By year’s end the city of Mosul will be occupied by a force intent on keeping control while simultaneous being surrounded and liberated by a force made up of multiple groups with multiple goals. This is a recipe for disaster and disunity. Currently the Iraqi plan is for parts of the Iraqi National Army and Nineveh province militias to spearhead the assault into Mosul while all the forces envelop the city. From there, the areas that are liberated will be secured by Kurdish Peshmerga and Shi’ite militias. While Mosul is made up of different ethnic and religious groups, due to the violence, the main ethno-religious group left in Mosul is Sunni Arabs.

Current reporting puts the number of ISIL fighters in Mosul anywhere between 1000 and 2000 able bodied men. I’m not sure how reliable this number can be considering Mosul is a city, now, housing over 600,000 people. Since ISIL gained control of Mosul in 2014 they have instituted changes to the education system. A 12 year old in 2014 is now 14 with two years of ISIL indoctrination fed on a daily basis, and ISIL does not shy away from using child soldiers. Worse, a disenfranchised youth at 16 in Mosul has now turned 18 and fed the lies of martyrdom by ISIL. Mosul has had two years of ISIL Islamic Law, today most males in Mosul all look and dress the same- so which is the ISIL fighter and which is someone growing a beard to stay alive. So there may have been 1000 to 2000 ISIL fighters in Mosul at some point but it’s a stretch to believe that number today. ISIL has fully blended into the population of Mosul. For Sunni militia members from the Nineveh province, they are surely aware of the careful nature needed of liberating a city where the enemy now hides in plain day amongst the population. The care needed to differentiate between someone with a beard who grew the beard to survive the reign of ISIL and a beard belonging to a harden fighter.

Shi’ite and Kurdish fighters may not look for the differences between residents of Mosul as carefully as the Nineveh province militias. In Ramadi and Tikrit, which were retaken by primarily Shi’ite forces, if you were in the wrong area and looked the wrong way it may cost your life. The timescale to retake Mosul, which will be longer than the battles to retake Ramadi and Tikrit, gives enough time for mistakes to become grievances. Remember, since the Iraqi government plans to cut off all lines of retreat every mistake the Iraqi forces make will create a grievance that ISIL can exploit. The members of ISIL will be stuck inside Mosul with two options: win or die. To necessitate a victory ISIL will need more and more troops. While being cut off from traditional reinforcements from Syria they have an entire city under their control. Each innocent man killed means a new recruit for ISIL if they have a child. Each business looted by a Shi’ite militia means a new recruit for ISIL. These mistakes and behaviors have already happened in other parts of Iraq so it should not come as a surprise when they occur in Mosul again. Moreover, mistakes in governance and the abuse of power by the Shi’ite government led by Nouri al-Maliki allowed for ISIL to be welcomed in Sunni areas of Iraq.

The Iraqi coalition looking to take back Mosul has to perfectly execute their military strategy since they have abandoned the maxim of allowing your enemy an avenue of retreat. It would be a moving catastrophe if forward forces made up of Sunni militias looked back and saw Shi’ite militias looting recently liberated areas. No matter the reasoning behind the Shi’ite looting, even if the militia needed food, perception is everything. It would immediately trigger amongst the Sunni fighters the idea “what and who are we fighting for?” This same line of thinking caused Sunni tribes to allow ISIL into a city like Ramadi as the Iraqi government forces, and the government itself, was failing to meet their obligations in defending Ramadi.

