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After Mosul: a Grueling Start Down a Very Long Road

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After Mosul: a Grueling Start Down a Very Long Road Strategic & Defence Studies Centre April 2017 ANU College of Asia & the Pacific After Mosul: A Grueling Start Down a Very Long Road Matt Brown ANU College of Asia & the Pacific A The Centre of Gravity series About the series The Centre of Gravity series is the flagship publication of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre (SDSC) based at The Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific. The series aspires to provide high quality analysis and to generate debate on strategic policy issues of direct relevance to Australia. Centre of Gravity papers are 3,000-4,000 words in length and are written for a policy audience. Consistent with this, each Centre of Gravity paper includes at least one policy recommendation. Papers are commissioned by SDSC and appearance in the series is by invitation only. SDSC commissions up to 10 papers in any given year. Contact us Strategic & Defence Studies Centre ANU College of Asia & the Pacific September 2016 Strategic & Defence Studies Centre November 2016 Dr Andrew Carr ANU College of Asia & the Pacific Editor Strategic and Defence Studies Centre ANU Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs T 02 6125 1164 E [email protected] W sdsc.bellschool.anu.edu.au US Congress and the politics of strategy Alan Tidwell, Professor and Director, Center for Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Australia andStudies the at the Rise Edmund of A. WalshGeoeconomics School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University Michael Wesley ANU College of Asia & the Pacific ANU College of Asia & the Pacific A A Centre of Gravity series paper #30 Photos courtesy of ABC Four Corners/ Aaron Hollet. © 2017 ANU Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. All rights reserved. The Australian National University does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University, its staff, or its trustees. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the ANU Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. Please direct inquiries to [email protected] This publication can be downloaded for free at sdsc.bellschool.anu.edu.au/our-publications/ centre-of-gravity-series CRICOS#00120C Author bio Matt Brown is a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University’s Coral Bell School of Asia and Pacific Studies. Over two postings to Jerusalem and one to Beirut as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Middle East Correspondent, he has spent most of the past decade reporting from the Middle East. He’s also served as the ABC’s Indonesia Correspondent and National Security Correspondent. He’s interested in the relationship between organised criminal activity and insurgency, familial relations and radicalisation and Australian foreign and national security policy. Matt has won four Walkley Awards, Australian journalism’s highest accolade, for reports on conflict, terrorism and insurgency in the occupied Palestinian territories, Turkey, Syria and Iraq. He was the inaugural winner of the Australian Political Studies Association’s Journalist of the Year award in 2016. The views expressed here are his own, not those of the ABC or the ANU. ANU College of Asia & the Pacific 1 After Mosul: A Grueling Start Down a Very Long Road Matt Brown Executive Summary òòThe battle for Mosul has resulted in fewer civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure than many first feared. òòAfter government forces recapture the city ISIS is likely to continue to stage attacks and seek influence through extortion, intimidation and corruption. òòCivilians have been scarred by previous abuse at the hands of the security forces and ISIS but are receptive to reconciliation with the government. òòFears that security forces would engage in sectarian violence have not been realized but sectarianism remains a threat. Policy Recommendations If Iraq requests ongoing international security assistance Australia should: òòSupport measures to encourage inclusive governance in Iraq at the national and provincial level. òòAdvocate and contribute to training for the security forces which focusses on intelligence-led action against organised crime and insurgent networks, incorporating human rights and the rule of law as the foundations for national security. òòEncourage development aid which focusses on small projects in response to localised needs, minimising opportunities for corruption and extortion. The eye of the storm With combat operations underway in west Mosul, Iraqi security forces will later this year regain control of the city. But what comes next will be crucial, affecting the utility of the costly international intervention against ISIS, the chances of stability in Iraq and the risk of terrorism beyond its borders for decades to come. The maelstrom has already swept over the