Iraq's army making slow progress on Mosul, but quick victory unlikely
To Western eyes, the Iraqi offensive on Mosul to oust the Islamic State militants seems slow and laborious, but that’s the way Iraq’s army has historically fought.
With the exception of its highly regarded counterterror forces, Iraq’s military will follow its campaign plan started more than two weeks ago. What it will probably not do is change that strategy on the fly to exploit enemy weaknesses as the fighting unfolds, raising concerns that Iraq's military may miss opportunities for a quicker and more decisive victory over the Islamic State.
Iraq's top-down hierarchy means only senior officers make decisions, which can take a long time and lead to delays. Faster action, for example, might have stopped the Islamic State from fleeing in previous battles in Ramadi and other parts of western Iraq.
“In modern warfare, armies do best when you have people who take initiative,” said Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
Iraq's forces this week reached the edges of Mosul, and elite counterterrorism units have begun clearing operations inside the city. Iraqi forces will encounter the toughest fighting when they get deeper inside the city, where they will confront the heaviest concentration of obstacles and fighters.
“The hardest part of the urban fight has yet to come,” said Michael Eisenstadt, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The Pentagon has said Iraqi forces are proceeding according to plan since the offensive began Oct. 17. “The campaign is on track and moving forward,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said this week. The Pentagon has also said the troops need to move cautiously and deliberately because of an estimated 1 million civilians in the city.
But some analysts believe Iraq's military leaders may be too wedded to the campaign plan.
The U.S. military encourages its junior leaders to make decisions without always seeking approval in order to take quick action.
U.S. aircraft to block ISIL militants fleeing Mosul in Iraq
“What modern warfare is about is not a general coming up with a master strategy,” Pollack said. “It’s allowing junior officers to create opportunities and exploit them.”
The Iraqis proved that concept works during the summer in Fallujah, a Sunni city west of Baghdad. Iraq’s military, spearheaded by its counterterror forces, rapidly cleared the city, catching Islamic State militants by surprise.
The quick victory forced the militants to flee rapidly, and coalition aircraft pummeled them in one of the most devastating air attacks of the war against the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS. At least 348 militants were killed and more than 200 vehicles were destroyed, the U.S.-led coalition said.
Iraq’s counterterror forces have proven capable of exercising initiative on the battlefield, but they are a small force already heavily used in the fight against the Islamic State.
“The counterterrorism service forces are dying to push harder,” said Michael Knights, another analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “We have to hold them back.”
Mosul is the largest offensive yet against the Islamic State, and the campaign will depend heavily on conventional troops, in addition to several thousand lightly armed counterterrorism forces. About 30,000 Iraqi troops are involved in the Mosul operation, including a large armored division moving up from the south.
The top-down structure of Iraq’s military is typical of armies in the region and reflects an educational system that doesn’t emphasize independent thinking, Pollack said.
By contrast, the United States has developed a corps of non-commissioned officers and junior leaders who are encouraged to make decisions at lower levels, without constantly seeking approval from senior leaders.
The United States had made headway in reshaping the Iraqi military after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. American officers helped identify and promote capable young leaders.
But after the United States left Iraq in 2011, then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki fired many professional officers and replaced them with political loyalists. Three years later, Islamic State militants stormed into Iraq, seizing Mosul and other cities. Iraq's military collapsed in the face of the Islamic State onslaught.
The departure of U.S. advisers led to a decline in the quality of Iraq’s military, said Jim Lechner, a retired Army officer who served in Iraq. “You can’t sustain it unless you’re there on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
U.S. advisers returned two years ago and improved training Iraq’s military for individual tasks, such as clearing minefields and finding improvised explosives. But improving leadership and military culture takes longer.
Some analysts say Iraqi forces may lack an ability to improvise, but that is not necessarily a weakness in this war. It means the movement of Iraqi forces is more predictable and allows pilots to easily identify the front lines, Knights said.
A situation where units were taking their own initiative could lead to chaos, since Iraq's forces don't have sophisticated systems for tracking where all their troops are positioned.
“We just want them to move forward steadily and let us know where they are,” Knights said. “This is like World War I. We need a very defined forward line of troops.”