begin quote from:
BAGHDAD
— The Islamic State’s latest suicide attack in Baghdad, which killed
nearly 330 people, foreshadows a long and bloody insurgency, according
to American diplomats and commanders, …
BAGHDAD — The Islamic State’s latest suicide attack
in Baghdad, which killed nearly 330 people, foreshadows a long and
bloody insurgency, according to American diplomats and commanders, as
the group reverts to its guerrilla roots because its territory is
shrinking in Iraq and Syria.
Already, officials say, many Islamic State fighters who lost battles in Falluja and Ramadi
have blended back into the largely Sunni civilian populations there,
and are biding their time to conduct future terrorist attacks. And with
few signs that the beleaguered Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi,
can effectively forge an inclusive partnership with Sunnis, many senior
American officials warn that a military victory in the last urban
stronghold of Mosul, which they hope will be achieved by the end of the
year, will not be sufficient to stave off a lethal insurgency.
“To defeat an insurgency, Iraq
would need to move forward on its political and economic reform
agenda,” Lt. Gen. Sean B. MacFarland, the top American commander in
Iraq, said in an email.
A return to guerrilla warfare in Iraq, while the United States and its allies still combat the Islamic State in Syria,
would pose one of the first major challenges to the next American
president, who will take office in January. American public opinion has
so far supported President Obama’s
deployment of roughly 5,000 troops to help Iraq reclaim territory it
lost to the Islamic State in 2014, but it is not clear whether political
support would dissipate in a sustained effort to fight insurgents.
For
American diplomats and commanders, the specter of an insurgency
resurrects some of the most bitter memories from the United States’
involvement in Iraq over the past 13 years. Officials voice concern
about how that type of mayhem — which was led by an earlier iteration of
the Islamic State and nearly crippled the Iraqi government when the
United States had more than 100,000 troops in the country — could affect
the stability of Iraq and the broader campaign to defeat the Islamic
State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
In
a recent visit to Iraq, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter acknowledged
these looming challenges, noting that toppling the Islamic State in
urban centers like Mosul “won’t establish control over the entirety of
the territory,” and that the militants would “try to terrorize the
population.”
The
Islamic State is increasingly fighting less like a conventional army
than “a more terrorist-type force,” Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the commander
of American forces in the Middle East, said last week. On the
battlefield, the Islamic State has redoubled its use of suicide bombers
and ambushes to attack Iraqi security forces. Despite losing about half
the territory it seized in Iraq, it carried out the suicide attack in
Baghdad this month, one of the deadliest bombings in Iraqi history.
“When
ISIS’s army is defeated in Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq, there will
still be ISIS terrorist cells that will attempt to continue to carry out
the kind of terrorist attacks we have seen in Baghdad and elsewhere in
recent months,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former top American commander in Iraq, said in an email.
Senior
Iraqi officials agree. “Absolutely, Daesh will remain a potential
threat to Iraq,” the country’s foreign minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari,
told reporters in Washington last week, using an Arabic term for the
group.
American
military officials in Baghdad said that they had not seen the Islamic
State mass more than 100 troops on the battlefield since December, when a
group of several hundred attacked a base in northern Iraq. “We have
seen more and more of their guys with vests on trying to run into Iraqi
Army headquarters buildings or in the middle of a fight into a big group
of soldiers,” said Col. Christopher Garver, the military spokesman in
Iraq.
After
losing battles to the Iraqis, some Islamic State fighters have tried to
blend back into groups of civilians who have fled the violence,
according to Iraqi commanders.
“We
have hurt ISIS’ morale, but nobody can deny that ISIS still has its
sleeper cells, and we expect anything from it,” said Lt. Gen. Abdul
Wahab al-Saidi, the commander of Iraqi operations in Falluja.
“A
number of ISIS fighters were found among the displaced people in
Falluja, and one of them even blew himself up,” he said. “They are
criminal, and we must expect anything from the criminals because they
would do anything.”
The
United States and other countries in the coalition countering the
Islamic State are adopting a series of measures that they believe will
help the Iraqis defeat the remnants of the group in the coming months.
In
recent weeks, specially trained American explosives experts, including a
three-star Army general, and new bomb-detection devices have been sent
to Baghdad to help stem suicide and car-bomb attacks. The Danes, who are
part of the coalition, have begun training border patrol agents.
The
first class of 300 Iraqi border patrol agents completed a four-week
training course on Wednesday, Colonel Garver said. The plan is to train
five more similarly sized classes and use them to patrol the border with
Jordan and Syria.
The
American-led coalition has focused intensely for months on the military
campaign to retake Mosul — a dauntingly complex task. But the dozens of
defense and foreign ministers meeting in Washington last week were
equally concerned with the aftermath of the fight for Mosul and the
city’s security, reconstruction and governance.
Western
and Iraqi officials are preparing plans to address the humanitarian
needs of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians displaced by the
violence, and the importance of restoring local government in Mosul and
other areas controlled by the Islamic State for the past two years.
“The local governance plan has to be ready to go,” said Brett McGurk, Mr. Obama’s special envoy for combating the Islamic State.
Even
if the operations to take Mosul are ahead of schedule, there will
almost certainly be a new American president in office by the time that
operation is complete. And although it is not clear how committed that
administration will be to the fight in Iraq, American commanders are
planning for an enduring presence of forces to help the Iraqis.
“After
the defeat of ISIL in Iraq, the U.S. and our partners will need to
retain a presence there that can help the Iraqis secure their borders
and hunt the terrorist threats within them,” General MacFarland said.
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