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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / The Battle to Liberate Mosul Has Begun. Updated: And Dabiq Has Been Liberated Too!

The Battle to Liberate Mosul Has Begun. Updated: And Dabiq Has Been Liberated Too!

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Here’s the link to the strike press releases by Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve.

There will be more to come on this in the coming days. In the meantime here’s a link to the CJTF Spokesman doing a briefing – he’s one of my former students and an excellent Public Affairs Officer. Three other former students of mine are also with him at CJTF OIR.

Updated at 11:05 PM EDT

I missed it, but Secretary of Defense Carter issued another, very important press release today as well:

Statement by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter on the Liberation of Dabiq‎

Release No: 16-110 Oct. 16, 2016

Release No: NR-369-16
Oct. 16, 2016

I welcome today’s news that Syrian opposition forces liberated the Syrian town of Dabiq from ISIL control, aided by strong support from our ally Turkey and our international coalition. This is more than just the latest military result against this barbaric group. Dabiq held symbolic importance to ISIL. The group carried out unspeakable atrocities in Dabiq, named its English-language magazine after the town and claimed it would be the site of a final victory for the so-called caliphate. Instead its liberation gives the campaign to deliver ISIL a lasting defeat new momentum in Syria. Again I want to congratulate the Syrians who fought to free Dabiq and thank our ally Turkey for the close coordination during this operation.

 This is a very, very important bit of news. The town of Dabiq, Syria is central to ISIL’s apocalyptic theology. As I wrote about back in FEB 2015, ISIL believes that the defining battle of their version of Islam’s armageddon will be fought between the Muwaheedun (adherents to the radical unity of the Deity) and the infidel. By denying Dabiq/access to Dabiq to ISIL a blow has been struck directly to the heart of the raison d’être of ISIL’s theology and doctrine! The Information Operations and PSYOPS significance of this achievement is very, very important in the Syrian side of the fight against ISIL.

Reader Interactions

99Comments

  2. 2.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: You don’t root for anything. You keep good thoughts for a quick, effective campaign that liberates Mosul with the fewest casualties and deaths as possible for the Iraqi regular and irregular forces and, especially, for the Iraqi citizens that live in Mosul and the surrounding areas.

  3. 3.

    Yutsano

    I wish, I wish, I wish they would call them Daesh.

    May those who are about to defend their homeland stand firm and be judged mercifully should they meet Allah.

  4. 4.

    debbie

    According to this, the Peshmerga aren’t entering Mosul, they’re instead blocking possible escape. Is there a reason they aren’t more involved?

  7. 7.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Cue up world famous military mastermind and strategerist Donald “Bone spurs!” Trump telling everyone who will listen to him how a strategic surprise would have been better, as if Daesh has no clue that Mosul is the next logical step on their eastern flank.

  8. 8.

    hellslittlestangel

    It’s gotten to the point that when I hear about any major news, I think, oh great, here’s something else for fucking Donald Trump to blather about.

  9. 9.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @debbie: Blocking a possible escape is, from a strategic perspective, every bit as important as the direct assault. No where to run, no where to hide.

  10. 10.

    Ken

    I wonder if Trump was told of this operation in his intelligence briefings. Actually are they even wasting time with those any more, given (1) he stands almost zero chance of winning and (2) he obviously doesn’t pay attention?

  12. 12.

    Brachiator

    It’s tragic. I just hope that this thing can be resolved someday, with a positive outcome from everyone.

    And I suppose that questions about this will be part of the next presidential debate.

  13. 13.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: Yes. The Coalition brokered an operational agreement between the Pesh and the Government of Iraq to have them do this because of Iraqi Arab concerns that if the Pesh moved into the city wherever their lines wound up at the end of operation would be claimed by the Kurds as part of the Kurdish Autonomous Area/Iraqi Kurdistan. Mosul is a disputed city – both the Iraqi Arabs and the Iraqi Kurds have claims to it belonging under each side’s control.

  17. 17.

