The battlefield momentum in Iraq and Syria has shifted against Islamic State, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday, but the global community must now also confront the challenge of stabilizing newly liberated areas.
Advertisement
“The momentum has shifted”, Kerry told an worldwide conference to raise funds for Iraq.
“When the city of Mosul is freed from Islamic State, we will face enormous humanitarian, societal and political challenges, just as we saw when Fallujah was liberated”, he said.
The United Nations has estimated that Iraq needs a total of $4.5 billion in humanitarian assistance.
“The military campaign will have achieved a great short-term success, but perhaps little else of enduring impact”, she said.
The U.S. expects to raise at least $2 billion from governments around the world to help Iraq as it retakes territory from Islamic State militants.
The U.S. State Department says extra money is urgently needed because the United Nations Iraq Humanitarian Response Plan of US$861 million is only 36 per cent funded.
Iraq has a humanitarian crisis of large proportions, with an estimated 3.3 million people displaced by the war with IS.
This month, Iraqi forces backed by U.S. air power retook Qayara air base south of Mosul, which will be turned into a logistics hub for the main assault on the city.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi plans to install a military governor for Mosul after ISIS is expelled, several sources said.
The meeting of defense ministers at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington, D.C., will be the fourth time that U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has convened an anti-ISIS coalition meeting.
A broader meeting on a US-led campaign to fight Islamic State militants will be held on Thursday. “It’s an octopus, it’s a snake with many heads”, said Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders. They will need shelter, food and water, and sanitation for three to 12 months, depending on the extent of the city’s destruction.
The extremist group captured Mosul in the summer of 2014. Masrour Barzani, head of the regional security council, called it “a travesty” on Twitter.
Advertisement
At Wednesday’s meeting at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, Pentagon officials will present plans for upcoming battles in Iraq, where local forces are preparing to confront militants in the city of Mosul, and in Syria, where US -backed fighters hope to eventually isolate militants in their de facto capital of Raqqa. The U.N. estimates that there are now 10 million Iraqis in need of assistance and that number is likely to exceed 13 million by year’s end.