What will underscore fears of instability is the lack of troop commitment to retake Mosul. Having only 25,000 to 35,000 disparate forces to retake and re-administer government control in Mosul could easily allow for any ISIL operatives, assuming they lose, to continue the destabilizing terror attacks that allowed their entry in the first place. The first thing ISIL did when they rolled their pick-ups, tanks, and humvees into Mosul was remove any and all roadblocks/checkpoints put in place by the Iraqi government. The people of Mosul rejoiced at just the idea of feeling free again, even if it meant their new rulers would enforce draconian quasi religious laws. If the prior force of 5,000 well armed Iraqi National Army forces fled at the sight of ISIL what makes the Iraqi government so sure that they can begin administering control once again. Mosul after ISIL will be a fully war torn city with a remaining population rife with grievances with little avenues to readdress their grievances. To leave security control in the hands of the Nineveh province militias, backed by Kurdish forces, seems like the most sensible approach. However, the government out of Baghdad has yet to prove they can consistently deliver weapon shipments to the Sunnis or Kurds. Instead, much to the lament of American officials, weapon shipments sent to Baghdad earmarked for the Kurds or Sunnis end up bolstering the already impressive armaments of Shi’ite militias. A successful Mosul campaign would need to flip the script of how the Iraqi government has behaved with regards to Iraqi minorities since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

This is the slow grind of destruction Mosul stands against. The desire to be liberated, but by a liberator that will do as much destruction as the occupier. The citizens of Mosul are caught in a paradox of living under an oppressor of their own ethno-religious background or return to being governed by Baghdad that was a corrupting force on the city. There may come a time were ISIL will be forced into a situation between win or die, where all options of retreat are cut off and the might of US-Arab forces bear down full bore. Mosul is not that location. That strategy in Mosul will redefine a Pyrrhic victory for our modern times. Mosul is a city that has to become functional again if Iraq seeks a peaceful future. By following a strategy that cuts off retreat the Iraqi government may doom Mosul to complete destruction.

Since ISIL launched their Iraqi offensive in 2014 the Iraqi National Government has struggled to maintain a standing, unified, army. Instead, many of the military counter offensives that have been waged against ISIL are done by the Iraqi National Army (singular in a sense), the Kurdish Peshmerga, and the Shi’ite militias of which the main one is the Badr Organization (now the Popular Mobilization Forces). The fight to retake Mosul will see a fourth actor introduced, militias formed out of the Nineveh Province. All told the Iraqi government is forecasting 25 to 35 thousand troops needed to retake Mosul. This will be the first time all four major actors to retake Mosul will be working together with the same goal. None of these actors are unified in the western sense of a military. In the United States there are soldiers, seamen, marines, and airmen of the entire kaleidoscope that makes up the America citizenry. In Iraq the picture is starkly different. The Iraqi National Army is mainly made up of Shi’ites, the Kurdish Peshmerga made up mainly of Kurds, the Shi’ite militias made up of Shi’ites and finally the Nineveh militias’ a mix of Sunni, Christian, as well as other ethnic and religious minorities. It should be noted the bulk of the fighters making up the Nineveh militias will be Sunni’s. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein many ethnic and religious minorities have been driven out of the Nineveh province- this accelerated with ISIL’s invasion.

The four part entity will make up the liberation force tasked with driving out ISIL from Mosul and, one would hope, the ongoing security force to keep Mosul from falling back into ISIL control. From studying civil conflict, the mechanisms that lead people to war, I cannot think of another single example where a country has four different independent forces converging on the same goal. There are plenty of examples of countries working together, which happened when coalition forces drove out Saddam Hussein from Mosul. But the internal forces of a country acting this independently have not been a feature in recent history.

This independent nature of the Iraqi forces converging on Mosul is not positive. Already in Sunni areas that have been “liberated” by Iraqi National Army and Shi’ite militias there is two consistent stories that emerge. The first being how terrible ISIL is as an organization, their barbaric conduct, their wanton disregard for human life, and their obsession with destroying the past. The second focuses on whatever was left standing after ISIL being destroyed by the “liberators”. Shi’ite militias have no interest in preserving Sunni homes. Therefore, if a booby trap is found within a home it’s detonated. If there is a business still standing Shi’ite militias will claim the resources of that business for the war effort- what they are doing actually amounts to looting. When Sunni’s return they usually have nothing left as evidenced in Tikrit and Ramadi. There should be zero expectation that Shi’ite militias will behave any differently once entering Mosul.

In this series of articles we will hope to examine why the current campaign to retake Mosul is tantamount to the destruction of Mosul. That, sometimes, patience is a virtue and when a country acts it should act as a unified force not a fragmented society.