    Adam L Silverman

    @redshirt: There’s two different things going on. There’s the Coalition backed Iraqi efforts in Iraq. Of which, the liberation of Mosul is the latest push, and likely the final one, to push ISIL out of a large population center as Mosul is the last one of those they hold in Iraq. In Syria the Coalition is backing Syrian irregular forces, including Syrian Kurdish Peshmerga, in their fight against ISIL. For updates, just go to the link I provided at CJTF OIR’s website. Those are the daily strike reports: what Coalition Air Forces are hitting. There are other links to press releases, leadership statements on what is happening, etc.

  18. 18.

    Hurling Dervish

    When they go in, will they say the words, “radical Islamic terrorism”? Because otherwise, they’re just wasting their time, from what I hear.

  19. 19.

    Pinacacci

    It’s hard to believe anybody’s left in Mosul; it’s been a center of struggle for so long.

  20. 20.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @debbie:

    I wish they’d all set aside this stuff and focus on the bigger picture.

    What is “this stuff?” What is “the bigger picture?”

  22. 22.

    Mike in NC

    Trump sez he knows more about ISIS than all of the generals combined. He could retake Mosul in a day, two at most. He has all the best people!

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: There’s a lot of between ethnic group scar tissue. Its been built up over a long time and its not going away any time soon.

  26. 26.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman: Adam, Adam, Adam: if we’re publishing daily strike reports that means the enemy KNOWS what we’re striking, daily, how dumb, how stupid…I have a secret plan to push ISIS (note, not ‘ISIL’) out of Mo-soool, and it’s better than the generals, most of who will be new generals on Nov 9th.

    BELIEVE ME.

  27. 27.

    Achrachno

    @redshirt: What’s the uncertainty? Isis/Daesh has been getting rolled back for over year now, but they’re not totally rolled up yet. Step by step. They lost Debiq yesterday, now the big push into Mosul has apparently begun. If the Iraqi fighters can dislodge Daesh from there, it’ll be near the end for the clearest bad guys on the field. Keep your fingers crossed for minimum bloodshed and damage (neither of which will probably be slight) and hope that the Iraq government does the right thing after they win. Maybe a way will be found to put the country back together.

  29. 29.

    Fair Economist

    @debbie:

    According to this, the Peshmerga aren’t entering Mosul, they’re instead blocking possible escape. Is there a reason they aren’t more involved?

    There have been some conflict between the Arabs and the Kurds as both claim some areas of mixed ethnicity, including Mosul. The Kurds are the least bad of all the major actors but they’re not saints and there have been credible accusations of low-grade ethnic cleansing. They’ve developed a strategy of having allies actually do the occupation of urban areas that aren’t heavily Kurdish even when they’re doing the heavy work, as in Manbij.

  32. 32.

    Glidwrith

    @hellslittlestangel: So we give him something else to blather about. Adam has mentioned on occasion that the Orange Sniffer has a badly deviated septum, possibly due to being beaten up at some point in his life. Has anyone considered with the number of women he has assaulted that one of them beat the living shit out of him for his transgression? It is a dead certainty he would never allow it to be public if this is the case.

    It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    I just put an update up top: SecDef Carter has also announced that the Coalition backed Syrian irregular forces have liberated Dabiq, Syria. This is, to quote VP Biden, a Big Fucking Deal!

  34. 34.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @debbie:

    Marshmallow, huh? Isn’t this where Shomi is supposed to sign in to call you a pants wetter?

    I agree, it would be fabulous if all humans could use reason and honesty to settle conflict, but that’s not really the world we inhabit.

  35. 35.

    Another Scott

    Just spitballing here, but didn’t Mosul fall quickly because the Iraqi forces ran? Wouldn’t it make sense for Daesh to slink away now than try to defend their gain? Or counter-attack once Mosul is liberated? Or counter-attack elsewhere?

    Daesh isn’t (as I understand it) an army-like force. They’re a band of criminals and enforcers who rule by intimidation, not by crushing an opposing army by going mano-a-mano.

