I've had Paul Davis Op-ed's here previously. Below is another one.Is there a coming fight for Mosul? The answer is: Yes
While the Iranian backed Shia militias are working with the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to push ISIS out of Ramadi ....( Coincidentally the US "inadvertently" killed Iraqi soldiers" ) little has been said about the liberation of Mosul.
Kurdish presidential Chief of Staff Fuad Hussein recently announced an upcoming meeting between the Kurdistan Regional government, Turkey and the United States to discuss strategy in the fight against ISIS. It is interesting to note that while Hussein said this would be with the full knowledge of the Iraqi government they will not be attending. Mosul is likely to be on the agenda and while Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq the Iraqi government has shown little interest in its emancipation.
An upcoming, meeting between KRG, Turkey and the US to discuss strategy regarding the liberation of Mosul. But, the Iraqi government in Baghdad won't be attending. According to Paul Davis "the Iraqi government has shown little interest in it's emancipation" Utter nonsense! Mosul is an important city. Oil. Water. Strategic. There is no way in heck Baghdad is not interested in its "emancipation" Consider the PKK /YPG vs KRG dynamic when continuing to read...Paul Davis continues...
" The Peshmerga would be the best chance, in conjunction with the ISF, to achieve this goal but the Peshmerga are not trained to do so. To fight in Mosul is to fight in urban terrain.
* U.S. To Provide Arms Soon To Iraqi Kurds To Fight IS The Peshmerga allied with ISF would be able to achieve the taking back of Mosul. But the ISF is busy in Ramadi, and the US is busily killing the ISF too. With the ISF out of the picture, what will happen with the KRG Peshmerga? Obviously they will not be able to take the city without assistance. This may have been where Turkey had come into the picture when they moved tanks & troops into the Mosul area, in cooperation with Barzani.Until the US intervened: What’s Behind the Iraq/Turkey/ Mosul Spat? Mosul is still today in Iraq!
So Biden's call, which resulted in a limited Turkish withdrawal, sets back the removal of ISIS from Mosul. If the US was truly at war with ISIS and really wanted Turkey to participate in ridding the globe of ISIS, why request or demand a troop withdrawal from such a strategic area?
My suspicions are the Barzani Kurd KRG allied with Turkish troops were going to move on Mosul- Hoping to kick ISIS to the curb and block the favoured PKK! The US put a stop to that.Back to the Paul Davis piece. Picking up at fighting in urban terrain.
City fighting is bloody and costly and time consuming for any army. Most armies are trained in open warfare not in what the west calls “Military Operations on Urban Terrain” (MOUT).Mosul had a pre ISIS civilian population of 1 million and an estimated 600,000 today. Mosul is a much larger city than Ramadi and has been under ISIS occupation longer. Tikrit was almost depopulated allowing airstrikes on targets inside the city. Ramadi is proving problematic for airstrikes attempting to avoid civilian casualties. Fighting in Mosul will be done house to house with little air support as targets will be hard to detect and ISIS will mix in with and hid behind civilians knowing the US and coalition air forces will not knowingly bomb civilian targets.Once inside the city Iraqi forces will find IEDs and other traps everywhere. ISIS fighters will be well concealed and in covered positions. As fighting proceeds street to street and house to house, every car may contain a bomb and every house may be rigged. As casualties mount the Iraqi forces may, and the Iranian backed Shia militias will, begin to slow and then stop fighting. Should the better trained and motivated Peshmerga forces be involved in fighting inside of Mosul, they will probably continue to fight before they are cut off and find themselves alone. It is most likely that the Peshmerga will be used as a blocking force to contain any ISIS fighters trying to escape Mosul. Peshmerga training and equipment is more designed for this.
If the Peshmerga can't fight house to house- Who can?Paul Davis tells us all who can. It is the PKK/YPG alliance or as like to call them KurdIShIS.They can go in and win yet another 'stunning victory' against ISIS. As they have on oh so many occasions. Easy enough of a win, really. When at the top is the one ring to rule them all. The one umbrella that shelters all the alphabet terrorists- NATO
The most reasonable action, if any, to come from the tripartite meeting will be to leverage the recent Kurdish victory in Shingal to continue to isolate Mosul from ISIS and cut off supplies while forces in Syria continue to pressure Raqqa. Operations in Raqqa will also be mostly Kurdish as the YPG solidifies its gains and presses it defense.
Don't recognize the name Shingal? It is Sinjar. Or it was Sinjar. Sinjar, Iraq.
Sinjar (Arabic: سنجار, Sinjar; Latin: Singara), also known as Shingal[2] (Kurdish:
Paul Davis is using the Kurdish name for this freshly annexed territory. MSM and chicken little alt media didn't even mention that this territory was forcibly removed from Iraq. Yes, by force! NATO backed Kurdish militias and US airstrikes. However, all my readers were duly informed more then a month ago! Sinjar was disputed territory. Baghdad wanted to hold onto it. But the US and it's Kurdish militia terrorists PKK/YPG and the newest Yazidi militia trained by the PKK took it over and it's gone from the country known as Iraq. As I mentioned November 13/2015- Creating a crucial supply route and annexing Iraq's territory.Flashback: Sinjar: Creating a Crucial Supply Route for KurdIShIS & Annexing Iraqi Territory
Paul Davis "Turkey has the only military capable of supporting the needed actions. Should Turkey begin to play a major role the continuing deterioration of the region will be exacerbated.
A new strategy is needed and a new Middle East will emerge from it. The proposed meeting in Erbil is a good start in this realization but the new map cannot be drawn by Turkey and the United States.
Paul Davis knows that Turkey will want to participate to block the Kurdish state from being created and that can't be allowed. "Should Turkey begin to play a major role the continuing deterioration of the region will be exacerbated"So a minor role would be acceptable with hand picked participants no doubt Paul Davis specifically cites the fact that Turkey cannot participate in redrawing the Middle East-He already knows the US is. Paul Davis doesn't tell us who should draw that map. Only who shouldn't. Very curious.
Kurdistan aka “Second Israel”- Ethnic Cleansing the Indigenous of the Middle East