By Emily Anagnostos and the ISW Iraq Team
The Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) launched the second phase of
operations in Mosul on December 29, 2016, after weeks of limited gains and
heavy casualties. The Coalition and ISF introduced new accelerants that revived
the push, including advisors embedded at a lower-level and increased ISF
deployments, allowing the ISF to make significant gains in eastern Mosul from
December 29 to January 3, 2017.
The
ISF announced the “second phase” of operations
in Mosul’s city limits, now in its second month, on December 29 after
operations paused for a week
from December 21 to 28 to allow ISF units to regroup and remobilize. Since December
29, the ISF recaptured five major neighborhoods along Mosul’s main east-west
highway and pushed further towards the eastern bank of the Tigris River. The
advances inward have put the Mosul Airport and adjacent military base in range of ISF
artillery.
New
accelerants from the ISF and Coalition made this revived push successful. Three brigades of Federal
Police and units from the Emergency Response Division, an elite unit in the
Ministry of Interior, redeployed from the southern axis and began operating in
the southeast alongside units from the 9th Iraqi Army Armored
Division. The introduction of the Federal Police into Mosul is a risk if the
units are especially compromised by or comprised of pro-Iranian militias, which
has historically resulted in sectarian violence, although the Coalition has
previously cooperated with at least one of the three brigades in Ramadi. These
reinforcements bolstered Iraqi Army efforts to retake several southeast
neighborhoods from December 29 to January 3 and relieved the Counter Terrorism
Service (CTS), which has shouldered the bulk of the urban warfare, the burden to
both hold territory and support less-experienced ISF units.
The
Coalition also accelerated the advance by embedding deeper with Iraqi units. The
Coalition announced on December 24 that it would embed at a
lower-level in the ISF, including alongside formations, such as the Federal Police, with which
the Coalition has not embedded
in the past. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter had announced in July, after the
ISF retook the Qayyarah Airbase, that embedding U.S. advisors at brigade- and
battalion- levels was one of four
accelerants it would deploy as the ISF set final conditions for Mosul, however
advisors continued to remain primarily at the division level. U.S. advisors are now particularly
focused on supporting the northern axis, where Iraqi
Army units have not yet breached the city, though the advisors are also
operating alongside the CTS and other ISF units. The ISF may also begin relying
on increased Coalition airstrikes to counter
ISIS targets, rather than door-to-door operations; this raises the risk of civilian
casualties but can stave off further attrition.
ISIS
launched a series of spectacular
attacks
from December 31 to January 2 in the shrine cities Najaf and Samarra and in Baghdad
in response to the renewed push. ISIS will try to increase the pressure on provinces
and political leaders to draw back forward
deployed ISF units from Mosul operations, reducing reinforcements. It has also
attempted to sever the ISF’s supply routes by attacking
the Baghdad-Mosul highway around Shirqat District on January 2, though Iraqi
forces later reopened the road. ISIS’s
ability to continue attacks in the shrine cities and capital and to create a
protracted battle in Mosul will put increasing pressure on an already
vulnerable Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, who had pledged that the operation
would be over before 2017 but now states it will take another three
months.
