Pentagon planners have cautioned that the battle for Mosul could present a mixed picture for war planners, with Islamic State likely to retreat in some areas of the city only to reinforce in others.
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Increasingly, and not without irony, Iraq has become the bright spot in Obama’s campaign against the Islamic State group, though profound challenges remain.
“We’ve always believed that progress on the battlefield needs to be accompanied by continued political progress among Iraq’s different communities”, Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said ahead of the meeting scheduled for Monday. Along with the de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa, it’s one of two strongholds that the USA and allied forces plan to pressure in simultaneous assaults that it hopes will cripple the terrorist group’s military power in the region.
The northern Iraqi city, once the county’s second-largest with more than two million people, has been occupied by the Islamic State for more than two years.
The top USA general later said Iraqi forces would be ready in October, but the timing was up to Abadi.
“We are making good progress”, he told AFP.
The group has been working hard this month to dig a two-meter by two-meter trench along the city’s perimeter and position oil tanks nearby to create a river of fire that would impede advancing troops and hinder aerial surveillance, according to senior Iraq military officers, Mosul residents, and local officials based outside the city.
The U.S. views the Shiite militia as proxies of Shiite Iran, and has pressured Mr. Abadi to sideline them during major battles, including Mosul.
The city fell to the jihadists in 2014 after Iraq’s army and police dropped their weapons and fled, despite having received billions of dollars in aid since a US -led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. And in a phone call with President Kenyan Uhuru Kenyatta, Obama talked about refugee issues, terrorism and the upcoming elections.
Vice President Joe Biden will meet Abadi Thursday.
U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday that the battle against the Islamic State militant group in Mosul would be challenging but he was confident it would move forward rapidly.
The United States alone now has 4,460 troops in the country, backed by hundreds more from Western allies, advising and assisting Iraqi and Kurdish forces. Still, Obama said he and Abadi were confident that Iraq’s military and the US -led coalition could make progress in Mosul “fairly rapidly”, adding that he was hoping for progress by year-end.
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He said the operation must drive out the ISIS group but also reassure the populace so that the “extremist ideology born out of desperation will not return”.
