IRAQI prime minister announced the long-awaited assault of the Mosul by saying that “the hour of victory has come. The victory bell has been rung”. Strong rhetoric but a hostage to fortune as there is no guarantee that the terrorists of Daesh (the so-called IS) will in the end melt away from this important city, as they did when Fallujah was assaulted in July.
Daesh once controlled over a third of Iraq and it seemed after the Iraqi army cut and ran from Ramadi, there were genuine concerns that Baghdad would fall. But in the last year, with the support of US-led Coalition airstrikes in which the Kingdom warplanes take part, the terrorists have been driven back so that they now hold less than ten percent of Iraq. Mosul is their last big position, which in peacetime had a population of approaching two million, not all of whom have since fled the depraved rule of the terrorists.
The Iraqi commanders have reported early advances. Kurdish Peshmerga fighters appear to have taken a number of outlying villages and the Iraqi army said that it had advanced into Mosul’s Hamdaniya district inflicting “heavy losses of life and equipment” on the terrorists.
On the Iraqi side, some 30,000 troops are involved in the attack. It is unclear how many Daesh killers are inside the city. But they have had months to prepare for this assault. They have reportedly dug tunnels and knocked connecting passages through buildings. It has to be assumed booby traps have already been placed and heavily armored car and truck bombs assembled ready to be driven at the attackers. If the terrorists do choose to stay and fight to the end, this is going to be a ferocious battle, in which civilians are also likely to pay a high price.
However that the terrorists morale may have suffered from last week’s loss of their iconic position in Dabiq, whose redolent name was used as the title of the killers’ main publication, with its merciless message of hatred and images of helpless victims being butchered with knives and bullets in the back of the head.
The Iraqi battle plan might be to avoid completely surrounding the city but to leave an area to the west which would enable the terrorists to flee. The idea would undoubtedly be that such a corridor would become a shooting gallery for coalition warplanes launching airstrikes against retreating convoys. Such a strategy would serve to spare Mosul from extensive destruction in the sort of vicious street fighting that has been seen from the fight against Libyan-based Daesh terrorists in Sirte and Benghazi. It is also very hard to actually corral well-prepared terrorists within an urban area. As has been demonstrated in Sirte, where Daesh killers are supposedly penned into a small area of the town, they are still able to sneak through the lines and launch attacks in rear areas.
If the escape corridor is the Iraqi army’s plan, the calculation would be that driving Daesh back into Syria would move the problem out of their territory. But in fact the threat is unlikely to go away since the killers will merely retreat into the shadows and embark upon a classic terrorist campaign of intimidation and murder, for which they have doubtless already prepared. It may be too soon to ring the victory bell.
