Baghdad — The operation Iraqi forces launched on Monday to retake the city of Mosul from the Daesh group could last weeks and “possibly longer”, a top US general said.
Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, commander of the US-led coalition battling the terrorist group, warned that victory in Daesh’s last major stronghold in Iraq could take time.
“This operation to regain control of Iraq’s second-largest city will likely continue for weeks, possibly longer,” he said in a statement.
“This may prove to be a long and tough battle, but the Iraqis have prepared for it and we will stand by them,” Townsend said.
Following the fall of Mosul to Daesh more than two years ago, the United States led what has now become a more than 60-nation coalition supporting the anti-IS effort in Iraq and Syria.
Most of the coalition’s support has come in the shape of air strikes and training but US, French and British special forces are now also on the ground to advise local forces in battle.
Townsend said the coalition had trained and equipped more than 54,000 Iraqi forces.
Mosul was an Iraqi demographic mosaic of Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and Christians that was gutted by years of violence culminating in the Daesh group takeover in June 2014.
Iraq’s second-largest city, with a population now estimated at up to one million, mostly Sunni Arabs, Mosul is crucial to Daesh.
The city controls strategic trade routes in northern Iraq, notably a key highway to the border with Syria and its second city of Aleppo, while other routes lead to Turkey and to Baghdad.
Food and fabrics have long been traded in Mosul, which is also known for producing the fine cotton called muslin.
The capital of Nineveh province, Mosul lies around 350 km (220 miles) north of Baghdad, and 50 km south of Iraq’s biggest dam, now controlled by Kurdish peshmerga fighters.
The city’s historic center is dotted with church spires and it was home to an estimated 35,000 Christians when Daesh arrived and ordered them to convert, pay a special tax, or leave. Almost all fled.
Mosul was conquered by Arabs in 641 and reached its cultural peak in the 12th century before falling to Mongols in 1262, and then to Persians and Ottomans.
The city became part of Iraq when the country was created out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s.
Nineveh has always been a border region, keenly contested by its rival communities and their more powerful supporters in neighboring states.
Under the ousted Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein, Mosul saw a huge influx that boosted its population to around two million.
Disproportionate numbers were from Arab areas of the countryside, changing its demographic make-up. Arabs currently vastly outnumber Kurds. — Agencies
