Operation Featherweight: Day 7.

On Wednesday (13/8/14) the United Nations (UN) declared a Level 3 Humanitarian Emergency for all of Iraq. This is the highest level of alert that the UN can issue and comes in response to the over 600,000 people who have been internally displaced by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). It has also been triggered by concerns that ISIL have over-run the main food producing areas of Iraq creating food insecurity for all of Iraq's roughly 36 million people. It also means that the crisis in Iraq is now only equalled by the crisis in Syria, South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR).

The US however has been working very hard to keep a very narrow focus entirely on the situation atop of Mount Sinjar in Iraq's Nineveh province on the border with Syria. This has revolved around the US making almost hourly and often contradictory statements about the actions in the area. For example at the start of the day it was announced that the US was dispatching 130 extra special forces to act as military advisers. We were then told that those extra special forces had not only already been approved but had already arrived in Iraq. Next we were told that they weren't special forces but US Marines who had already arrived on top of Mount Sinjar via V-22 Osprey aircraft. Then we were told that they were special forces rather then Marines and only 20 of them had been sent to Mount Sinjar. Finally we were told that all US ground forces had been withdrawn from Mount Sinjar.

Obviously all nations like to be quite vague when it comes to the deployment of troops particularly when they are special forces. However this very high level of confusion seems to have been to serve two political purposes rather then any military objective. In the first instance the high volume of announcements was supposed to give the impression that the US was urgently rushing around to help and solve the situation. In the second instance it seemed intended to give the impression that the problems in Iraq - particularly the humanitarian crisis - was limited to a handful of Yazidis (ethnic Kurds) on a single mountain.

A few hours after US forces were withdrawn from Mount Sinjar the US made a shock announcement that there were in fact fewer then 5000 Yazidis on the mountain and they were being well supplied with water, food and medical supplies. As a result the US would not be taking the UK up on its offer to use Chinook helicopters to mount an evacuation.

To an extent this is true because initially there were in excess of 60,000 Yazidis trapped on the mountain. However on or around Sunday (10/8/14) Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) operating out of Syria were able to open an evacuation route down the northern side of the mountain. On the first day the YPG were able to evacuate some 20,000 people via this route into Syria. That route has since remained open allowing the YPG to evacuate between 1000 and 5000 people per night. As a result the number trapped has dropped to around 20,000 although that is still substantially more then the US estimate of 5000.

Even believing the US estimate to my mind this actually strengthens the case for mounting a helicopter rescue because a smaller number of people actually makes it easier. Plus it is highly likely that those who remain on the mountain are too young, too old or too infirm to make the journey over land.

As such it seems to me that the US assessment has been a purely political one in order to allow them to justify failing to mount an evacuation by simply declaring the crisis solved. It is after all the media outrage about the plight of people on Mount Sinjar which has forced US President Obama to take any action at all much to his obvious annoyance.

The other big announcement of the day has been that both the US and France intend to arm Kurdish Peshmerga forces. This goes to the heart of the problem that the Peshmerga have faced in fighting ISIL. The Peshmerga are essentially a local police force/militia. As such they are very lightly armed with AK-47's, RPG's and some machine guns. This is all very old equipment that the Iraqi army only handed over when they were equipped with better weapons by the US. By contrast ISIL have been supplied for years with heavy weapons from the Libyan national arsenal, the Syrian national arsenal, the Saudi national arsenal, the Qatari national arsenal and the Turkish national arsenal. They have also received so-called "non-lethal equipment" such as body armour and nightvision equipment by western nations headed by the US. Since over-running large parts of Iraq ISIL have added to their arsenal with artillery and rocket launchers, Armoured Personnel Carriers (APC's) and even tanks which they have seized from the Iraq army.

As a result the Peshmerga simply do not have the type of firepower needed to repel ISIL attacks. The question remains though of what type of weapons to equip the Peshmerga with in order to allow them to match ISIL on the battlefield.

The obvious answer would be tanks but it is simply impractical to equip the Peshmerga with tanks and train them in tank warfare in such a short space of time. Heavy calibre (.50 cal+) machine guns would be a great help but anti-tank artillery is really too immobile to be used against a fast moving enemy. The involvement of France suggests that the MILAN anti-tank system is likely to be used. The MILAN is a pretty impressive weapon system but the problem is that it was designed during the Cold War to be effective in really only two types of scenario.

The first of these involves infantry moving with the support of one or two armoured vehicles. This is very much the sort of tactic currently being displayed by SWAT teams in Ferguson, Missouri, US. The second scenario is when an infantry position is being attacked by a large number of tanks. There the infantry can use the MILAN to protect themselves by knocking out one or two tanks in order to buy time for air-support to come in and knock out the majority of the tanks often with cluster munitions.

Neither of these scenarios seem to apply in Iraq. That is because ISIL's main tactic has been to use a column of armoured vehicles including Humvees and technical trucks to advance at speed on a position. At the head of the column there is often a suicide bomber whose purpose is to blow a hole in the targets defences. In order to repel that type of attack the Peshmerga would need at least one MILAN missile for each vehicle. Those missiles cost around USD8000 each and are so sophisticated they need to be specially made in only handful of factories across the World.

In short what the Peshmerga need to repel ISIL attacks is air-strikes. The US can provide those air-strikes itself using the F-18's based on USS George H Bush or they can simply hand over the F-16's that they have been withholding from the Iraqis because a couple of Cessna's with Hellfire missiles does not count as an air force.


16:50 on 14/8/14 (UK date).