If the editors of the New York Times are right about this:
There is a lot riding on a victory against ISIS — for the civilians suffering under the terrorists’ rule; for Mr. Abadi, Iraq’s embattled leader; and for Mr. Obama, whose regional credibility has been damaged by his decision not to intervene directly in Syria. But retaking Mosul may be the easier part of an operation whose ultimate success will depend on putting in place effective long-term plans for maintaining stability and rebuilding a shattered city.
then the people of Mosul are doomed. If there’s a common thread running through American foreign policy of the last several decades it’s the failure of long-range planning. Overthrowing the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq and then boogying out isn’t carrying out a long-range plan. It’s a failure of long-range planning, whether in the planning itself or the execution. The Iraqi government has shown no ability to look beyond its immediate political goals.
Here’s what I think will happen in Mosul. If the Iraqi military can maintain force cohesion, something that has eluded them in the past, it can take the city with U. S. air support. If DAESH in turn anticipates that will be the case, it will withdraw the greater part of its force from the city before the Iraqi army arrives, leaving partisans, IEDs, and booby traps behind to harass the Iraqi and U. S. efforts.
The Iraqi government will initiate a program of ethnic and sectarian cleansing in the name of rooting out DAESH remnants. Prior to DAESH’s occupation of the city it was a mostly Sunni and Christian city. Presumably, the historic Christian churches of Mosul have been destroyed and the Iraqi government will move to Shi’itize the city. That’s likely to be carried out without being covered by the U. S. media.
If the Iraqi military cannot maintain force cohesion, it will be defeated and that will be a tremendous propaganda victory for DAESH both against the Iraqi government and the U. S. In this case I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the Iraqi military engaged in just the sort of tactics that the New York Times is presently decrying with respect to Aleppo. The difference will be that, while the deaths of civilians in Aleppo will be war crimes, the deaths of civilians in Mosul, if we hear of them at all, will be collateral damage in the fight against DAESH.
War crimes as in Aleppo, collateral damage as in Yemen, or ethnic cleansing, per the long-stated wishes of Joe Biden. I’m reminded of some dialog from Lawrence of Arabia:
“God help the men under that.”
“But they’re Turks!”
…
“God help them.”
Say, Dresden is doomed, and pretend to care as much.
What happened to Fallujah and Ramadi portends the destruction of Mosul. This will be another case of Sunni cleansing.
City fighting is never good. An additional problem with Mosul is that it is – or was – multiethnic. So it is a prize that different factions will want to control.
Since Tikrit and Fallujah were basically reduced to rubble, there’s no reason to believe that the same won’t happen in Mosul, just on a larger scale.
I’ve heard no one in the Obama administration ask or answer the question “then what?”. As in, if Mosul is taken back from the Islamic State by the government that disenfranchised Sunnis so badly that they would rather join the Islamic State, then what?