In Iraq and Syria
Iraqi forces trying to retake the crucial city of Mosul are now running into classic urban guerilla resistance warfare bottlenecks, hence progress is understandably slow. The squeeze has been on for a month now, yet government forces have barely really entered the city. The biggest problem is ISIS’s use of civilians as human shields. With more than a million people inside Mosul, the problem is formidable. Perhaps Iraqi forces are (rightly) taking a leaf out of the book from the war in next-door Syria. Just when Damascus was facing wolf-at-the-door rhetoric in the international press around mid ’13, Lebanese Hezbollah militia proved crucial in helping the Syrian government cut off the Lebanese border, then they proceeded to cleanse important cities house-by-house. It’s slow, but it deals more effectively with the human shield problem.
Mosul’s fall will deliver a severe blow to ISIS. It’s trajectory of the last two years has been effectively bulldozed. But the genesis of the turnaround is not found in Iraq. The tables were turned in Syria. The Syrian Arab Army had made significant gains over the last couple of years, but the war was effectively stalemated; till the Russian intervention. Since then ISIS has been on the run. And its backers and financers, in the Middle East and in the west, have been fuming.
Pakistan is beginning to face ISIS specific problems too. So far the interior ministry has tended to play down the threat. But of late parts of the security machinery have been leaking stories about ISIS operatives being picked up in different parts of the country. If anything, the wars in Iraq and Syria should provide us ample proof of the degree of ISIS’s barbarity. And since we are already in the middle of an existential war, we should preempt not ignore this threat.