Current Isis Update

The United States has just issued an aerial assault on Tikrit. This aerial assault will include 17 air strikes and it will focus on taking out certain parts of the city so that a ground invasion may go smoothly for our Iraqi comrades. Reports showed that the airstrikes targeted three ISIS checkpoints, two bridges, two staging points and other targets like a road block as well as a command and control facility. These attempts to dismantle their defenses and control units is an attempt to ensure an easy victory and seizing of the grounds. It was stated by the United State’s Lt. Gen. James L. Terry that, “The ongoing Iraqi and coalition airstrikes are setting the conditions for offensive action.” Iraqi forces have failed numerous times before this attempt to take back the Tikrit land, but now with the assistance of American forces they hope to attain the location back from ISIS competition.

United States involvement is a risky maneuver by al-Abadi. He has been working with outside forces such as the Shiite Muslims, who do not get along well and have had long lasting conflict with the US army. The hopes of al-Abadi are that they will just assist in the taking back, which is needed for their further goals. He hopes no conflict occurs on his own grounds, but this is why it is a risky maneuver. After the Iraqi bands hopefully take over Tikrit, their ultimate goal is the takeover of the important city Mosul. Mosul is Iraq’s second biggest city and home to one of Iraq’s greatest ever embarrassments. Last June, Iraqi defenders dropped their guns and ran from the invaders. This is why it is in al-Abadi’s sights to regain this post along with some of their national pride after this embarrassing loss to the ISIS fighters.

It was reported that a key US official stated that Iraq would engage in an invasion of Mosul with 25,000+ men in April or May to win it back. Statements from al-Abadi came in that they have no choice but to win Mosul back. Not only to ensure national pride back, but he says it is their only stronghold left as a reassurance of keeping ISIS out of power. As one can denote, this has become a fairly serious operation. Handing over Mosul to ISIS would give them much more stake and power in the Middle East than can be afforded to give up. Therefore, we will take over Tikrit, and move onward towards Mosul with greater forces and possibility at success.

The only problem was that… al-Abadi’s choice to involve conflicting nations on the same side, his, was a poor one. Three Shiite militias quit the siege of ISIS because of US involvement. This took a toll on the ground forces of the Iraqi forces. They lost thousands of their soldiers to this decision to assault aerially with US involvement. While the aerial bombings no doubt assisted in the taking of Tikrit, it may have hurt them just as badly in the end. The three militias which pulled out because of US involvement represented at least one third of the current forces at disposal. This would be some 10,000 of 30,000 troops. This is a huge knock to the ground forces en route to invade Tikrit. Even in shambles, it can be assumed that Tikrit will now be able to put up a good fight with such a lessened assault force.

Unfortunately, the reason that these Shiite Militias dropped out of the fight comes down on nobody but the United States. It was explained by Naeem al-Uboudi that Shiite Muslims, “do not trust American led coalition in combating ISIS. In the past, [US forces] have targeted our security forces and dropped aid to ISIS by mistake.”

There have been other militias run by the Shiite Muslims that have threatened returning their forces and not assisting in the invasion. They all state that the US involvement is a danger to them. Seems interesting as we have one of the strongest, if not the strongest military in the world, however we will not truly know their motives. They say it is a lack of trust and they also state that the US forces are unneeded because it is an easy victory. However, al-Abadi plans on taking Mosul after Tikrit and this may be the reason he does not want to risk losing any troops in this invasion. He may also want to embarrass ISIS the way they embarrassed his forces during their first taking of Mosul.

2 thoughts on “Current Isis Update

  1. This was very informational. I liked how you worded everything, it seemed very seamless. One thing that bothered me about the planning was that this information about planned strikes is available on the internet. All it takes is one google search to tip off the people in ISIS and unless we have some reverse psychology going on I’d be surprised if our strikes and those of the Iraq soldiers will be effective. Oh well, I’m trusting that the military knows what they’re doing.

  2. A good summary of what has been going on in the past few weeks. In these types of conflicts it seems like its extremely difficult for an overarching power like the United States to try and get everyone on their side in a fight.

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