Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > The U.S. Military Is Back on the Battlefield in Iraq
________________________________________
The U.S. Military Is Back on the Battlefield in Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn [1] / The Independent [2]
March 28, 2016
It was suddenly announced last week that the Iraqi army was taking territory
from Islamic State forces in what was presented as the first steps in an
offensive to recapture the city of Mosul. It sounded as if the self-declared
Caliphate was crumbling and was particularly welcome news since it coincided
with the Isis suicide bombings in Brussels. The message was that Isis might
be able to slaughter civilians in Europe, but was being defeated on its home
turf in Iraq and Syria.
I was particularly interested in the attack because two months ago I had
been with the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga in Makhmour, the town in the front
line between Mosul and the Kurdish capital Erbil, where the offensive by the
15th Division of the Iraqi Army was said to have taken place. At that time,
local Kurdish commanders said that there was little fighting and they did
not expect an offensive to recapture Mosul, which Isis had captured in June
2014, to happen any time soon.
Several weeks later in February, I was travelling on the main road between
Baghdad and Kirkuk when I was held up by a large convoy of military vehicles
moving north. I asked what was happening and was told that this was the 15th
Division heading for Makhmour with the long term intention of joining an
Iraqi army-Kurdish Peshmerga assault on Mosul. It did not appear that this
was imminent since I did not see any tanks and most of the divisions
vehicles were soft-skinned or lightly armored Humvees.
Back in Baghdad, I asked several senior officials about recapturing Mosul
and they all downplayed the idea that this would take place before the end
of 2016. It may have been that they knew more than they were saying about
what had happened to the 15th Division, said to be 4,500-strong and to be
one of the better units in the Iraqi army, in the days immediately after I
had seen it on the road.
What had really occurred at Makhmour is significant because it shows the
continuing weakness of the Iraqi military as well as the extent to which
U.S. military troops are returning to the battlefield in Iraq in far greater
numbers than the U.S. administration has been willing to admit.
The 15th Division had indeed established a base near Makhmour where its
arrival was greeted by the Iraqi Defense Minister Khalid al-Obaidi. But
Nancy Youssef writing in The Daily Beast cites three U.S. defense officials
as saying that the Iraqi soldiers had then come under sustained attack from
IS fighters and had fled into the mountains, largely abandoning their base.
One of the officials is quoted as saying that "they dispersed into the
mountains out of an abundance of caution." Only a few headquarters units
stayed behind dug in at the base.
At this point, the U.S. military took an important decision to send its own
troops to prop up the Iraqi forces in and around Makhmour. Without any pubic
admission or even telling the families of the U.S. soldiers involved, they
sent 200 Marines from the Marine Expeditionary Unit with four artillery
units to the by now largely abandoned base. Their arrival was wholly
contrary to the impression the Pentagon had previously given that U.S.
soldiers in Iraq are limited in number and not engaged in front line combat
duties. Though the Marines were within rocket range of Isis ten miles away,
they were not added to the official U.S. roster of 3,870 troops in Iraq
because they were supposedly there on a temporary assignment.
The U.S. public may not have known that their soldiers were back in Iraq
defending a fire base, but Isis certainly had observed the arrival of the
Marines and the artillery. They began firing rockets at the base, one of
which hit a bunker on 19 March, killing Master Sergeant Louis Cardin, a
27-year-old Marine from California, and injuring eight other Marines, three
of them seriously. Two days later they made a ground attack in which two
Isis fighters were killed. At this point, the Pentagon was forced to become
more open about where Sergeant Cardin had been when he died and admit that
Marines were not just acting in support of the Iraqi Army and Peshmerga.
The purpose of sending the Marine unit into such as dangerous place was to
revive the morale of the 15th Division and to some extent this was
successful. Though U.S. defense officials spoke of the Iraqi troops fleeing
into the mountains, they may mean the ridge of steep hills behind Makhmour
and not the mountains further north. Last Thursday Iraqi troops supported by
the Marine artillery and airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition captured three
abandoned villages in the front line after an advance of less than a mile.