    Taking back Mosul is important and long over-due, but it’s hard for me to think that this means that Daesh (or its follow-ons) are going away. There are too many guns out there, too many easy to make explosives, too much money to be made, and too many young men who are looking for a “higher calling” who also have no prospect for a decent job and a family to call their own in a modern society.

    tl;dr: What will it take to “defeat Daesh” if, as it seems clear to me, killing al Baghdadi and liberating Mosul and Raqqa and the other areas they presently control doesn’t do it?

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  36. 36.

    Nodakfarmboy

    @debbie: think of it as a hammer and anvil. The Iraqis are the hammer, the Peshmerga the anvil.

    Mosul has always been disputed territory. Having the Kurds stop outside it is actually a good sign of cooperation between two groups that have come to blows in the past.

  40. 40.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: Like, centuries. The situation in Iraq/Syria/Eastern Turkey is every bit a morass of ethnic/religious goo as the situation in the former Yugoslavia remains. The difference is just about everyone but the Serbs got the political boundaries they wanted.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Another Scott: You can’t kill an idea. What you can do is degrade ISIL’s organizational and institutional structure – its ability to take and hold territory, command and control fighters both within areas it holds and in other parts of the world, and deny it territorial gains. Once that is done, then the actual hard work has to be done. Iraq and Syria will need significant Military Support to Governance in order to establish the conditions to win the peace, which will include marginalizing ISIL’s theology/doctrine and pushing it to the extremes of both Syrian and Iraqi societies where it is only able to be a limited nuisance. This will take a lot of hard work, it will not be quick nor will it be easy.

  45. 45.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @shomi: I got my DD 214 right here, guy. Mind you, most of this time was spent assigned to brigade headquarters or higher, or in direct support of a brigade headquarters or higher.

  46. 46.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: Holding up pretty good, actually. My sister is bearing up under a bigger burden, as I long ago ceded all the cleaning up after the fact matters to her.

  50. 50.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: Given that the Syria situation, and therefore a good chunk of the Daesh situation, can be tied directly to “Acts of God” (that is, drought and famine, gosh, the sort of shit the Pentagon is worried about but Donald insists is all a Chinese ruse), yes, it’s a huge problem. Syria’s civil war is a direct result of the Assad regime being unable to address those things totally beyond their control.

  53. 53.

    Schlemazel

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    Yeah, exactly! WTF would you know about military operations?

    Seriously, I think this is just tat “R” guy. He knows that his side is getting its ass kicked in a couple of weeks but still wants to be ‘clever’ and disrupt our happy home away from home

  54. 54.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Glidwrith: I’m more prone to go along with the diagnosis of Carrie Fisher, PhD in Bolivian Marching Powder, who has some expertise in these matters.

  57. 57.

    Another Scott

    @Adam L Silverman: Dunno. Daesh seems to have been downplaying the importance of Dabiq.

    BBC:

    The battle for Dabiq has been building for weeks – with one village after another being seized from IS by rebel fighters backed by Turkish airstrikes.

    In the end, it seems to have fallen swiftly after the announcement of the final assault on Saturday.

    Strategically, it’s not a major prize. But IS has embraced it as a symbol of its apocalyptic vision of all-out confrontation with its enemies.

    Why is Dabiq so important for IS?

    The town is named in one Hadith – or saying by the Prophet Mohammed – as the site of the climactic battle between Muslims and non-Muslims before the end of the world. The group named its online magazine after it, but has downplayed its significance recently, saying this battle is not the epic that was prophesied.

    A commander of one rebel group, the Hamza Brigade, told the Associated Press that resistance from IS was “minimal”.

    Saif Abu Bakr said IS withdrew towards the larger town of Al-Bab to the south.

    He said about 2,000 rebel fighters were involved in the offensive.

    Sure, Daesh is more than happy to scream about how powerful and invincible it is, but it’s not stupid enough not to cut its losses to fight another day.

