WASHINGTON (April 19, 2016) —
Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the next phase of the fight
against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant during a troop talk Monday in Baghdad.
The next steps in the anti-ISIL fight were authorized by
President Barack Obama and coordinated with Haider al-Abadi, Iraqi prime
minister, and Masoud Barzani, president of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region
and leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, as well as other leaders,
Carter told the troops.
“First we’re going to place additional advisers with the Iraqi
security forces, now down to brigade and battalion headquarters levels.
Second, we're going to make available attack helicopters in support of
the [Iraqi forces] and ongoing efforts to envelop and then retake Mosul.
It's an important capability,” he said.
Carter is on an extended international trip that has included India, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. The secretary also will visit Saudi Arabia and participate in the U.S. Gulf Cooperation Council defense meeting.
Supporting the Mosul Fight
DoD also will send more high-mobility artillery rocket systems,
or HIMARS, to support the Iraqi ground offensive to retake Mosul, and
will provide a $415 million package of financial assistance to the
Peshmerga in response to a request from the Kurdistan regional
government for economic assistance.
Carter said the Peshmerga have been one of the most effective fighting forces against ISIL.
Yesterday, Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said the
timing of the distribution of Peshmerga funds is still to be determined,
and that “it's part of ongoing U.S. support for all Iraqis in the
fight, which has included $3.1 billion in assistance to the Iraqi
government to support its counter-ISIL efforts.”
In Baghdad yesterday, Carter said the new actions against ISIL
are coming “on top of what we're already doing. We're providing air
power, command and control, other fire, training, sustainment [and]
logistics,” and he noted that as part of the next steps, coalition
troops -- those already in Iraq and the 217 new troops coming in -- will
be used in different ways.
Flexible Logistics
During a media briefing yesterday in Baghdad, Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, commander of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, said the character of the operation in Iraq is evolving into a maneuver fight.
“For us to enable that maneuver fight will require us to be
able to have a little bit more flexibility, and one of those ways will
be logistically,” he said. “The Iraqi security forces are going to be
operating at extended distances from their bases, their depots … so
we're going to have to provide them with a different kind of logistics
support to keep their vehicles rolling and operational as they close
with the enemy.”
He said the 217 new advisers would be doing “largely what we've
been doing all along, which is providing the kind of military advice
and access to enablers that help our partners on the ground against the
enemy -- so access to coalition fires and logistics support, things of
that nature.”
On the upcoming fight to take Mosul back from ISIL, MacFarland
said Mosul will differ from operations that took place around the
retaking of Ramadi.
Linear Operation
“Ramadi was what we call a non-contiguous battlefield, and we
were operating out of … forward operating bases like Taqaddum and
Al-Asad. The Iraqi security forces headquarters are all located in those
facilities, which were largely surrounded by enemy-held territory and
received occasional indirect fire as a result,” the general explained.
Mosul, he said, will be “more of a linear type of an operation
-- more contiguous -- and therefore those headquarters are pushed out of
those bases, and in order to continue to provide the kind of assistance
that we have been providing we have to be able to go to them.”
Also, Mosul is four or five times the size of Ramadi and a lot
farther away from Iraqi bases that provide logistics support, MacFarland
added.
“It’s an order of magnitude more challenging than Ramadi was,
so obviously we were able to take Ramadi back without the additional
enablers. Mosul is going to be more difficult,” the general said, “hence
the additional support.”