After Mosul: military victory won’t suffice

As the Iraqi military and its allies prepare for a campaign to take back Mosul from ISIS, it is important to examine the strategic importance of the city and how the dynamics in Iraq might change once it is back in the state’s possession. This was the topic of a September 9 panel at the Hudson Institute After Mosul: The Imperative of Bolstering US Allies.

The panel was moderated by Eric Brown, a fellow at Hudson, who explained that much of the conversation surrounding Mosul is concentrated on a military defeat of ISIS and overlooks the potentially chaotic aftermath. Iraq, the US and their allies have no plan for keeping the peace after Mosul is taken back. The power vacuum that ISIS will leave behind will give other extremist groups the opportunity to throw their weight around to the detriment of citizens of Mosul.

Michael Pregent, also a scholar at the Hudson Institute, agreed. The current US strategy of punishing ISIS-held towns essentially recreates the situation that made ISIS strong in the first place. The disproportionate US focus on military victory leaves potential Iraqi allies without the support they need to establish sustainable democratic institutions. Pregent suggests that we focus on taking out high ranking ISIS individuals in Iraq and concentrate the majority of our resources on empowering Iraqi communities. By doing so, ISIS will begin to fade and Iraqi civil society will grow stronger and more sustainable.

In regards to Mosul specifically, Dylan O’Driscoll, a research fellow at the Middle East Research Institute in Erbil, explained that Mosul is too fractured to survive any sort of power vacuum. While the liberation of Mosul would be an excellent political boon for both Baghdad and Washington, the Iraqi army isn’t militarily prepared to undertake the task. Without a strong political agreement, Mosul will not stay liberated for long, as it will likely be torn apart by factional violence, leaving room for a neo-ISIS group to take control.

Dlawer Ala’aldeen, the president of the Middle East Research Institute, echoed the sentiments of the previous two panelists. He predicts that once Mosul is liberated, the US will shift its focus to Syria and will totally disengage from Iraq, leaving ISIS and its descendants to flourish. He emphasized the importance of intelligent decision making in Iraq. If the US does not learn from the mistakes of its previous forays into Iraq, it and its allies will be paying for it for decades to come.

The final panelist, Bilal Wahab, the Soref fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, agreed with the other panelists and offered insight specifically on Iraqi Kurdistan. While Kurdistan has largely been a safe haven for stability and freedom, the Kurdish moment for independence is slipping away as a result of internal fissures within the KRG. There is no force to unite the Kurds. Disunity makes it difficult for the US or Baghdad to work with them. Their lack of unity in combination with their rising debt, stalled income as a result of low oil prices, and lack of sustainable infrastructure makes the KRG a less-than-ideal ally.

During the Q&A, Ala’aldeen suggested that the US use its leverage over the KRG and Baghdad to encourage democratic institution building, humanitarian aid and reduction of corruption. Both governments financially depend on the US and will respond positively to American pressure. He concluded by saying that the only long term solution to terror is good governance. In Iraq, good governance requires Western pressure.