    I wonder how much the fall in oil prices – and the continuing rather low prices even with the OPEC attempt to drive them up recently – has affected Daesh’s prospects. Airstrikes on oil facilities that Daesh controls can’t help them, either. Mercenaries fight better when they get paid…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  58. 58.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Omnes Omnibus: I mean blocking the way back to the rest of Daesh. The hammer/anvil analogy is best. You can’t really “encircle” something like Daesh, but you know as well as I if you block their primary line of communication back to spook central, it’s bad for the boys in Mosul.

  63. 63.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Dmbeaster: What sets Daesh apart is, if you scour the archives of the site for all the Adam posts, it’s got a cadre of actual military professionals who used to work for…wait for it!…Saddam Hussein, and were, brilliantly, I must say, cast into the wind by the super-geniuses of the deserting coward malassministration. What fueled their rapid rise was that they had actual military leadership and expertise at hand, which made them more of a threat than say the Bundy Bunch.

  68. 68.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @JJ:

    I just read an intriguing explanation, too. From now on, I will refer to them as Daesh. The term mocks and de-legitimizes them.

  69. 69.

    Another Scott

    @Villago Delenda Est: All of that is true, but they don’t have the capacity of a modern nation-state to manufacture advanced weapons, keep an air force flying, and all the rest. They can do lots of damage through guerilla-type attacks, and they can terrorize and brutalize a population, but they’re not a match for a modern military (even though many of them used to work in a near-first-world military). Their strength is in their reputation for brutality, not in their logistics and the like.

    I, personally, don’t expect them to put up much of a concerted fight to keep Mosul. Daesh doesn’t seem to like to play defense. It’s different than, say Assad’s flattening of Aleppo. (The Mustache of Understanding wrote a fairly good book (at least it seemed to me at the time) with a section about Assad’s father destroying Hama – Assad the younger seems to be trying to do the same in Aleppo, with Putin’s help.)

    Like the rest of you, I hope Daesh is driven out of the city and greatly weakened in the process, while sparing the civilians. I fear that Daesh will lash out elsewhere to try to prove that they’re still relevant after Mosul and Raqqa fall.

    We’ll see.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  71. 71.

    Adam L Silverman

    @West of the Rockies (been a while): The reason the US government, including the military, calls them ISIL is its the English acronym for the translation of the full name they use for themselves: “al-Dawla al-Islamiya fil Iraq wa al-Sham” This translates as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Al Sham literally refers to the land of the sun, which is the Arabic phrase to refer to what we call the Levant: parts of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, Israel, and Jordan. This is why ISIS doesn’t make sense as that would be al-Dawla al-Islamiya fil Iraq wa al-Suria. Suria is Arabic for Syria.

  72. 72.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    I’m a little surprised Le Not-So-Grand L’orange has not begun insulting individual states… “California is for losers. Oregon is a total disaster. Connecticut is a catastrophe….”

  76. 76.

    mike in dc

    How close are the FSA and Syrian Kurds to staging the final assault on Ar Raqqah? My impression is that it’s a matter of a few months away. By the time a new president is inaugurated the physical “caliphate” may be almost gone.

  78. 78.

    Anoniminous

    It’s all about logistics. Daesh has a very limited ability to manufacture munitions and with the losses they’ve taken in the past 2 years they have to be running out of cannon fodder. Also their heavy and battalion support weapons have been degraded since the last time the Iraqi Army ran away and left tens of billions of dollars worth of stuff lying around.

    And that’s the key. There’s no evidence the Iraqi Army is a creditable fighting force.

    IF the Iraqi Army actually – ya know – fights Daesh will have to abandon Mosul or face Yet Another decimation of their armed forces, forces that, supposedly, they are not replenishing at the necessary rate.

  80. 80.

    JR in WV

    @debbie:

    Preventing escape from the city is important for the next battle. The only fighters who would be allowed to use the escape tunnels would be senior staff, leaders and commanders. Keeping them from becoming part of the next battle is strategically important.

