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The Battle of Ramadi, Continued
From all the accounts I can see from here, The Iraqi Security Forces have made major gains in Ramadi and recaptured key terrain. The city is strategically and symbolically critical: It sits on the Euphrates and a highway linking Baghdad to the Syrian and Jordanian borders; further up the Euphrates is the Haditha Dam, which generates power not only for Anbar, but other parts of Iraq.
After they seized Ramadi last May, ISIS apparently connected webs of IEDs to single trigger wires, turning the city into a nightmare of booby-traps. According to Iraqi officials, this is what’s allowing a relatively small number number of them to keep control of cities despite being massively outnumbered. (I am not there. I do not know. Truth is the first casualty of war, etc. But Col. Steve Warren, the spokesman for the coalition, stands by the assessment.)
The Ramadi operation must be successful to expel ISIS, but the question is how deeply involved Iranian proxy militias are or will be. Again, I couldn’t possibly say from here, but this is the assessment from Institute for the Study of War:
[C]ontinued ISF success may lead to greater interference from Iranian proxy militias, some of which maintain a presence around the Habaniya base east of Ramadi but do not participate in Ramadi operations. Nujaba Movement, an Iranian proxy militia, claimed to have killed ISIS members during Ramadi operations, but there has been no indication of Nujaba Movement units are positioned near the front lines in Ramadi. Proxy militias will likely release similar disinformation in the future to discredit the ISF. PM Abadi is facing immense pressure from Iranian proxies to reject foreign support, particularly from the Coalition, in the wake of a unilateral deployment of Turkish troops to the outskirts of Mosul on December 4. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s December 9 proposal to deploy attack helicopters and “accompanying advisers” to assist the IA in recapturing Ramadi could offset this pressure by showing strong support for the ISF. U.S. support will also expedite the swift recapture of the city, underscoring the importance and effectiveness of the U.S. in the anti-ISIS fight.
I would guess that this reflects our strategic thinking, and I’d guess this is why yesterday, Ash Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he’s willing to send American troops closer to the front lines in Anbar province. Their deployment, he said, would be contingent upon a request from Abadi. Would Abadi request this, given the pressure he’s under? I don’t know. It’s possible that the Russians have so spooked him that he might.
At the same time, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to submit a bill to bypass Baghdad and directly arm the peshmerga of the Kurdish Regional Government. The would effectively cut Abadi government out of the discussion. The indignant Iraqi Embassy pointed out — correctly, as it happens — that this is more about symbolism than immediate military strategy:
Even if the Foreign Affairs Committee approves this legislation, it must travel a long path in order to be enacted into law. In addition to being approved by the Foreign Affairs Committee, it would have to pass the full U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the full U.S. Senate, which for bills of this nature typically occurs only by unanimous vote of the Senate. As a final step, President Obama would have to sign the bill into law.
Nonetheless, the symbolism is sufficiently powerful that Shiite militias have reportedly threatened to attack US forces in Iraq in response.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin has kindly offered us a readout of Putin’s meeting with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, which I’m sure is a transparent, unvarnished glimpse into Russian strategic thinking:
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: How is work proceeding, Mr Shoigu? You and I will have to discuss preparations for the annual meeting of the [Defence Ministry] Board on the year’s results, but now let us get down to our current matters, please.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu: Mr President, in line with your instruction, on December 5 we increased the intensity of our strikes and prepared and launched a massive aviation and missile attack using Tu-22 strategic bombers from the territory of the Russian Federation. For the first time we launched Kalibr cruise missiles from the Rostov-on-Don submarine based in the Mediterranean Sea. …
From the Hmeymim airfield, we actively worked on territories where militants who shot our pilot are based. As a result, all these areas have been liberated, and the Syrian Army’s special operation forces…
Vladimir Putin: Searching for the crew?
Sergei Shoigu: Yes. The Syrian service members searched the territory, detected our aircraft’s crash site, and all these bandits were leaving so fast they did not have time to take anything from the aircraft, so we discovered a parametric recorder, which we brought here and which I would like to show you.
