul - What Happens Afterward'?...

Petraeus on Battle for Mosul: 'The Question Is, What Happens Afterward'
October 17, 2016 | The fight to expel ISIS from the city of Mosul is now underway, and it's going to be the most difficult fight yet for the Iraqi ground troops and the U.S. coalition that is advising and assisting them. "The outcome is not in question. The question is, what happens afterward," said retired General David Petraeus, who commanded U.S. troops in Iraq the first time around, when al Qaeda was defeated.

The fight for Mosul will be "orders of magnitude larger than any fight that the Iraqis, with our assistance and the coalition support, have taken on," Petraeus told ABC's "This Week." "There will be dug-in troops, there will be tunnels, there will be suicide bombers, improvised explosive devices. "But at the end of the day, the Iraqi forces, with our assistance, are going to prevail. There's no question. The Islamic State fighters in Mosul are dead men walking, and I think they increasingly know it. They're even trying to desert and they're being executed. "So there's no question about the outcome of the fight. The challenge here is actually after the fight. It's governance."

Petraeus said the new government must represent and respond to "the most complex human terrain in all of Iraq." "There are a lot of grievances,' he said. "There are Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Turkmen. There are Kurds from three different political parties. You've got Yazidis, Christians, Shabak. A lot of grievances, scores that may be settled. "And in that kind of complexity, governance is going to have to emerge or else you'll start preparing fields for the planting of the seeds of Islamic State 3.0." Petraeus said the "real fight is in Baghdad," where the Iraqi parliament recently forced the resignation of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi 's chosen defense minister. The vote in late August came after weeks of political wrangling over corruption allegations.

In July, al-Abadi accepted the resignation of his interior minister amid growing public anger over security lapses in and around Baghdad that allowed ISIS to carry out large-scale insurgent attacks, killing hundreds of civilians. Mosul, with a population of a million or more, fell to ISIS in June 2014. After seizing Mosul, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi visited the city to declare an Islamic caliphate that at one point covered nearly a third of Iraq and Syria. Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, said on Monday the operation to regain control of Iraq’s second-largest city "will likely continue for weeks, possibly longer."

He said the coalition will offer air support, artillery, intelligence, adviser and forward air controllers, "but to be clear, the thousands of ground combat forces who will liberate Mosul are all Iraqis." Townsend said the U.S.-led coalition will continue to use precision strikes "to accurately attack the enemy and to minimize any impact on innocent civilians. We can’t predict how long it will take for the Iraqi Security Forces to defeat Da'esh in Mosul; but we know they will succeed—just as they did in Bayji, in Ramadi, in Fallujah and, more recently in Qayyarah and Sharqat. "This may prove to be a long and tough battle, but the Iraqis have prepared for it and we will stand by them. The Iraqi Security Forces and the Coalition are not only fighting for the future of Iraq, we are fighting to ensure the security of all of our nations."

Petraeus on Battle for Mosul: 'The Question Is, What Happens Afterward'

See also:

Battle for Mosul must navigate ethnic rivalries
Sat, 15 Oct 2016 - The battle of Mosul will have to navigate ethnic rivalries, as well as sectarian and religious sensitivities, writes Hugh Sykes.

Plans for the recapture of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, from the so-called Islamic State are fiendishly complicated. Ethnic rivalries, as well as sectarian and religious sensitivities, will have to be respected if the offensive is not to go horribly wrong. The Iraqi army which scattered and fled as IS fighters drove and rode into Mosul in 2014 was mocked as I.R.A.Q. or I Ran Away Quickly. But the soldiers may have been running not only from IS.

The mostly Sunni Arabs of Mosul resented the domination of the central Baghdad government by Shia Muslims. Junior ranks in the Iraqi army were afraid that they would be attacked by Sunni Arabs in Mosul as well as IS, taking revenge for the transformation of Iraq into what they perceived to be a Shia state. For the same reason, IS in Mosul has enjoyed strong political and logistical support from former members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist armed forces, men who were summarily dismissed and who lost their livelihoods in the de-Baathification process after 2003.

Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters near Mosul in May this year​

The sectarian policies of the first elected prime minister Nouri Maliki may have led some Mosulites to welcome "Islamic State". The Shia government in Baghdad had allowed the pendulum of political adjustment in Iraq to swing so far that the large Sunni minority felt downtrodden, marginalised, and collectively blamed for Saddam Hussein's cruelty towards the Shia majority. But the new prime minister Haider al-Abadi - also Shia of course - has worked hard to bring Sunnis back into the fold. For example, he has funded and armed Sunni Arab tribal forces which are expected to play a prominent role in the imminent battle for Mosul.

The remaining residents, especially in the city centre, are more likely to welcome them than the mostly Shia Iraqi army, the irregular Shia "Popular Mobilisation Forces", or the Kurdish Peshmerga. Meanwhile the remaining IS fighters have driven out, or massacred, the Christians, Yazidis and Kurds who used to live there. Thousands of Sunni Arabs too have also left Mosul. If they ever believed that IS was a potentially sympathetic group of Sunni co-religionists, they were quickly disabused as the conquerors of Mosul revealed themselves to be irrational psychopaths who, for example, force children to watch public executions.

Exodus expected

 

[Baron]

Obama retaking Mosul just to save ISIS from Putin who will bomb this city after Aleppo.

 

[blackhawk]

Mosul - What Happens Afterward'?...

Petraeus on Battle for Mosul: 'The Question Is, What Happens Afterward'
October 17, 2016 | The fight to expel ISIS from the city of Mosul is now underway, and it's going to be the most difficult fight yet for the Iraqi ground troops and the U.S. coalition that is advising and assisting them. "The outcome is not in question. The question is, what happens afterward," said retired General David Petraeus, who commanded U.S. troops in Iraq the first time around, when al Qaeda was defeated.

The fight for Mosul will be "orders of magnitude larger than any fight that the Iraqis, with our assistance and the coalition support, have taken on," Petraeus told ABC's "This Week." "There will be dug-in troops, there will be tunnels, there will be suicide bombers, improvised explosive devices. "But at the end of the day, the Iraqi forces, with our assistance, are going to prevail. There's no question. The Islamic State fighters in Mosul are dead men walking, and I think they increasingly know it. They're even trying to desert and they're being executed. "So there's no question about the outcome of the fight. The challenge here is actually after the fight. It's governance."

Petraeus said the new government must represent and respond to "the most complex human terrain in all of Iraq." "There are a lot of grievances,' he said. "There are Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Turkmen. There are Kurds from three different political parties. You've got Yazidis, Christians, Shabak. A lot of grievances, scores that may be settled. "And in that kind of complexity, governance is going to have to emerge or else you'll start preparing fields for the planting of the seeds of Islamic State 3.0." Petraeus said the "real fight is in Baghdad," where the Iraqi parliament recently forced the resignation of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi 's chosen defense minister. The vote in late August came after weeks of political wrangling over corruption allegations.

In July, al-Abadi accepted the resignation of his interior minister amid growing public anger over security lapses in and around Baghdad that allowed ISIS to carry out large-scale insurgent attacks, killing hundreds of civilians. Mosul, with a population of a million or more, fell to ISIS in June 2014. After seizing Mosul, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi visited the city to declare an Islamic caliphate that at one point covered nearly a third of Iraq and Syria. Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, said on Monday the operation to regain control of Iraq’s second-largest city "will likely continue for weeks, possibly longer."

He said the coalition will offer air support, artillery, intelligence, adviser and forward air controllers, "but to be clear, the thousands of ground combat forces who will liberate Mosul are all Iraqis." Townsend said the U.S.-led coalition will continue to use precision strikes "to accurately attack the enemy and to minimize any impact on innocent civilians. We can’t predict how long it will take for the Iraqi Security Forces to defeat Da'esh in Mosul; but we know they will succeed—just as they did in Bayji, in Ramadi, in Fallujah and, more recently in Qayyarah and Sharqat. "This may prove to be a long and tough battle, but the Iraqis have prepared for it and we will stand by them. The Iraqi Security Forces and the Coalition are not only fighting for the future of Iraq, we are fighting to ensure the security of all of our nations."

