Middle East | Obama, Iraqi leader vow rapid offensive to retake Mosul

President Barack Obama greets people in the tarmac

President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi put the Islamic State group on notice that they plan to recapture the city of Mosul within months. If successful, the operation could mark a major turning point in the campaign to defeat the extremist group.
Neither leader glossed over the immense difficulty of the battle ahead as they met in New York on the sidelines of a U.N. summit. Still, Obama said he and Abadi were confident that Iraq’s military and the U.S.-led coalition could make progress in Mosul “fairly rapidly,” adding that he was hoping for progress by year-end.
“This is going to be hard. It’s going to be challenging. It will require resources,” Obama said. But he professed confidence that more territory can be wrested from the militants, in part because he said “the Iraqi forces are getting more confident.”
Abadi, speaking in English, echoed Obama’s timeline for retaking Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and the extremist group’s stronghold in the country. He called the group a “huge threat” to Iraq’s stability.
“We hope within the next few months we’re going to kick Daesh out of Mosul,” Abadi said, using an Arabic acronym for the group. He added: “They must be crushed on the ground.”
The aggressive timeline reflects Obama’s hopes of notching another major victory against IS before he leaves office in January and hands the conflict off to his successor. Donald Trump and other Republicans have blamed Obama’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq for fueling the extremist group’s formation and its growth into the world’s most serious terrorist threat.
Both leaders want to move quickly in Mosul to take advantage of recent momentum against IS in Iraq and the perception that the extremists’ morale is waning. In neighboring Syria, the chaotic civil war continues to hamper the fight against IS, but in Iraq, the extremists have lost half the territory they once held, according to the U.S.
Capturing Mosul, the last major city IS controls in Iraq, would constitute both a symbolic and strategic defeat to the militants. The U.S. and its partners hope a successful Mosul offensive will set the stage for eventually ousting the group from Raqqa, the largest IS-held city in Syria and the de facto capital of the group’s self-declared caliphate.
Yet military experts have warned that retaking Mosul is an incredible arduous task that plays to the extremist group’s advantages, including its ability to embed among civilians. The battle will require huge numbers of troops and street-by-
street combat. In preparation, Iraq’s military has been amassing troops and retaking a string of towns in the vicinity of Mosul.
Equally daunting to military planners is the prospect that the battle could displace some 1 million people. AP