Vladimir Putin: With regard to strikes from a submarine. We certainly need to analyse everything that is happening on the battlefield, how the weapons work. Both the Calibre missiles and the Kh-101 rockets are generally showing very good results. We now see that these are new, modern and highly effective high-precision weapons that can be equipped either with conventional or special nuclear warheads.
Naturally, we do not need that in fighting terrorists, and I hope we will never need it. But overall, this speaks to our significant progress in terms of improving weaponry and equipment being supplied to the Russian army and navy.
As for the parametric recorder, let’s look at it now. Have you opened it?
Sergei Shoigu: No, Mr President.
Vladimir Putin: I will ask you not to open it for now, and to open it only together with foreign experts and carefully record everything. As I understand, the parametric logger will give us the opportunity to clearly understand the full trajectory of the Su-24 from the location and moment that it took off to the moment it fell – its speed, altitude, all the turns made during the flight. In other words, we can understand where it actually was and where it suffered that felon blow from the Turkish Air Force, which we have now discussed many times.
And I want to qualify this right away. Of course, we need to know this information. But regardless of what we learn, our attitude toward what was done by the Turkish authorities will not change. I repeat, we treated Turkey not only as a friendly nation but as an ally in the fight against terrorism and nobody expected this treacherous stab in the back.
(No, I’m not making that dialogue up. I couldn’t.)
This is, unfortunately, now a world war. We can and will win it, because we have to. But what a lamentable series of blunders have led to this. What a high price we — and the world — pay when we make mistakes in foreign policy.
Published in Foreign Policy, General, Islamist Terrorism
That expresses exactly how I feel.
Ted Cruz said somewhere in the last day or so that the Middle East would have been better off if we hadn’t removed Saddam Hussein.
It is shocking to hear such an ignorant statement from someone running for president.
It is doubly shocking for someone whose family fled from Batista and Castro. Good lord.
What would this have to do with it?
Saddam Hussein was a bloodthirsty sadistic murderer. Estimates of how many Iraqi people he and his sons were responsible for torturing and/or murdering range from 150,000 to 300,000, depending on whom you ask.
It is a good thing that the United States got rid of him.
As for the Cruz family’s experience in Cuba, it was not good under Batista and Castro, and that was why they emigrated to the United States. I would think Cruz would be more sympathetic to the Iraqi people.
You want American soldiers to die instead? Your sons?
I think CB believes that Russia is our opponent here.
Well you have the perspective the rest of us lack, good Sir, – especially about the quality and worthiness of the Iraqis people experiencing this travail – so we hope if you ever want to vent you vent here. Thank you for your service.
You quoted Ted Cruz as saying that “the Middle East” would have been better off (had we not killed Saddam). Not Iraq but the whole ME. That statement might very well be true. Is ISIS not as bad as SH? Would Assad have been fighting and killing his fellow countrymen in Syria in such numbers and with such brutality? Would Iran have this extra lattitude for greater mischief that it has now?
And then it might equally be claimed that the US would be better off had we saved our money and soldiers lives, and even preserved a healthier domestic political climate from all the acrimony engendered by all that waste.
No worries. We have Montenegro now.
Well, it might be interesting to bandy this around a bit in this forum, because when I first heard this comment, rather than read anything sinister into the message like you two folks did, I almost stood up and cheered. Because a perfect response to any sizable terrorist attack against the West orchestrated by ISIS is to nuke them – provide we can find them in sufficient numbers to justify the collateral damage. I could see us getting together with the Russians and agreeing to split the job, they get to nuke 2-3 ISIS concentrations, and we likewise. That way any world condemnation would be equally split.
This strategy, of course, would be only triggered by the event of ISIS inflicting a sizable attack against Western citizens, something we should have contingency plans for by now.
PS. You are right-on in intimating that getting the JLENS technology to work is very, very important for us – for the reason you mentioned.
That isn’t the criterion our country has usually used for going to war. It’s not the reason that Colin Powell gave to the United Nations.
I don’t want to go all Henry Kissinger on you, but it is beyond the capability of the United States to go and fix the things you mention. We can certainly do some good, but war is a blunt instrument not well designed for fixing things.
How do you know he is not sympathetic to the Iraqi people?