U.S. Struggling to Maintain Fragile Anti-ISIS Alliance in Iraq - Dow Jones News

05-Dec-2016
10:58:48 AM

DJ U.S. Struggling to Maintain Fragile Anti-ISIS Alliance in Iraq


By Tamer El-Ghobashy and Michael M. Phillips

BAZKERTAN, Iraq--The Obama administration is trying to preserve the fragile alliance between the Kurdish fighters and Iraq's military that has made significant battlefield gains against Islamic State in Mosul but is now threatened by a budget battle in parliament and uncertainty over the policies of the incoming Trump administration.

Brett McGurk, President Obama's top envoy for the U.S.-led international coalition fighting Islamic State, made a rare visit Monday to a military checkpoint near Mosul, the militants' last major stronghold in Iraq. There he assured Kurdish fighters, called the Peshmerga, that the U.S. would continue to stand by them as long as they remain united with the Iraqi government against Islamic State.

"Without the cooperation of the Peshmerga [and] the Iraqi military...Daesh would be in Mosul forever," Mr. McGurk told Kurdish officers, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Mr. McGurk, a key official in the 68-nation alliance fighting Islamic State in Iraq and neighboring Syria, has been meeting for political and military leaders for several days. The visit comes as Mr. Obama's presidency winds down and the fight to oust the Sunni Muslim extremist group from Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, grinds on.

Despite rapid gains since the operation was launched in October, fighting in the densely populated eastern portion of Mosul has become a bloody street-to-street undertaking, with the military and civilian death toll rising. Official casualty figures aren't available, but Iraqi army commanders acknowledge that they are unusually high compared with previous battles to take Ramadi and Fallujah, which didn't involve the same magnitude urban warfare.

Among the key challenges of the operation is maintaining battlefield cooperation between the Kurdish fighters and the Iraqi army. Relations between Iraq's Arabs and the country's Kurdish minority have been strained for decades, and the Kurds control a large share of northern Iraq, including the key routes into Mosul.

But in an unprecedented move, Kurdish authorities have allowed Iraq's military to assault the city from Kurdish territories. Kurdish-controlled roads have remained critical supply lines for Iraqi forces fighting inside Mosul and important corridors for evacuating the wounded for medical treatment.

At the same time, political tensions are coming to a boil between Kurds and Iraqi Arabs. The parliament is mired in a fractious budget debate over funding for the Peshmerga, one that led several Kurdish lawmakers to walk out in protest on Sunday.

Kurdish lawmakers argue that the Peshmerga should receive funding from the federal government since it is legally part of the Defense Ministry. Iraqi lawmakers have said the Kurdish armed forces have an independent command structure and should be funded by the semiautonomous Kurdish Regional Government.

In recent days, Mr. McGurk has repeatedly highlighted the successful military cooperation in meetings with Kurdish and Iraqi officers, saying the coordination is "unprecedented so we'll try to harness that spirit for a whole host of issues across the board."

During the meetings, Kurdish generals told Mr. McGurk they would uphold the agreements with the Iraqis but urged him to pressure Baghdad to allocate funding for them and provide greater assistance for civilians fleeing the fighting in Mosul to Kurdish regions. The generals expressed their hope the U.S. would remain involved in securing Iraq even after Islamic State is defeated.

Since Donald Trump's U.S. election victory last month, both Iraqis and Kurds have been worried that he might decide against maintaining the financial and military support that has allowed them to reclaim 56% of the territory Islamic State took over during a sweep of the country in 2014. Mr. Trump has promised a new but still unspecified approach to fighting the militant group, while also advocating a diminished American role in Middle East.

"We have a general sense that the Republican policies are more decisive in dealing with different issues, but it is still foggy what Mr. Trump will do because we don't know all the members of his cabinet and team," Mohammed al-Karbouli, a member of the Iraqi parliament's security and defense committee, said in a phone interview from Baghdad.

In his visit Monday, Mr. McGurk stood on a defensive berm built by Peshmerga soldiers after evicting Islamic State from Bazkertan, a village about 25 miles east of Mosul, and told the fighters they had paved the way for Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces to enter the city.

"They could never have began the assault into the city without all of you," he said.

"Thanks America! Thanks Obama!" an officer shouted back in Kurdish.

Write to Tamer El-Ghobashy at tamer.el-ghobashy@wsj.com and Michael M. Phillips