Petraeus on Battle for Mosul: 'The Question Is, What Happens Afterward'

See also:

Battle for Mosul must navigate ethnic rivalries
Sat, 15 Oct 2016 - The battle of Mosul will have to navigate ethnic rivalries, as well as sectarian and religious sensitivities, writes Hugh Sykes.

Plans for the recapture of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, from the so-called Islamic State are fiendishly complicated. Ethnic rivalries, as well as sectarian and religious sensitivities, will have to be respected if the offensive is not to go horribly wrong. The Iraqi army which scattered and fled as IS fighters drove and rode into Mosul in 2014 was mocked as I.R.A.Q. or I Ran Away Quickly. But the soldiers may have been running not only from IS.

The mostly Sunni Arabs of Mosul resented the domination of the central Baghdad government by Shia Muslims. Junior ranks in the Iraqi army were afraid that they would be attacked by Sunni Arabs in Mosul as well as IS, taking revenge for the transformation of Iraq into what they perceived to be a Shia state. For the same reason, IS in Mosul has enjoyed strong political and logistical support from former members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist armed forces, men who were summarily dismissed and who lost their livelihoods in the de-Baathification process after 2003.

Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters near Mosul in May this year​

The sectarian policies of the first elected prime minister Nouri Maliki may have led some Mosulites to welcome "Islamic State". The Shia government in Baghdad had allowed the pendulum of political adjustment in Iraq to swing so far that the large Sunni minority felt downtrodden, marginalised, and collectively blamed for Saddam Hussein's cruelty towards the Shia majority. But the new prime minister Haider al-Abadi - also Shia of course - has worked hard to bring Sunnis back into the fold. For example, he has funded and armed Sunni Arab tribal forces which are expected to play a prominent role in the imminent battle for Mosul.

The remaining residents, especially in the city centre, are more likely to welcome them than the mostly Shia Iraqi army, the irregular Shia "Popular Mobilisation Forces", or the Kurdish Peshmerga. Meanwhile the remaining IS fighters have driven out, or massacred, the Christians, Yazidis and Kurds who used to live there. Thousands of Sunni Arabs too have also left Mosul. If they ever believed that IS was a potentially sympathetic group of Sunni co-religionists, they were quickly disabused as the conquerors of Mosul revealed themselves to be irrational psychopaths who, for example, force children to watch public executions.

Exodus expected

What happens next is the question no one ever ask before getting involved in the Middle East.

 

[Iceweasel]

Just in time for the elections. Go figure.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

obama gave Mosul to isis once. He will just do it again.

 

[Camp]

Obama retaking Mosul just to save ISIS from Putin who will bomb this city after Aleppo.

You think Putin will begin bombing Iraq? Do you know the difference between Syria and Iraq?

 

[longknife]

What They Aren't Telling You About the Move to Retake Mosul, Iraq

In a nutshell, with US backing, they plan to let the IS fighters free passage to go to Syrian to find the Saddam regime.

The source also seemed to suggest the air assistance the U.S. would provide to the Iraqi offensive would be a sham, as the coalition would only strike detached, vacated, or uninhabited buildings. According to the source, Washington’s strategy in moving these ISIS fighters is due to an attempt to counter Russia’s advancements in Syria.

God, how low can Obozo sink? He'll do anything to save what he thinks is his legacy. And, if elected, Shrillary will only continue this farce.

More – much more - @ What You Aren't Being Told About The Iraqi ISIS Offensive

 

[AZGAL]

Apache Helicopters Take Action in Mosul Offensive

 

[AZGAL]

It’s hard not to sympathize with these calls. At least 400,000 civilians have been killed in Syria, and over half of the country’s 23 million citizens have been displaced. If there’s ever a case for the use of US force, it’s stopping a catastrophe like this.