Stiffeners

I recommend that you read Con Coughlin’s remarks on the battle for Mosul at the Telegraph for the excellent graphic depicting the tactical situation in Iraq’s second largest city if for no other reason. His primary observations in the piece are that a) we haven’t been terribly successful with our proxies in Iraq, Libya, etc. lately—astonishingly, they have their own priorities and agenda; and b) without the 5,000 American soldiers as “stiffeners” the battle in Mosul would be very much in doubt if it were taking place at all:

Our attempts to work with proxies in countries like Libya and Syria, by contrast, have been less successful, not least because our so-called allies have been more interested in pursuing their own agendas. In Libya, many of the anti-Gaddafi militias we supported morphed into anti-Western Islamist factions, while in Syria Western-backed groups are more interested in fighting each other than Assad.

And it is entirely feasible we could experience similar difficulties once the fighting for Mosul is over – for example, the Kurds make no secret of their desire to use land captured from Isil to create their own state. So we need to be clear. The fact that any form of military intervention by the West is now seen as political suicide comes at a heavy price. It means we have no other option than to work with proxies and simply hope they share the same goals about tackling our enemies.

Is it possible that there might be lessons learned about our planned decamping from Afghanistan in the situation in Iraq now? For example, that once we’ve removed the governments in these ersatz countries the only alternatives we have are stationing troops in them for the foreseeable future or allowing them to collapse into chaos?