Conferring Courage

The American Central Command official who claimed in Baghdad that an assault is near imminent to retake the Sunni-majority city of Mosul, now occupied by the Islamic State, evidently took it upon himself to interpret long-range plans of the Iraqi government to restore its honour and its geography. When it does decide the time is right, it will have its hands full in battling the Islamic State for whom continued possession of Mosul is an imperative, with its one million souls and strategic location within its caliphate.

The attack was described as one that would take place in the spring involving 20,000 to 25,000 soldiers representing eight Iraqi army brigades, three peshmerga Kurdish brigades, and a police force trained in irregular warfare. Since there is an estimated one thousand to 2,000 ISIS fighters within Mosul maintaining control there, the odds seem about right. With the exception of the peshmerga, ten-to-one odds may give an advantage to the Iraqi military which hasn't distinguished itself on the battlefield, other than for the speed with which it is known to decamp in terror.

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters on the outskirts of Mosul. Photograph: Reuters

Mosul has been cleansed of its population of Christians and Yazidis and other minority ethnic and religious groups. They've either been slaughtered, along with the Iraqi troops that didn't move fast enough, or escaped that fate, like the bulk of the Iraqi troops that so courteously left all the U.S.-supplied weaponry and military vehicles to the incoming Islamic State militias to better equip them for their long-range territorial aspirations.

The Iraqi Sunnis who remain in Mosul, are content enough with the presence of Islamic State. Better a Sunni taskmaster than the corrupted discriminatory policies and insulting neglect of the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government, even if, since ISIS's takeover of Mosul civic services have been reduced, residents face higher food prices, blackouts and water supply cuts. These inconveniences more than balanced out in the opinion of Mosul's Sunnis than living under the hated oppression of the Shias.

Supporters "blame the government rather than ISIS" advised Hassan Hassan, an authority at the Delma Institute, based in Abu Dhabi, doing research on ISIS. "I think ISIS is very comfortable in its heartland", he added. And, according to Mr. Hassan, given the generous plethora of vehicles abandoned by the Iraqi army in June, ISIS can at any time move in large numbers of troops to augment those established within the city, so the number of one to two thousand is not a firm estimate of the numbers an Iraqi assault on Mosul would confront.

ISIS has been preparing itself for the defence of Mosul, training in guerrilla warfare, striking out from civilian areas. And, as they did in Syria's Kobani, planting large numbers of improvised explosive devices to greet any possible invasion. While ISIS gloats in the large caches of American-supplied arms it took possession of, the U.S. has once again provided Iraq with additional arms. In the past week ten thousand M-16 rifles and additional military equipment has been given to the Iraqi troops.

Up until the present time the main force leading the fight against ISIS has not been the Iraqi military, many of whose troops are being trained once again by Americans, according to a U.S. Central Command official. Instead it has been the Kurdish peshmerga and Shia militias who have been fighting ISIS in the area. Should they take part in a proposed assault on Mosul, the city's inhabitants will not view them as liberators but as despised murderers. Shia militias are accused of sectarian murders across Iraq.

"Anyone but the Shia militias", a Mosul businessman who had fled to Kurdistan last June said. "Even the Americans would be better". As for the Kurds, they are less interested in committing to assist in the retaking of Mosul than with getting on with pursuing their own nationalist aspirations, creating in the process a buffer area against ISIS. "The peshmerga don't want to go to Mosul because they will be seen as invaders", said the peshmerga spokesman, Hekmat Ali.

But, Masrour Barzani, head of the Kurdish region's National Security council stated that "the Kurds will definitely have to play a role." Dutch and Italian military advisers have been teaching urban fighting techniques to members of a peshmerga platoon at an infantry training camp in Iraqi Kurdistan. "If Massoud Barzani [president of the Kurdish region and head of the peshmerga] says so, we will do it", said the platoon leader of helping with an attack on Mosul.