U.S. to send more troops to Iraq ahead of Mosul offensive
The
United States is stepping up its military campaign against Islamic
State by sending hundreds more troops to assist Iraqi forces in an
expected push on the city of Mosul, the militants' largest stronghold,
later this year.
U.S.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter made the announcement on Monday during a
visit to Baghdad, where he met U.S. commanders, as well as Iraqi Prime
Minister Haider al-Abadi and Defence Minister Khaled al-Obeidi.
Most
of the 560 additional troops will work out of Qayara air base, which
Iraqi forces recaptured from Islamic State militants and plan to use as a
staging ground for an offensive to retake Mosul, Iraq's second biggest
city.
Government
forces said on Saturday they had recovered the air base, about 60 km
(40 miles) from the northern city, with air support from the U.S.-led
military coalition.
"With
these additional U.S. forces I'm describing today, we'll bring unique
capability to the campaign and provide critical support to the Iraqi
forces at a key moment in the fight," Carter told a gathering of U.S.
troops in Baghdad.
The new troops were "ready to come" and it would be a matter of "days and weeks, not months," he said.
Abadi has pledged to retake Mosul by the end of the year.
TIMING
However, there is still debate in Washington about the timing of a move on Mosul.
Some
U.S. and allied military and intelligence officials warn that aside
from its elite counter terrorism force, the Iraqi military is not ready
to take on Islamic State militants in Mosul without significant
assistance from the Kurdish peshmerga and Shi'ite militias.
Moreover,
Baghdad and Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region, do not
appear to have agreed on a plan for Mosul, and any significant
participation by Kurdish or Shi'ite forces in a Mosul campaign, one U.S.
official said, "would create a whole new set of problems that the Abadi
government is incapable of managing, or even mitigating."Separately,
the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services
Committee said on Monday that President Barack Obama must ask Congress
for additional funds to pay for the deployment of more troops to Iraq,
as Congress and the White House debate defense spending amid mandatory
budget cuts.
Still,
the latest U.S. force increase comes less than three months after
Washington announced it would dispatch about 200 more soldiers to
accompany Iraqi troops advancing towards Mosul.Carter told reporters
ahead of Monday's trip that the United States would now help turn Qayara
into a logistics hub.
The
airfield is "one of the hubs from which ... Iraqi security forces,
accompanied and advised by us as needed, will complete the southernmost
envelopment of Mosul," he said.Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, commander of
the coalition against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, said
the additional troops would fill a variety of roles.
"(They
are) coming in to help expand the base at Qayara West airfield into a
node that can support the Iraqi security forces as they move forward
with the Mosul operation, and it’ll be an operational air base."U.S. forces have already visited Qayara to check on its condition, and advisors can offer specialized engineering support in Mosul, where Islamic State has blown up bridges across the Tigris, U.S. officials said.
Iraqi forces were already improving the base's perimeter in case of a counterattack from the nearby town of Qayara, which Islamic State militants still hold, another U.S. official in Baghdad said.
The
recapture of Mosul, Islamic State's de facto Iraqi capital, from which
its leader declared a modern-day caliphate in 2014, would be a major
boost for the plans by Abadi and the United States to weaken the
militant group.NO FOLLOW-UP PLAN
Still,
retaking Mosul without a plan to restore security, basic services and
governance and the money and personnel to implement it immediately would
repeat the mistake the Bush administration made in 2003, by ousting
Saddam Hussein with no plan for installing a new government, said three
officials from the U.S. and Britain.
And
as Islamic State militants have lost part of their self-proclaimed
caliphate in Iraq and Syria, they increasingly have turned to suicide
attacks. These included a bombing in the Iraqi capital last week that
left nearly 300 people dead, the most lethal bombing of its kind since
the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
U.S.
and Iraqi officials have touted such bombings as proof that battlefield
setbacks are weakening Islamic State, but critics say a global uptick
in suicide attacks attributed to the group suggests the opposite.
"In
fact, it demonstrates (Islamic State's) strength and long-term survival
skills," terrorism expert Hassan Hassan wrote in a recent article. "The
threat is not going away."
(Additional reporting by John Walcott and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Bernadette Baum)
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