  83. 83.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Anoniminous: It’s ALWAYS about logistics, and for a short period, Daesh was in a good situation logisically because, as you indicated, the Iraqi Army gave shit away.

    The Iraqi Army isn’t that much better a fighting force than they were when they lost Mosul, but Daesh isn’t as lavishly equipped and doesn’t have the element of surprise, either. So different outcome.

  86. 86.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Another Scott: Yup, they can’t sustain a force without help, and the help they did get wasn’t the result of some state power deliberately supporting them. No air power REALLY sucks especially in that environment.

  88. 88.

    Peale

    I thought that Turkey troops weren’t invited as they were likely to be fighting the Kurds instead of freeing the city. Or maybe that was in Syria.

    If we do liberate Mosul and ISIS is done in Iraq, what next? Do we ask the Iraqi Kurds to go across the border into Syria?

  90. 90.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Peale: No, we are working with Syrian irregular forces in Syria. This includes Syrian Arabs and Syrian Kurds. The various Kurdish clans, Iraqi and Syrian, will support each other, but only to a point. They don’t necessarily agree on who who should be in charge, where a prospective Kurdistan should have its borders. If there should even be one, united, contiguous Kurdistan vs Iraqi Kurdistan and Syrian Kurdistan – largely because none of the leadership wants to cede any power.

  92. 92.

    The Lodger

    We’re using the term ISIS (or ISIL, or Daesh) to refer to three wildly different things:
    – The military organization which is getting kicked out of Iraq and Syria;
    – The terrorist group which carried out organized operations in Paris, Brussels and Nice;
    – The inspiration for lone-shooter mass killings in San Bernardino and Orlando.
    Pretending they are all the same makes about as much sense as conflating the St. Louis baseball team, the Arizona NFL team, and the Roman Catholic Curia because they’re all known as the Cardinals.

  93. 93.

    Davebo

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I tend to think, with no real knowledge of the region other than what I can glean from thousands of miles away, that one, united, contiguous Kurdistan would be the best solution. Am I nuts?

  94. 94.

    patrick II

    @Davebo:

    There is a large Kurdish minority in southern Turkey that would want to join “Kurdistan.” Another civil war is not really what the area needs, and Turkey is already having enough problems.

  95. 95.

    Fair Economist

    @mike in dc:

    How close are the FSA and Syrian Kurds to staging the final assault on Ar Raqqah? My impression is that it’s a matter of a few months away. By the time a new president is inaugurated the physical “caliphate” may be almost gone.

    The FSA, aka the Turkish proxy rebels, are a long way off and advancing slowly. At the rate they’re going they’re at least a year off, if they’re even interested in going that far. The Kurds are close but seem to have lost interest since it would be a painful assault and they’ll get nothing for it, since it’s Arab territory. They also probably want to be ready to defend themselves against Turkey and – the FSA.

  96. 96.

    Fair Economist

    @Davebo:

    I tend to think, with no real knowledge of the region other than what I can glean from thousands of miles away, that one, united, contiguous Kurdistan would be the best solution. Am I nuts?

    I don’t know about nuts, but it’s not in the cards. Iraq, Assad, Turkey, and Iran are all opposed, Turkey VERY violently. And what kind of government would the Kurds use? The Iraqi Kurds have a routine corrupt democracy. The Syrian Kurds are Communist – the real thing, sort of Maoist. Autonomy within countries is the best they’ll get for the foreseeable future.

  97. 97.

    NotMax

    My understanding is that Daesh began altering their propaganda weeks if not months ago in anticipation of being ousted from Dabiq, using that occurrence as a call for recruits and severely toning down or veering away from any mention of prophecy.

  98. 98.

    debbie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I picked a bad time to fall asleep on the couch. Thanks, I did see this. I understand and support the need to drive ISIS/ISIL/Daesh off the face of the Earth. I just think the various factions (Shia, Sunni, Kurd, etc.) have let their squabbles (which I don’t think are unbridgeable) get the better of them. Until they can set these things aside and work together, there will be no real change.

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