Andrew Tilghman
August 22, 2016
It’s going to be a long year for Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, who on Sunday became the seventh American general since 2003 to assume command of war operations in Iraq. And his mission might be the toughest one yet.
As the head of Operation Inherent Resolve, Townsend’s objective is to eliminate the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate while simultaneously diffusing the region’s Sunni-Shia conflicts that have metastasized into a proxy war, drawing in nearly every major country across Europe and the Middle East. He has to win the Battle of Mosul and stabilize northern Iraq. He has to pursue ISIS into Syria, where the U.S. has few allies on the ground, and negotiate a highly complex battlefield that also includes heavily armed and highly unpredictable Russian military forces. And back in Washington, Townsend will face historic uncertainty, the product of an unusual political landscape that — for better or worse — will produce in a new commander in chief come January.
Military analysts say Townsend, by all accounts one of the Army’s most gifted strategists, will oversee a shift from conventional warfare to a mission that is far more ambiguous and political. “Things are about to get a lot more complicated,” said Theodore Karasik, a senior adviser for Gulf State Analytics, a geopolitical risk analysis firm. “The complexity of operations is going to speed up. And for General Townsend, trying to understand that quickly is going to be paramount.”
Townsend replaces Lt. Gen. Sean McFarland, a fellow Army officer whose 11 months in command brought about a significant momentum shift. He helped the Iraqi army seize Ramadi and Fallujah, two strategically important cities in Anbar province, and made important commitments to the Kurdish forces now encroaching on Mosul from the north. That came despite a spike in ISIS terror attacks in Baghdad, turmoil inside Iraq’s Shiite-led government, and the steady expansion of Russian military operations across the region. Most recently, Russian military aircraft began flying combat missions from Iranian air bases, cutting across the Iraqi airspace already crowded with American military aircraft.
Townsend will face those challenges and more. He’ll have to contend not only with Russia’s expanding presence, but with Iran’s heavy-handed influence and continued fallout with Turkey, whose leadership has become outwardly distrustful of the U.S. after this summer’s failed coup attempt. If relations with Turkey don’t improve, U.S. military access to Incirlik Air Base could be in jeopardy, potentially compromising the anti-ISIS air campaign.
In Iraq, a fundamental predicament remains: Can Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds live together in a single nation state? And in Syria, where the military plan remains vague, there is no end in sight to the chaotic civil war that created the safe havens where ISIS took root.
“It’s hard to imagine walking into a more difficult scenario than General MacFarland did last year,” said Peter Haynes, a retired Navy captain who is now a military strategist at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. “However, I think General Townsend is walking into an even greater challenge.”
Townsend declined to be interviewed, instead offering Military Times a brief written statement about his initial plans as war commander.
“We will continue the attack, maintaining the momentum we have, to close with Mosul and Raqqa, ISIL’s twin capital cities, and destroy or drive Da'esh out,“ the general said, using alternative monikers for the Islamic State group. "Our international coalition has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to this mission, which will liberate the Iraqi and Syrian people from ISIL’s twisted ideology and make our own nations safer.”
FRAGILE, NEFARIOUS ALLIANCES
Townsend will command fewer than 5,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria. He can strike ISIS from the air, and he is authorized to deploy H-64 Apache attack helicopters to support close-quarters urban warfare. Yet most of his power lies in his ability to stitch together an improbable coalition of allies.
“The U.S. is almost like the glue that will hold this together. The multiple actors is going to be the biggest challenge General Townsend faces,” said Omar Lahriani, a military analyst for Stratfor, a Texas-based private intelligence firm.
Nearly all of those allies are flawed in some way. By and large, they don’t trust one another. Some are poorly led, ill equipped and unreliable. Some are foreign militaries with their own national agendas that may or may not overlap with U.S. objectives.
Operation Inherent Resolve is providing air strikes and combat advisers to at least four distinct groups: the Iraqi army, the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga, the Syrian Kurds, known as the YPG, and also to the so-called “Syrian Arab coalition.” At the same time, there is another layer of more ambiguous players: the enemies of America’s enemies who may (or may not) be friendly to the U.S. They oppose ISIS for one reason or another but don’t coordinate directly with U.S. forces. These groups include Iraq’s Shiite militias, Iranian operatives, the Russian military, the Turkish military and a patchwork of Syrian rebel militias whose aims and loyalties are unclear.
