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US to send 560 more troops to Iraq to establish staging hub against Isis
US to send 560 more troops to Iraq to prepare for attack on Isis stronghold
(about 2 hours later)
The United States will send 560 more troops to Iraq to help establish a newly retaken air base as a staging hub for the long-awaited battle to recapture Mosul from Islamic State militants, the defense secretary, Ash Carter, said Monday during an unannounced visit to the country.
Buoyed by recapturing Falluja from the Islamic State and the seizure of an airbase on Saturday, US and Iraqi officials are intensifying plans for an assault on Mosul, the terror group’s last urban stronghold in Iraq.
Most of the new troops will be devoted to the build-up of the Qayara air base, about 40 miles south of Mosul, and they include engineers, logistics personnel and other forces, Carter said. They will help Iraqi security forces planning to encircle and eventually retake the key city.
The US will send 560 more troops to the newly taken base, around 40 miles south of Mosul, which will be used as a staging point for the coming battle that officials suggest is likely to be launched later this year.
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The fight for the country’s second-biggest city will define the fate of Isis in Iraq. The group emerged from civil war more than a decade ago and soared to prominence when it seized large parts of the country in mid-2014.
“These additional US forces will bring unique capabilities to the campaign and provide critical enabler support to Iraqi forces at a key moment in the fight,” Carter said, according to prepared remarks.
He revealed Barack Obama’s decision as he spoke to about 120 troops – many of whom were members of the 101st airborne division, known as the Screaming Eagles – in a building at Baghdad’s airport, shielded from scorching desert. The increase brings the total US force authorization in Iraq to 4,647, and comes just three months after Obama’s last troop addition.
Carter told reporters earlier that US advisers were prepared to accompany Iraqi battalions if needed, as those units begin the siege of the key northern city. It’s not clear when exactly that will happen. US officials said a team of American troops went into Qayara for a quick site assessment Sunday and left.
One potential job is helping Iraqi troops use highly technical bridging capabilities to get across the river into Mosul.
Carter called this weekend’s recapture of Qayara a key strategic victory. Speaking to reporters before he arrived in Baghdad, he said the air base would be a hub from which “Iraqi security forces, accompanied and advised by us as needed, will complete the southernmost envelopment of Mosul. That’s its strategic role, and that’s its strategic importance.”
He likened the air base to how forces used the eastern city of Makhmour. There, US troops set up a fire base for artillery to support advancing Iraqi units. Marine Staff Sgt Louis F Cardin was killed at the fire base in March in an Isis rocket attack.Iraqi forces retook the air base from Isis on Saturday. The prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, hailed the success as a key step toward Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Residents there should “get ready for the liberation of their areas”, al-Abadi said.
US officials said American advisers were already working at brigade level with Iraqi special operations forces, but they have not yet accompanied them on operations.
They weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and demanded anonymity.
Obama in April allowed US troops to assist Iraqi forces at brigade and battalion levels, where they could be at greater risk closer to the battle. They would still be behind front lines. They previously had been limited to advising at headquarters and division levels, further from the battle.
Carter is expected to meet al-Abadi; the minister of defense, Khalid al-Obeidi; and Lt Gen Sean MacFarland, the top US military commander for the Isis fight. The main topic, he said, would be the next steps in the military campaign, with a particular focus on Mosul.
Related: Iraq war still casts a long shadow over a dangerous and deeply unstable region
Related: Iraq war still casts a long shadow over a dangerous and deeply unstable region
MacFarland told reporters during a press conference that the new forces would begin flowing into Iraq “relatively soon” and said they have already gotten their so-called warning orders to deploy.
Since capitulating to Isis in Mosul, Iraqi forces have gradually regrouped and have taken back Tikrit, Ramadi and Falluja. All battles were strongly backed by US-led airstrikes.
Isis captured Mosul in the summer of 2014. It has used the city as a main headquarters since.
The boost in troop numbers takes to 4,647 the number of US forces who have returned to Iraq to fight Isis. As Iraqi forces, aided by Shia irregulars, have gained traction on the battlefield, American advisers have started embedding with Iraqi brigades and battalions, drawing the advisers closer to the fighting.
Carter’s daylong visit to Iraq comes on the heels of the two-day Nato summit where allies agreed to expand their military support for the war.
In a visit to Baghdad on Monday, the US defence secretary, Ash Carter, said: “These additional US forces will bring unique capabilities to the campaign and provide critical enabler support to Iraqi forces at a key moment in the fight. Iraqi security forces, accompanied and advised by us as needed, will complete the southernmost envelopment of Mosul. That’s its strategic role, and that’s its strategic importance.”
In addition to Qayara, Iraqi government troops recently have retaken Ramadi, Fallujah and a number of towns along the route to Mosul.
The fight for Mosul will be the most complex in the campaign to claw back territory lost to Isis. The city is surrounded by villages from all approaches and the group has consolidated much of its leadership and many of its diehard fighters amid the city’s dense urban landscape.
But Isis militants still control large swaths of the country and continue to launch deadly attacks, including a massive suicide bombing last week at Baghdad’s bustling commercial area of Karada. Isis has increasingly resorted to ad hoc attacks, including the bombing in the Iraqi capital last week, which left nearly 300 people dead – the most lethal bombing of its kind since the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
Kurdish Peshmerga forces are also part of attack planning and have taken up positions to the north and south-east of the city. The Peshmerga and Iraqi troops occupy the same frontline near Makhmour, around 50 miles south-east of Mosul. As they have inched forward, both have been heavily supported from the air and by US artillery fired from a mountain behind them.
Iraqi troops say air support was decisive in the fight for Falluja, where up to 1,000 Isis fighters held out for six weeks against a sustained ground assault.
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“The warplanes were perfect,” said Capt Ali Kazwini, an interior ministry official in Falluja. “If it wasn’t for them, we would still be here a long time.”
After being criticised for being too slow and sparing over the past two years, air support is proving decisive on the battlefields of Iraq, where the swath of the country held by Isis has dropped from more than 30% in late 2014 to an estimated 12% now.
In recent months in particular, Isis units have been battered by precision strikes that have destroyed weapons caches, bases and large numbers of fighters. Sunni leaders in Iraq, however, have cautioned that although Isis faces defeat militarily, it will remain a drawcard for Sunnis disenfranchised over the 13 years since the ousting of Saddam Hussein, and who have since faced a political process dominated by Iraq’s Shia majority.