The episode does not bode well for a successful attack to retake Mosul this
year. The Iraqi army has never really come together again since its defeat
by Isis in northern and western Iraq in 2014. Though it recaptured Ramadi,
the capital of Anbar province, which it lost last May the city is largely in
ruins with 5,700 buildings destroyed or damaged by airstrikes. The Iraqi
ground forces involved were limited in number and largely acted as a mopping
up force. This is an ominous sign for any future attack on Mosul, since Isis
is likely to fight for it to the last man and could only be defeated if all
the buildings in the city were systematically destroyed by U.S. airpower as
happened a year ago in Kobani.
The story of the 200 U.S. Marines at Makhmour and the flight of the 15th
Division illustrates more than just the fragility of the Iraqi armed forces.
It underlines the degree to which the U.S. already has combat troops in
Iraq, while all the while claiming that there are no "boots on the ground".
Sergeant Cardin was not officially even in Iraq when he died because he was
one of 1,470 U.S. service personnel only temporarily in the country. Taken
together with the 3,870 officially there and 1,100 contractors working for
the Pentagon in Iraq who are U.S. citizens this brings the total to over
6,400.
The U.S. military have been crowing over how their special forces killed the
Isis finance director Haji Iman last week and there is no doubt Isis is
under extreme pressure in Iraq. In Syria, the Syrian army backed by Russian
airstrikes is close to recapturing Palmyra, while the Syrian Kurds have been
pushing south in Hasakah province in the north east of the country. All this
looks more impressive on a small scale map than when one travels for hours
skirting the Isis front line in Iraq and Syria which one Peshmerga general
put at 3,700 kilometres long. Claims of Isis losing control of important
roads and supply routes are less significant than appears because Middle
East truckers are adept at using makeshift tracks to bypass obstacles.
The speed with which Isis responded to the arrival of the 15th Iraqi
Division and the U.S. Marines at Makhmour shows that they are by no means a
spent force, their enemies are weaker than they look and the Caliphate is
still far from final defeat.
Patrick Cockburn is the author of The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the
New Sunni Revolution [3].
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Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/world/us-military-back-battlefield-iraq
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/patrick-cockburn
[2] http://www.theind.com
[3] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0802150276/counterpunchmaga
[4] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on The U.S. Military Is
Back on the Battlefield in Iraq
[5] http://www.alternet.org/
[6] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > The U.S. Military Is Back on the Battlefield in Iraq
The U.S. Military Is Back on the Battlefield in Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn [1] / The Independent [2]
March 28, 2016
It was suddenly announced last week that the Iraqi army was taking territory
from Islamic State forces in what was presented as the first steps in an
offensive to recapture the city of Mosul. It sounded as if the self-declared
Caliphate was crumbling and was particularly welcome news since it coincided
with the Isis suicide bombings in Brussels. The message was that Isis might
be able to slaughter civilians in Europe, but was being defeated on its home
turf in Iraq and Syria.
I was particularly interested in the attack because two months ago I had
been with the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga in Makhmour, the town in the front
line between Mosul and the Kurdish capital Erbil, where the offensive by the
15th Division of the Iraqi Army was said to have taken place. At that time,
local Kurdish commanders said that there was little fighting and they did
not expect an offensive to recapture Mosul, which Isis had captured in June
2014, to happen any time soon.
Several weeks later in February, I was travelling on the main road between
Baghdad and Kirkuk when I was held up by a large convoy of military vehicles
moving north. I asked what was happening and was told that this was the 15th
Division heading for Makhmour with the long term intention of joining an
Iraqi army-Kurdish Peshmerga assault on Mosul. It did not appear that this
was imminent since I did not see any tanks and most of the divisions
vehicles were soft-skinned or lightly armored Humvees.
Back in Baghdad, I asked several senior officials about recapturing Mosul
and they all downplayed the idea that this would take place before the end
of 2016. It may have been that they knew more than they were saying about
what had happened to the 15th Division, said to be 4,500-strong and to be
one of the better units in the Iraqi army, in the days immediately after I
had seen it on the road.
What had really occurred at Makhmour is significant because it shows the
continuing weakness of the Iraqi military as well as the extent to which
U.S. military troops are returning to the battlefield in Iraq in far greater
numbers than the U.S. administration has been willing to admit.
The 15th Division had indeed established a base near Makhmour where its
arrival was greeted by the Iraqi Defense Minister Khalid al-Obaidi. But
Nancy Youssef writing in The Daily Beast cites three U.S. defense officials
as saying that the Iraqi soldiers had then come under sustained attack from
IS fighters and had fled into the mountains, largely abandoning their base.
