Jeremy Binnie
March 5, 2015
US sidelined from Tikrit offensive
Iraq has not asked the US-led coalition to assist the operation to clear Tikrit of Islamic State militants
Iranian-backed Shia militias, rather than US-trained Iraqi Army units, make up the majority of the forces involved in the operation
US officials have said the Iraqi government has not requested support for the offensive that has been launched against the Sunni-dominated town of Tikrit and that the majority of the forces involved are Iranian-backed Shia militias.
"The Iraqi government did not ask for our support in this particular operation [in Tikrit]," Secretary of Defense Ashton Cater told the Senate Armed Service Committee on 3 March.
This means that aircraft from the US-led coalition will not provide air support to Iraqi ground forces and raises the possibility that Iranian aircraft will be involved. The coalition did not report carrying out any airstrikes in support of operations against the Islamic State in the eastern province of Diyala in late 2014, while Iranian F-4 jets were filmed flying overhead.
As in the operations in Diyala, the Tikrit offensive will be dominated by Iranian-backed Shia militias. “Of the size of the force going to Tikrit, about a third of it is Iraqi security forces, the 5th Division, from their base just north of Taiji, then the other two-thirds are Shia militia from the Popular Mobilisation Committee,” said General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Iraqi Ministry of Defence released a video on 3 March showing the 5th Mechanised Infantry Division advancing in Salah-al-Din province with its T-72 tanks, BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles and M113 armoured personnel carriers. D-30 and M198 howitzers and a 107 mm multiple-rocket launcher mounted on an Iranian-made Safir jeep were seen providing fire support.
The Iraqi Army personnel appeared to be intermingled with Shia militia, at least some of them from the armed wing of the Badr Organisation.
Gen Dempsey described Iranian support for Iraqi forces as the “most overt” it had ever been, but said he could not confirm claims that General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Qods Force, was with the Iraqi forces advancing on Tikrit. “I’ve seen the pictures [of Soleimani purportedly in the Tirkit area] and our intel community will now go to work to decide whether he was personally there or not,” he said.
The general added that the involvement of Iranian-backed Shia militias would not necessarily be a problem. “If they perform in a credible way, rid the city of Tikrit, turn it back over to its inhabitants, then it will in the main have been a positive thing in terms of the counter-ISIL campaign,” he said, using an old abbreviation for the Islamic State.
Testifying to the House Armed Services Committee on the same day, General Lloyd Austin, the commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM), seemed unsure whether the Iraqis had a plan to hand over power to locals in Tikrit and Mosul once the militants have been cleared. “That is the intent, I am sure,” he said. “But in terms of specifics of the plan to do that, at this point I could not lay that out for you.” When asked what the United States was doing to encourage the Iraqi government to adopt inclusive policies towards non-Shia communities, Gen Austin said, “We are using every lever in the inventory to influence it”.
Cater, meanwhile, refuted a 19 February press briefing in which a CENTCOM official said the United States wanted the offensive against Mosul in April or May. “Clearly that was an instance of speculation,” the secretary of defense said. “We will conduct an offensive against Mosul when the Iraqi security forces can lead such an offensive, helped by us, because it is important that that offensive succeeds. It will happen when it can succeed.”
The CENTCOM official also said that the assault on Mosul would be led by five US-trained Iraqi Army brigades, each with a strength of 2,000 (US budgetary documents show a plan to train 5,000 for each brigade). This force would be supported by three smaller brigades and a brigade-sized force from the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), while three Kurdish brigades would help cordon the city and a force made up of former Mosul police and tribesmen would be prepared to move in once it has been cleared.
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