“Coalition warfare is always difficult. Collation warfare where some of the players aren’t even part of the coalition is even more difficult,” said Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. What remains to be seen is whether those groups will do what Townsend and his U.S. strategists want them to do. “You’re going to have to be looking at the Kurds; you’re going to have to be looking at the Iraqi forces; you’re going to have to be looking at the Iranians. And you’re going to have to be looking at the popular militias — and it is possible you might have to be looking at the Turks,” Cordesman added.
The rules of engagement could become quite complex very quickly, Haynes said. “What is the ROE if Shiite militias or Iranian forces start to fire on U.S. forces?” he said. Such an array of dubious allies makes some military professionals question the entire mission.
"The question," said Doug MacGregor, a retired Army colonel who’s now a consultant living in Virginia, "is 'who are our friends and allies that we are ultimately helping?’ I don’t think that’s very clear because I don’t think we have friends and allies in the region.”
A LOT HINGES ON MOSUL
Mosul will be familiar terrain for Townsend, who was a brigade commander there in 2006. Nevertheless, the battle for Iraq’s second-largest city, likely to begin later this year, will be a careful balancing act.
If he relies too heavily on air power and artillery, Townsend risks civilian casualties and damaging the city, further alienating Mosul residents and making reconciliation more difficult. But he can’t let the fight drag on for too long. “If Mosul ends up being a long, slogging affair, it will make the political situation in Baghdad even worse and ISIS would be able to gain a huge propaganda victory,” Haynes said.
This image posted on a militant website, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) marching in Raqqa, Syria.Photo Credit: AP Photo/Militant Website
Mosul is also a place where traditional combat operations will converge with politics. For the first time the U.S. commander is relying on all Iraqi factions to work together.
The battle plan calls for the Iraqi army to invade from the south and coordinate with the Kurdish Peshmerga who will push into Mosul from the north and east. At the same time, Townsend will have to apply political pressure to prevent the more autonomous Shiite militias — some backed by Iran — from causing problems.
“Taking Mosul is actually just the first time you have to make sure the glue works and the Baghdad government, the Peshmerga and the Shiite militias don’t turn on each other,” Lahriani said. A military victory in Mosul that “clears” the city center might ultimately turn out to be the easy part for the new commander.
To that end, MacFarland offered a blunt warning shortly before leaving Baghdad. “We can expect the enemy to adapt, to morph into a true insurgent force and terrorist organization capable of horrific attacks,” he told reporters on Aug. 11. It’s a problem that sounds a lot like the one that faced a force of 150,000 U.S. troops a decade ago.
“General Townsend’s biggest challenge is going to be figuring out how to translate battlefield victories into political gains,” Hayes said. “The sooner that you can get your political and economic reforms underway, it kind of starts to drain the swamp that ISIS swims in. If you reduce those grievances, it really reduces ISIS’s ability to gain a foothold at the local level. … Will it require more U.S. troops to do a counter-insurgency mission, which is very labor intensive?”
SYRIA: 'ANYBODY’S GUESS’
Achieving success will be far more difficult in Syria, where the multi-sided civil war creates a self-reinforcing crisis that ISIS exploits. Targeted operations against ISIS inadvertently strengthen the regime of President Bashar al Assad, thus prolonging the civil war between Assad and a disorganized patchwork of rebel forces. Weakening ISIS inadvertently eases pressure on Assad and helps sustain the chaotic stalemate where ISIS took root.
U.S. strategy is focused on ousting ISIS from its stronghold in Raqqa. American warplanes conduct daily airstrikes, but there are only about 300 U.S. troops on the group, special operators backing a cadre of anti-ISIS militias.
Compared to Iraq, the Syrian battlefield has many more actors, including dozens of rebel factions, Russians and Iranians, both of whom support Assad’s ultimate survival. Syria is a geopolitical powder keg, and that limits the U.S. military’s ability to leverage its own power.
“If you put more U.S. forces on the ground in Syria, not only can they come into contact with ISIS, but they could come into contact with Russian forces. Or with Iranian forces. Imagine if some of their bombs actually hit U.S. forces? That is a much bigger complication,” Lahriani said. That fear was highlighted just a few days before Townsend took command. On Aug. 18, Syrian jets launched air strikes near a small contingent of U.S. special operations troops alongside Syrian real allies on the ground.
