The U.S. military will send Apache attack helicopters and additional troops to assist the Iraqi army in the fight to retake the city of Mosul from the Islamic State group, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Monday.
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The US has agreed to deploy more than 200 additional troops to Iraq and to send eight Apache helicopters for the first time into the fight against Islamic State (IS) forces in Iraq.
Iraq’s northern city Mosul was overrun during an ISIS offensive in June 2014 and has become the group’s stronghold.
“It does not change the basic elements of the strategy, which is that this has to be a fight that is led by local forces with the support and assistance of the United States and our coalition partners”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
On a visit to Baghdad this week, Carter described the decision to deploy another 217 soldiers as “more of the same”, in the sense that it aligns with the US strategy of providing more support to Iraqi forces as they gain momentum, while not doing the fighting for them.
“The Iraqis are not shy about asking for what they need”, a senior defense official said. “Everything we are doing now, and everything we do to accelerate the fight, is consistent with this approach”. Earlier, Obama had been saying that Mosul would fall this year.
Obama has agreed to send 217 more US troops, bringing the authorized total to 4,087, and to let them “embed at the battalion level”, a step closer to the fighting than previously, Captain Jeff Davis, a Defense Department spokesman, told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday. “Continuing to ask our military to do more with less is irresponsible and is placing the lives of our service members at increased risk”, McCain said.
On the other hand, the USA offer to fly Apache attack helicopters in support of an Iraqi advance toward Mosul is a significant move, Martin said, noting that it would be the first time the Iraqis have accepted that kind of support since US forces returned to Iraq in 2014.
However, the actual number of US troops in Iraq has routinely exceeded 5,000 for the last several months due to overlaps in troop rotations and the deployment of personnel on temporary assignments that do not count against the official total, according to USA military spokesmen.
The president said the U.S.is seeing the benefits of its military operations in the region.
American and Iraqi commanders want the advisers, who the officials say will not be on the actual front lines, to move closer to the fighting so they can provide timely, tactical guidance to the Iraqis as they prepare for the long-awaited assault on Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, which was seized by the Islamic State in 2014.
He has said that “the success of the campaign against (ISIS) in Iraq does depend upon political and economic progress as well”, and that “it’s important that we continue to support (Abadi)”.
The decision to enlarge the U.S. military force was made in close concert with Iraqi authorities, said Carter, who met United States commanders and Iraqi officials including Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on a visit to Baghdad.
Rampant violence was eventually brought under control, and American forces withdrew at the end of 2011 after talks on a residual troop presence broke down over Washington’s insistence that they have parliament-approved immunity.
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U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter speaks at the closing ceremony of a U.S.