east of the city and when I visited in January, the relative calm was unnerving. Debris lined the streets. Residents wondered about repairing their lives, their businesses, their community, and maybe even their nation. They also had sharp memories of a recent past blighted by corruption, I saw evidence of abuse and murder. In three trips to Iraq in October and November of 2016 and a grueling fight. January of 2017 I saw evidence of a grueling fight which has taken a substantial toll. The true cost to civilians is difficult to gauge but over the past two years the national civilian death toll has hovered around 600 a month. When the battle began, that shot up to over 1100 and Mosul and its surrounding Nineveh province accounted for more than half the total.1 Traumatised civilians have also found medical aid in short supply. 2 The Centre of Gravity Series A resident of the outer suburb of Gogjali, the first to be breached during the battle to enter the city in late October, told me, “There are no doctors in our region… There is no medical assistance”. Civilians were especially vulnerable because, “life under Da’esh governance went from bad to worse… They would only heal their own people. They had many hospitals (but) we had only a little assistance.”2 I saw one child who died from injuries sustained in a mortar attack after being turned away from a military hospital closer to the front line. A Non-Commissioned Officer in a battalion sized unit of around 400 men in the Iraqi Special Operations Force (ISOF) told me he had lost 18 dead and 100 wounded in less than three months.3 But the exact toll the fight has taken on the Iraqi Security Forces is unknown because the Government of Iraq won’t publish casualty data. It angrily disputed a UN estimate of 1959 killed nationally in November last year which is likely to have consisted mainly of deaths in Mosul.4 It was a big spike and may have been an outlier but the estimate of security force casualties has broadly tracked the more finely estimated civilian toll over the past three years. One look at the battle weary soldiers, the wreckage of bombed and burned out Humvees, and the shattered glass of most vehicles, hit by sniper fire, testifies to the tough road they’ve been down, through Tikirt, Ramadi and Fallujh to Mosul. The battle for the west of the city, which began in February, has been even more intense, causing much greater civilian displacement. In response to concern about civilian casualties caused by US-led coalition airstrikes the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, noted that ISIS is using civilians as human, but warned the strikes “may potentially have a lethal and disproportionate impact on civilians”. In short, civilians and the security forces have paid a heavy price for this looming victory and it will be just the first phase in a much longer campaign. For ISIS, the next phase is already underway. A Captain who hosted us in a house just outside Mosul was later killed by a grenade dropped from an ISIS drone. A market down the road had been targeted by a suicide bomber a few weeks after the suburb was liberated and a restaurant we ate at in January was bombed a few weeks after we left. Urban centres to the south west in Anbar province, which were liberated much earlier, in more controversial operations, are already the scene of renewed insurgency. ANU College of Asia & the Pacific 3 ISIS won’t give up on Mosul When ISIS seized control of Mosul in 2014 the catastrophe shocked much of the world’s media but it didn’t come out of the blue and the history of the city offers ample evidence that ISIS will try to regain influence and control. Mosul offers ISIS the chance to make money, and lots of it. Captured documents from its predecessor organization, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), show it, “resembled a ruthlessly violent and effective organised-crime syndicate” that was self-financing, generating US $4.8 million dollars in revenue between August 2008 and January 2009.5 In that same 5 month period, the jihadists earned US $1.83 million from extortion alone, including from construction projects, “typically demanding 10 to 20 percent of a contract’s value, in exchange for protection.”6 Senior ISI officials gained positions in provincial institutions and formed plans to infiltrate higher levels of government, aiding the misappropriation of funds from construction work and other government projects, demonstrating the need to bolster the fight against insurgency with an integrated fight against organised crime and corruption. As Iraq’s largest Sunni dominated city, Mosul also offers the Sunni extremists of ISIS a potentially receptive population. The city has frequently been the scene of rebellion and insurgency. After the US‑led invasion in 2003 it is where Saddam Hussein’s sons Uday and Qusay were found and killed in a gun battle with US forces and it became an important hub for jihadists moving into and out of Iraq.
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