As the end of the year approaches the Iraqi government will begin the final stages of preparation to reclaim the city of Mosul. What will be left of the city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, is another topic entirely. So far the Iraqi government has been able to retake major swaths of land from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) at a large cost. Each battle for a new city seems to bring another level of destruction. This destruction is not only wrought by ISIL but also caused by the liberating forces. Mosul will be the largest prize for the Iraqi National Army since the city’s fall in 2014. But does the Iraqi government have enough forces to retake Mosul? Are the Iraqi forces unified enough to hold together against what will be a trapped foe? Is the strategic plan to retake Mosul sound to begin with? Better yet, does the Iraqi government have a plan to hold Mosul after a successful military campaign?

Currently the goal of the Iraqi National Army is to envelop the city of Mosul beginning from the North and South, but also cutting off escape routes to the West. Fleeing ISIL fighters to the east will run directly into Kurdish Peshmerga, so the eastern front is effectively blockaded against ISIL. In each battle that the Iraqi National Army, usually backed by the Badr Militia (Shi’ite militia), has successfully won, they have allowed ISIL fighters to leave the combat zone. In Ramadi, ISIL fighters were fleeing the battlefield dressed as women. In Tikrit, ISIL forces once they realized the city was lost packed up their trucks and fled to Mosul. Throughout the successful military operations in the Anbar and Nineveh provinces of Iraq ISIL has been allowed to retreat. Even with the ability to retreat ISIL has made sure to torch oil fields, booby trap homes and roads, as well as leave munitions dumps booby trapped. The invasion into Mosul will see the same type of total warfare tactics displayed by ISIL in Ramadi and Tikrit. It’s understandable that the Iraqi government wants to crush ISIL in Mosul, erase them from the map. Therefore the lure of enveloping Mosul, cutting off all lines of retreat and supply, is a very attractive idea. However, let’s not forget the timeless words of Sun Tzu, from the Art of War–

“To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape.”

While an old text, there is reason the maxims of Sun Tzu still ring true today; they work. We in the West can look back to World War II where this maxim was put under examination. The Nazi Army was fighting on two fronts, to the west they contended with American and British forces while to the east Russian forces marched to Berlin. American and British forces often allowed for escape routes for Nazi forces, simply because fighting a cornered animal is extremely dangerous. The Russian Army decided the opposite, to envelop a city and to crush all Nazi forces. As the war in mainland Europe drew to a close two distinct patterns emerged. Nazi officers and soldiers on the western front began to surrender en masse to American and British forces. They knew by surrendering their fates would no longer be in their own hands but they may still have a chance to live. This also benefited American and British forces since it eased the burden on their soldiers. Rarely are lives lost when the enemy surrenders. This behavior was partly induced by previously allowing Nazi troops avenues of retreat. It allowed for less loss of life and damage to the existing infrastructure. The fighting on the eastern front of Nazi controlled territory was a literal battle to the death (win or die) until the fall of Berlin. The loss of life and the devastation caused to cities and towns would take decades to rebuild. The Russian Army would take years to rebuild as the causality count of their annihilation strategy tested their man power reserves.

To surround Mosul, allowing ISIL no means of escape will amplify the violence to new levels in Iraq. Instead of weary ISIL fighters thinking of fleeing they will absolutely know it’s either fight or be captured by a predominately Shi’ite force. ISIL is a Sunni organization. The thought that large swaths of Sunni ISIL fighters will surrender to the Iraqi National Army is a fantasy. The belief that ISIL will not amply there force by practically booby trapping as much of the city as possible is a fantasy. The notion that Sunni’s living in ISIL territory, who desperately want to be rid of ISIL, will readily welcome Shi’ite militias as saviors is by far the most fanciful idea. The upcoming battle for Mosul under the current strategy set forth by the Iraqi government may lead to a victory, but Pyrrhic victory. That is to say they indeed may obliterate the ISIL presence in Mosul but at the cost of most of their attacking force. Then who is left to protect the city.