May 27, 2015
A new report documents the grisly realities of moving back into territory formerly seized by the Islamic State group.
Iraqi security forces and paramilitaries near Baghdad deploy for an operation aimed at cutting off Islamic State group jihadists in the Anbar province before a major offensive to retake the city of Ramadi.
The Islamic State group is an enemy that doesn't see battlefield defeat as the end to its ability to kill.
Just this week, a hopeful Iraqi government claims its forces have launched a massive offensive to retake the critically strategic Anbar province, that soldiers have surrounded its largest city ofRamadi after the Islamic State group chased out the Iraqi military just last week, and that they can retake it within days.
The Pentagon is not quite so optimistic.
“It’s impossible to put a timeline on it,” cautioned defense spokesman Army Col. Steven Warren on Tuesday. He would not confirm whether Iraqi security forces had indeed surrounded Ramadi, and said the U.S. backers of the Shiite majority Iraqi government have only observed “shaping operations” – what the military calls preparations for a big battle – in the town of Habbaniyah about 20 miles to the east.
Warren added further temperance on any positive outcomes in this war, one that began in apparent surprise last summer and appears to have continued to befuddle war planners.
“This is a years-long fight that is going to require focus. It’s going to require patience, both tactical and strategic, and it’s going to require the Iraqi government to unify around this threat,” he said, adding a sober assessment of the situation on the ground. “Every day the enemy has in Ramadi is another day for the enemy to harden and to develop their defenses.”
His words represent a harsh reality for those in the region who have the comparative luxury of returning to their homes. The U.S. government continues to claim the coalition it’s leading is winning against the extremist network, also known as ISIS, ISIL or the Arabic acronym “Daish.” It cites ground retaken from the Islamic State group, like Tikrit and Haditha in Iraq, or Kobani in Syria – the scene of some of the bloodiest and most gruesome fighting yet between the extremists and coalition air power backing up Kurdish fighters on the ground.
Apparent victory is only the beginning in truly ridding the region of death caused by these extremists.
A new report from the Maryland-based nongovernmental organization Handicap International documents the gruesome scene in Kobani. Families are returning to explosive booby traps often stuffed inside corpses, craters caused by improvised explosive devices as well as powerful coalition bombs, and other forms of both industrial and homemade unexploded ordnance that have left roughly 10 pieces of active munitions for every square meter of the city center.
The booby traps target critical infrastructure, like water sources or roads
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Frederic Maio, the organization’s program development manager for mine action. Maio has previously operated in Syria and Iraq, as well as other active and former combat zones around the world. He and his technical team have been, as he says, shocked by the contamination they found in Kobani.
It’s too early to determine a specific breakdown of the threats that remain within the city, whether that is purposefully planted weapons a vindictive enemy left in retreat, or unexploded bombs the U.S. and its coalition allies dropped during the intense battle for the city on the Turkish border. The report, however, cites medium to high threats as far away as the villages that surround Kobani, to say nothing of the city center and its northern and southern neighborhoods. In those areas, unexploded ordnance is one of the most prolific types of contamination, in the form of armed weaponry that “may have been fired, dropped, launched or projected” and “yet remains unexploded either through malfunction or design or for any other reason.”
Internationally, roughly 15 percent of launched explosives like mortars do not explode on impact, Maio says. Handicap International as a part of this new report recommends all parties, including Western militaries, cease the use of explosive ordnance in war.
All American bombs and missiles are considered explosive ordnance, a spokesman for the Air Force says, and more than 95 percent of those used in operations over Iraq and Syria detonate appropriately. A spokesman for Defense Secretary Ash Carter did not respond immediately to requests for comment on whether the military would reconsider the use of explosive ordnance in air-based campaigns against heavily populated urban areas.
Air Force pilots who operated over Kobani tell U.S. News the city’s proximity to Turkey allowed almost all civilians to leave, creating a much heavier and more violent conflict than other areas where friendly forces must practice restraint to avoid civilian casualties. The uniformly concrete buildings in Kobani – there because of a factory that produces the construction material – forced bombers to employ their most high-powered weapons to reach enemy targets hiding within.
Grim realities in Kobani project a gnarly future for the war against the Islamic State group, which all sides admit will take years.
“Refugees returned to Kobani immediately,” says Maio. “They’re not going to wait until we tell them it’s safe. They’re not going to wait until clearance is done. People are going to return, even if their house is blown to rubble. They want to go back and see what’s left. They do that in every single situation I’ve experienced. They always go back.”
If Handicap International is able to secure funding from its usual sources of private donations and international organizations like the U.N., it could begin the first stage of clearing Kobani within nine months, Maio says. But for the area's citizens, the war will never be over.
“There will always be some level of contamination,” Maio says.
Updated on May 27, 2015: This report has been updated to include comments from the Air Force on the use of explosive ordnance.
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