US Fighter Bombers Attacking New Set of ISIS Targets Around Mosul Dam in Northern Iraq

Helene Cooper, Mark Landler and Azam Ahmed

Troops in Iraq Rout Sunni Militants From a Key Dam

New York Times, August 19, 2014

Kurdish pesh merga fighters near the Mosul Dam on Monday. President Obama said Iraqi and Kurdish forces quickly took advantage of American airstrikes.Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Iraqi and Kurdish ground troops overran Sunni militants and reclaimed Iraq’s largest dam on Monday, President Obama said, as American warplanes unleashed a barrage of bombs in an expansion of the limited goals laid out by the president in authorizing the military campaign in Iraq.

Mr. Obama, who interrupted a family vacation on Martha’s Vineyard to meet Monday with his national security team in Washington, maintained that the airstrikes around the Mosul Dam were within the constraints of what he initially characterized as a limited campaign meant to break the siege of stranded Yazidis on Mount Sinjar and protect American personnel, citizens and facilities in Iraq.

Administration officials repeatedly painted that second directive — the protection of Americans in Baghdad, 290 miles away — as the justification for the intense air campaign over Mosul Dam, seized two weeks ago by militants with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

But such a definition gives the White House wide latitude to support Iraqi forces in a sustained military offensive against ISIS across the country. The president hinted that more help from the United States and international partners would come if Iraq’s Shiite majority governed in a more inclusive way.

In announcing the seizure of the strategically critical dam, Mr. Obama mixed his message with a warning to Iraqi leaders not to use the heightened American military support as an excuse to slow down political reconciliation.

“The wolf’s at the door,” the president said in remarks at the White House. “Don’t think that because we’ve engaged in airstrikes to protect our people that now is the time to let your foot off the gas and return to the kind of dysfunction that has so weakened the country generally.”

Mr. Obama credited Iraqi and Kurdish forces with moving swiftly to take advantage of some 35 American airstrikes on ISIS militants around Mosul Dam over the past two days. It represented a rare degree of cooperation between Kurdish and Iraqi forces to defeat ISIS.

On Monday, the smoke from what appeared to be fresh airstrikes was visible from the town of Badriya, northwest of the dam.

In a letter to Congress on Sunday, the White House said that “failure of the Mosul Dam could threaten the lives of large numbers of civilians, threaten U.S. personnel and facilities, including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, and prevent the Iraqi government from providing crucial services to the Iraqi population.” Speaking to reporters on Monday, Mr. Obama added that if the dam had been breached, “it could have proven catastrophic.”

But administration officials acknowledged that there has been no indication in recent days that the dam was about to fail, although there has been fear that the ISIS militants might blow it up.

“They’re saying that if the Mosul Dam breaks, it’ll be felt all the way to Baghdad — that’s the thin veil that they are using,” said Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, a former American commander in Iraq who is now a senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of War. But that rationale, he cautioned, could see the United States military “backing into a war instead of moving forward with our eyes open with a clear strategy.”

Despite the military advances, the White House is still deeply reluctant to signal that Mr. Obama is contemplating anything beyond the initial goals he outlined 11 days ago. A senior administration official said the president did not want to suggest that the United States planned to replicate the operation at the Mosul Dam in other parts of the country.

The American airstrikes have received generally positive reaction from lawmakers of both parties — to the surprise of some in the White House, who expected to be criticized — but Mr. Obama’s advisers are sensitive to the wariness of the American public to wider engagement in Iraq. To that end, Mr. Obama emphasized that it was crucial that the Iraqis step up and defend their own country.

“Our goal is to have effective partners on the ground,” the president said. “And if we have effective partners on the ground, mission creep is much less likely.”

Thus far, Mr. Obama’s military strategy in Iraq has greatly favored the Kurds over the Iraqi government, with all the airstrikes taking place in northern Iraq in general and in the Kurdish areas of Mount Sinjar, Erbil and Mosul in particular. One reason, defense officials said, is that military assessment teams sent to Iraq to gauge whether the Iraqi security forces are capable of countering ISIS sent back reports specifying which units could make the most of American help — in the form of airstrikes — and which units were lost causes.

The American assessment teams quickly identified Kurdish pesh merga fighters as capable of pushing back the Sunni militants if given help, defense officials said. In addition, certain Iraq commando units — including those that worked with the Kurdish fighters to take back the Mosul Dam — also received good reports from the assessment teams.

In London, Britain’s defense minister said the Iraq campaign would last “weeks and months.” But in a replay of the same push-pull underway in the United States, Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, used an appearance on television Monday morning to stress that beyond a humanitarian effort and surveillance flights, there would be limits to that nation’s involvement.

“I want to be absolutely clear to you and to families watching at home, Britain is not going to get involved in another war in Iraq,” Mr. Cameron said. “We are not going to be putting boots on the ground. We are not going to be sending in the British Army.”

Pope Francis also weighed in on Monday. Asked whether he approved of airstrikes against ISIS, Francis stated that stopping the “unjust aggression” of the Sunni militants could be justified. But speaking to reporters on his return from a trip to South Korea, the pontiff quickly clarified that he was not endorsing “bombs,” and called on the United Nations, rather than a single country, to decide on an appropriate response to end the bloodshed by ISIS.

Mr. Obama has maintained that he will not send American combat troops back to Iraq, and the Pentagon has characterized the nearly 1,000 American forces sent there since the ISIS threat flared as advisers.

Kurdish officials said that the American involvement has been decisive, and seemed optimistic that coordination between the Iraqi forces and the Americans would deepen, now that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had agreed to step aside as prime minister, as the Obama administration had demanded.

“The circumstances in Iraq are very different from the circumstances just a week ago because of political changes,” said Fadhil Merani, the political secretary of the Kurdish Democratic Party. “The effort to coordinate with our new acting prime minister is very different from our friend Mr. Maliki.”

Such was the euphoria among the pesh merga that Kurdish officials openly talked in recent days about positioning themselves for a potential push toward Mosul itself, though such talk remained highly speculative.

Pesh merga forces began their march toward the Mosul Dam on Sunday, following a string of airstrikes on ISIS positions in the area surrounding the dam that started early in the morning. Mansour Barzani, the commander of the Kurdish ground forces, said his troops approached along four lines, making significant advances until they were slowed by an area riddled with mines less than two miles from the dam.

Eventually the pesh merga, with the help of the Iraqi Special Forces, and continued American airstrikes, claimed the area’s big dam and moved to retake a smaller one. Fighting continued into Monday evening.

But as nightfall approached, an assistant to Mr. Barzani, who is the son of the Kurdish president, Massoud Barzani, approached him to say that his forces had reclaimed the area.