One of the officials is quoted as saying that "they dispersed into the
mountains out of an abundance of caution." Only a few headquarters units
stayed behind dug in at the base.
At this point, the U.S. military took an important decision to send its own
troops to prop up the Iraqi forces in and around Makhmour. Without any pubic
admission or even telling the families of the U.S. soldiers involved, they
sent 200 Marines from the Marine Expeditionary Unit with four artillery
units to the by now largely abandoned base. Their arrival was wholly
contrary to the impression the Pentagon had previously given that U.S.
soldiers in Iraq are limited in number and not engaged in front line combat
duties. Though the Marines were within rocket range of Isis ten miles away,
they were not added to the official U.S. roster of 3,870 troops in Iraq
because they were supposedly there on a temporary assignment.
The U.S. public may not have known that their soldiers were back in Iraq
defending a fire base, but Isis certainly had observed the arrival of the
Marines and the artillery. They began firing rockets at the base, one of
which hit a bunker on 19 March, killing Master Sergeant Louis Cardin, a
27-year-old Marine from California, and injuring eight other Marines, three
of them seriously. Two days later they made a ground attack in which two
Isis fighters were killed. At this point, the Pentagon was forced to become
more open about where Sergeant Cardin had been when he died and admit that
Marines were not just acting in support of the Iraqi Army and Peshmerga.
The purpose of sending the Marine unit into such as dangerous place was to
revive the morale of the 15th Division and to some extent this was
successful. Though U.S. defense officials spoke of the Iraqi troops fleeing
into the mountains, they may mean the ridge of steep hills behind Makhmour
and not the mountains further north. Last Thursday Iraqi troops supported by
the Marine artillery and airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition captured three
abandoned villages in the front line after an advance of less than a mile.
The episode does not bode well for a successful attack to retake Mosul this
year. The Iraqi army has never really come together again since its defeat
by Isis in northern and western Iraq in 2014. Though it recaptured Ramadi,
the capital of Anbar province, which it lost last May the city is largely in
ruins with 5,700 buildings destroyed or damaged by airstrikes. The Iraqi
ground forces involved were limited in number and largely acted as a mopping
up force. This is an ominous sign for any future attack on Mosul, since Isis
is likely to fight for it to the last man and could only be defeated if all
the buildings in the city were systematically destroyed by U.S. airpower as
happened a year ago in Kobani.
The story of the 200 U.S. Marines at Makhmour and the flight of the 15th
Division illustrates more than just the fragility of the Iraqi armed forces.
It underlines the degree to which the U.S. already has combat troops in
Iraq, while all the while claiming that there are no "boots on the ground".
Sergeant Cardin was not officially even in Iraq when he died because he was
one of 1,470 U.S. service personnel only temporarily in the country. Taken
together with the 3,870 officially there and 1,100 contractors working for
the Pentagon in Iraq who are U.S. citizens this brings the total to over
6,400.
The U.S. military have been crowing over how their special forces killed the
Isis finance director Haji Iman last week and there is no doubt Isis is
under extreme pressure in Iraq. In Syria, the Syrian army backed by Russian
airstrikes is close to recapturing Palmyra, while the Syrian Kurds have been
pushing south in Hasakah province in the north east of the country. All this
looks more impressive on a small scale map than when one travels for hours
skirting the Isis front line in Iraq and Syria which one Peshmerga general
put at 3,700 kilometres long. Claims of Isis losing control of important
roads and supply routes are less significant than appears because Middle
East truckers are adept at using makeshift tracks to bypass obstacles.
The speed with which Isis responded to the arrival of the 15th Iraqi
Division and the U.S. Marines at Makhmour shows that they are by no means a
spent force, their enemies are weaker than they look and the Caliphate is
still far from final defeat.
Patrick Cockburn is the author of The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the
New Sunni Revolution [3].
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Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [4]
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Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/world/us-military-back-battlefield-iraq ;
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/patrick-cockburn
[2] http://www.theind.com
[3] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0802150276/counterpunchmaga
[4] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on The U.S. Military Is
Back on the Battlefield in Iraq
[5] http://www.alternet.org/
[6] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
