On Monday (26/1/15) the strategically important city of Kobane/Ayn al-Arab was liberated from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) following a battle that had lasted for 134 days and claimed the lives of 459 Kurdish fighters.
Away from Kobane however the rest of the theatre of operations against ISIL in both Iraq and Syria remained painfully quiet. The big event of the week occurred in London, UK on Thursday (22/1/15) when Britain hosted an international conference in response to Islamic terrorism of which ISIL are just the largest threat. Rather then offering any solutions the main purpose of this conference was to allow the UK to find out where everybody stood on the issue in the wake of the attacks in Paris, France that occurred between January 7th (7/1/15) and January 9th (9/1/15). For example France is obviously furious about this and wants to step up efforts to defeat Islamic terrorism while the US still seems desperate to pretend that it never happened in order to avoid having to defeat Islamic terrorism.
The big shock to come out of the conference though was that an Iraqi official made public an assessment by the US-led coalition that its now 6 month long bombing campaign had killed an estimated 6,000 ISIL fighters including the more then 1,200 who were killed in the Battle of Kobane. This US responded angrily to this release of information officially because they didn't want comparisons made to the body-counts used in the Vietnam war that succeeded in turning public opinion against the war.
However in reality the US were keen to keep this information secret because although it is not the be all and end all along with other factors such as territory held the enemy death-toll or force depletion helps to give an indication of how the operation is going. To put it in its most stark terms ISIL number around 32,000 fighters. If the coalition kills 31,999 of those fighters ISIL stops being a terror organisation dominating Iraq and Syria and instead becomes just one guy running around the desert in his underpants. The fact that the coalition has already killed 1 in every 5 of ISIL's fighters indicated that the operation is going far better then predicted. It also directly contradicts the comments made by US President Obama in his State of the Union address the previous day that the fight against ISIL will take months if not years to complete.
On the issue of territory held the Iraqi official went on to announce that with co-operation of the coalition it could mount an operation to liberate Mosul in a matter of weeks and the city which has become ISIL's de facto capital in Iraq could be fully liberated by early-March at the latest. While it continues to try and buy time to train and arm Sunni-Arab insurgent groups similar to ISIL in Syria the US is adamant that planning for an operation to liberate Mosul couldn't begin until the winter of 2015 at the earliest.
This pressure by Iraq and the European members of the coalition appears to have paid off. On Thursday evening the coalition received permission to act in a close air-support role for the Kurdish Peshmerga as they advanced on positions in and around Mosul. By Saturday (24/1/15) evening and following some 46 air-strikes against ISIL fighting positions and defenses the Peshmerga had succeeded in liberating the town of Tal Afar which sits around 70km (42 miles) to the west of Mosul on the main supply route between the city and ISIL positions in Syria.
Acting without close air-support from the coalition the Iraqi army launched and offensive on Friday (23/1/15) to liberate Muqdadiyah - a town in north-west Diyala province some 1km north-east of Baghdad. Despite the loss of some 58 members of the Iraqi army that operation was successful and Muqdadiyah was liberated from ISIL on Sunday (25/1/15). The liberation of Muqdadiyah means that the Iraqi army has now succeeded in liberating all of the eastern Diyala province from ISIL. This province hasn't been a main priority for ISIL but its loss further reduces the grip they have on the country as a whole.
Further evidence of the speed at which ISIL are starting to come apart at the seams was provided by the series of hostage videos they have released in the past week. Previous ISIL hostage videos have involved the group moving a convoy of vehicles into the desert outside of Raqqa where they establish a large cordon and film the video. There are rumours that the execution of UK hostage Alan Henning was actually captured on by a coalition spy satellite as it happened. Obviously if that satellite had been an armed drone then the search for the "Jihadi John" character would now be over. In the video of Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto that was released on Tuesday (20/1/15) ISIL attempted to hide their location by filming it in a basement in front of a green screen onto which images of the Raqqa desert were added in post-production. The big clue being that while the rest of the region was experiencing a snowy and cloudy winter in ISIL's Raqqa it was still late summer.
By the time they released the video on Saturday (24/1/15) confirming that Haruna Yukawa had been killed ISIL were unable to produce any sort of video and instead released a still photograph of Kenji Goto in front of a white wall holding another photograph of Yukawa's decapitated head. They had also changed their demand for USD100million to the release of Sajida al-Rishawi from a Jordanian prison. This was an effort to lay the ground work for a larger prisoner exchange for captured Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasaesbeh and promote discussion about amnesty for deserting ISIL fighters.
Following the liberation of Kobane on Monday (26/1/15) ISIL's interest in amnesty became more urgent so they released another still image of Goto. This time he was holding a photograph of al-Kasaesbeh and the voiceover demanding that unless Sajida al-Rishawi was released within 24 hours both Goto and al-Kasaesbeh would be killed. However if al-Rishawi was released then Goto would also be released but al-Kasaesbeh would remain a hostage. This morning the Jordanians announced that they will be prepared to release al-Rishawi but only in return for both Goto and al-Kasaesbeh. After all any exchange would only encourage ISIL to take more hostages so there can be no suggestion that al-Kasaesbeh can be used to bargain for the release of more prisoners. With the 24 hour deadline expiring at 14:00 GMT today we are waiting what ISIL's next move will be.
Although a looming collapse of ISIL is undoubtedly a good thing it actually adds another serious problem to the US' already deeply flawed plan to fight ISIL. That plan seems centred around delaying the defeat of ISIL in Iraq in order to buy time to build up similar Sunni-Arab insurgent forces in Syria. As ISIL grew out of the Sunni-Arab insurgent groups in Syria this approach carries a substantial risk that the coalition will simply be building a replacement to ISIL rather then defeating them. The delay also puts Kurdish, Iraqi and coalition forces on the ground in a great deal of danger while we wait.
For example on Monday (26/1/15) Canada confirmed that its special forces in Iraq had been forced to engage ISIL in direct combat on several occasions. Just yesterday the US was forced to carry out air-strikes against ISIL forces who were once again attacking US troops stationed at the al-Asad airbase just outside Baghdad while civilian flights in and out of Baghdad international airport were suspended after aircraft came under ISIL fire.
The speed at which ISIL are starting to disintegrate also adds a substantial time problem because it now looks as though the coalition is going to need ground forces to move into ISIL controlled areas in a matter of weeks. The US plan to train Sunni-Arab insurgents isn't expected to begin until March if it is even approved by Congress. If the ground troops are not ready in time then as ISIL splinters the security situation will become even more unstable as some ISIL fighters leave for places like Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Nigeria, others link up with the groups the US intends to train in Syria and others simply melt into the background. This means that the risks of the US building up a new ISIL in Syria or having to relocate the entire operation to another country such as Nigeria are both massively increased.
As such it is time for President Obama to accept reality and stop trying to fight the war he wishes he was fighting and instead fight the war that he's actually fighting by using the tools already at his disposal by backing the Kurds and the Iraqis as the ground forces of the coalition.
16:30 on 28/1/15 (UK date).
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