An Iraqi soldier patrols after clashes between Iraqi forces and Islamic State group fighters in Ramadi, Iraq, on November 20, 2015.
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Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee that tough fighting remains ahead and if requested by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi (HY’-dahr ahl ah-BAH’-dee), the US will provide helicopters and advisers to help finish the job. The vast majority are focused on train, advise and assist missions, but during the past several months, some American advisers have been moved outside the wire and closer to Iraqi-led combat operations.
“In the near-term, it would be a significant undertaking that, realistically, we would embark upon largely by ourselves; and it would be ceding our comparative advantage of special forces, mobility, and firepower instead fighting on the enemy’s terms”, Carter said.
In Anbar, Maj. Gen. Ismail Al Mahlawi, the head of Iraqi military operations in the province, said his troops were readying to push “towards the government complex and the Houz area” in central Ramadi.
Pentagon chief urges allies to intensify actions, asking them to deploy special operations forces to fight the group.
Since the outset of U.S.-led coalition campaign against the IS, now in control of wide swaths of territories both in Syria and Iraq, the Obama administration had been sticking to its original strategy of training local forces to conduct ground assaults against the group, together with launching air raids.
Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, scoffed at that presumption, saying he didn’t understand Carter’s logic.
“They are trying to flee the city”, he said, citing residents who have been unable to escape, “we believe there are only 300 fighters left”. “From the start, our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them”. Despite their initial participation in the air campaign, however, Gulf allies are “disinclined” to provide ground troops, particularly as they are preoccupied with the war in Yemen, Carter said.
“Like stepping up the number of coalition air sorties, however, it also risks being one more step in a process of strategic incrementalism where the Obama administration reacts to every new problem with ISIS by making a limited increase in military force that is too little and too late”, Cordesman wrote recently, using another acronym for the Islamic State, which has been branded a terrorist group by the USA government.
Clearing the city of booby trap bombs and holding the ground from Islamic State could still prove challenging for the ISF.
“U.S. commanders estimate (the Islamic State) will still control Mosul at the end of next year”, McCain said he was told on a recent visit to the region.
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“They’re holding civilians as hostages, and as human shields, and so we want to do this in a very careful and deliberate way”, he said.
