Less than a week ago, Iraqi officials were touting a new military offensive against some villages near Mosul as a major sign of progress in the war against ISIS, and their success in taking three villages was proof of ISIS being “in retreat.”
Today that offensive is stalled outright, on the brink of collapse, as low morale has many Iraqi troops leaving their positions, with Kurdish officials who were involved in the fighting saying the army “have no will to fight.”
The Kurds are in a position to know, as they hold a checkpoint between the villages and Shi’ite territory, and have been stopping deserters en masse, detaining those they can but ultimately watching as their key allies ditch the battle.
US officials are downplaying the concerns, insisting that the Iraqi troops are performing up to expectations. Locals are complaining that the troops showed up, looted their villages, and then just left, insisting they are no better than ISIS.
Looting and sectarian unrest are old problems, however, and the real problem is that this force of thousands of Iraqi troops is supposed to be the one taking over the heavily guarded city of Mosul. If they can’t even handle the villages, that Mosul offensive is far, far out of reach.
Guess they need to request Russian air support.
You’re advocating Assad and Russia to kill innocent civilians. In January 2016, the Syrian and Russian forces each killed 600 civilians.
http://sn4hr.org/wp-content/pdf/english/1382_civilians_were_killed_in_January_2016_en.pdf
Regarding the “Human Shields” argument:
When the Syrian and Russian armies began to “recapture” Palmyra, the Islamic State ordered civilians to flee via loudspeakers.
A lot of Russian air strikes target civilian infrastructure and residential areas. Recently a Russian strike killed dozens of civilians and no combatants. There were many instances of this in the news since Russia first started bombing in October 2015. Russia has been bombing schools, hospitals and bridges. When one bridge has collapsed due to bombing, people began to travel over the river by boat. Russia also did cluster bombs as caught on video. There are also pictures of unexploded submunitions from cluster bombs.
Assad’s barrel bombs created casualties, 99% of the casualties are civilians and only 1% are combatants. That’s the civilian/combatant fatality ratio for barrel bombs. Of course the civilian/combatant fatality ratio different for other forms of combat. That’s why some statistics still show that most of the people killed are combatants instead of civilians.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights is not a credible source. It is one guy in London that disseminates al-Nusra, Fictional Syrian Army and Da’esh propaganda against Assad with no independent verification.
another “Russia bad, America good” shill.
See my other comments, I criticized American policies, people who are pro-Russia and pro-Assad up upvoted them.
Shi’ite troops are highly sectarian and will murder and ethnically cleanse innocent Sunni Arabs.
low morale has many Iraqi troops leaving their positions…
Probably driving away in the new trucks and humvees the
Pentagon (bought) with the billions it continues to steal
and bamboozle from the USG taxpayers.
American troops are even have lower morals. Most Americans are cowards because they do drone strikes from tens of thousands of miles away.
If you want ground troops then why don’t you want American troops there? But of course, you never want this, because “American lives are worth more than Muslim lives.”
If you want ground troops…
Read my Lips:
“I don’t (want) ground troops. Iraq would not be in the
situation that it is in today if Bush had not lied his way into
a bogus invasion that precipitated this nightmare.”
Period, end quote.
No – that all goes to ISIS.
The problem resides in the very nature of the state. An army is a reflection of the state that raises it.
This was a puppet state, that fell apart into factions seeking narrow self interest. The army is thus factions willing to fight only for narrow self interests, and falling apart when pushed outside the narrowest of factional interests.
It isn’t just that the army lacks the will to fight. The society from which that army arises lacks the will to fight for anything on offer from the central government.
This finally reflects the bankruptcy of the neocons and Republican idea of a state. There was no common interest from the start. So surprise, now there is none.
Nicely put.
More billions of dollars of our hard-earned tax money to train the Iraqi army for the umpteenth time?
USA needs to swallow its pride and just leave. Russia has proven itself to be a far better and neutral broker in the region, and has fully exposed the Obama admin for its complicity in this CF
Just goes to show what American control does for a country.
Russia transformed the Syrian army differently.
Doesn’t have to be that way. The US could choose to be the good guy – if the neocons were kicked out.