Russian pilots fly a long range bomber Tu-22M3 during an air strike over Syria on Aug. 18, 2016. Russia’s Defence Ministry said the Russian warplanes took off from a base in Iran and in Russia to target Islamic State fighters in Syria.Photo Credit: AP via Russian Defense Ministry
U.S. support in Syria has focused on the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the YPG. They’ve proven to be the most reliable U.S. ally and could help achieve a major tactical victory by cutting off ISIS supply lines into Turkey and further isolating the extremist group. “The big question is going to be whether or not the Syrian Kurds are going to be able to consolidate control over the length of the Syrian-Turkish border,” said Michael Rubin, a military analyst with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
But flowing military support to the YPG comes with a big risk: destabilizing Turkey. The Turkish government vigorously opposes empowering Syrian Kurds. Turkey has its own restive Kurdish minority, and many Turks believe the YPG is linked to a Turkish terrorist group that mounts catastrophic attacks on the Turkish government and civilians.
U.S. relations with Turkey, a NATO ally, have faltered during the past year, and some U.S. military officials fear that Turkey would revoke military’s access to Incirlik Air Base, a key hub for the American coalition’s anti-ISIS operations. While Turkey nominally backs the U.S. effort to defeat ISIS, many experts believe suppressing the Kurds is Turkey’s top priority and many Turks quietly sympathize with the Islamic extremists.
“Turkey has been playing a double game,” Karasik said.
With Turkey, Russia and Iran all pursing different agendas in Syria’s civil war, many experts believe there is no military solution — that the civil war will end only with a diplomatic agreement between the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.
“It’s going to have to be solved politically,” said Larry Korb, a military expert with the Center for American Progress. “Syria has got to be solved by [U.S. Secretary of State John] Kerry, to come to some sort of accommodation with the Russians. Because the Russians kept Assad from failing, but they can’t make him win. … We don’t want to get involved with the Syrian civil war, but we want to deny ISIS a safe haven. We want to work with the Kurds to fight ISIS, but we don’t want to antagonize the Turks too much. So basically that is much more complex.”
Just days before Townsend arrived in Baghdad, the calculus grew more multifarious as the Russians began using Iranian military bases to launch air strikes on Syria. “That was a direct message to the Arabs, that the Russians are here to stay,” Karasik said. “The general is going to have to deal the Russians more and more.”
Most experts say there is simply no end in sight. “What happens in Syria is, quite frankly, anybody’s guess,” Cordesman said.
WILDCARD: IF TRUMP IS PRESIDENT
One of the greatest uncertainties during Townsend’s command will be his new commander in chief, and what direction the next president will want to take the ISIS fight.
If Hillary Clinton wins in November, Townsend’s mission is likely to remain largely unchanged. “She’ll continue the Obama policies, maybe a little more effort in there. … You might have a safe zone, for example, in Syria for humanitarian reasons,” Korb said.
Republican nominee Donald Trump has been vague about his objectives for war. If he’s elected, Townsend could face an awkward transition if the president-elect signals a big policy shift before being sworn into office.
“A president Trump would be an interesting issue,” Cordesman said. “One problem is — what does a president-elect say? And this is a president who would probably say something and there is no way to know. Is it going to reinforce General Townsend’s mission? Is it going to present a problem? ‘Obviously one of the difficulties for any serving officer is trying to serve two masters, and here you’d have a master in office and a master that is coming in. That is not something, again, that you can predict. But it is certainly going to be a challenge if it happens.”
Few experts believe either candidate would order a new, aggressive push into Syria. But Townsend may receive very little oversight as power changes hands in Washington. There might be some “drift” at a very critical time, Karasik said. “And ‘between administrations’ can last a good six months at least,” he added.
The list of worst-case scenarios is long: open conflict with Russia or Iran; a collapse of the Iraqi government; or even a massive humanitarian crisis caused by a breach of the dilapidated Mosul dam, which would cause flooding in the streets of Baghdad.
“If certain contingencies happen simultaneously,” Karasik said, “then he’s going to be on his own. And don’t forget everybody knows this — and they will take advantage of it.”
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