Tag Daesh

Syria After Aleppo

Reports of the collapse of resistance by forces fighting the regime of Bashar Al Assad in Aleppo, Syria have overshadowed news of the recent recapture of Palmyra by Daesh fighters. While the conquest of Aleppo is a significant victory for Assad, the loss of Plamyra – which had been recaptured by the Syrian Army earlier in the year – clearly indicates that success will not be decisive in bringing the five-year old civil war to an end.

Despite major assistance from Russia and Iran, the Syrian Army lacks the combat power to defeat the various domestic and foreign rebel forces arrayed against it. The army, estimated to number over 300,000 before the conflict began, is now believed to total less than half of that as a result of casualties, desertions, and fatigue. It has become particularly weak in infantry. In an attempt to remedy this, the Syrians have raised religiously and politically indoctrinated National Defense Forces (NDF) militias with the help of Iranian advisors, although they are of uncertain quality. The Iranians Qods Force and Lebanese Hizbollah have contributed advisor and fighters, respectively, and the Russians have also contributed advisors and heavy artillery and air support.

Reliable estimates of force strengths for the various factions are hard to come by, and figures for the Syrian Army are particularly variable. The Syrian Kurds are currently aligned against Daesh and Jubhat Fateh al-Sham (the current name for al Qaeda fighters in Syria). They seek independence from the Assad regime but are not fighting against it at this time.

Even the most optimistic estimates based on back-of-the-envelope counts of the raw numbers do not credit the Assad regime and its patrons with enough of a force ratio advantage to overwhelm their opponents in the sort-term. If the pessimistic estimates are more accurate, despite local successes, the Syrian government may struggle simply to maintain the status quo.

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to intensify U.S. efforts effort to defeat Daesh and to work with Russia to that end. Analysts believe, however, that Russia supports Assad’s calculated strategy to defeat Syrian Sunni rebels first to eliminate the political threat they pose to his regime, before seeking to defeat Daesh and al Qaeda. Precisely what the incoming Trump administration will do differently than currently and the extent of actual military cooperation with Assad and Russia remains to be seen.

Urban Combat in Mosul

battle-of-mosul-11-nov-2016The Iraqi Interior Ministry announced on Tuesday that Daesh fighters have been cleared from a third of the city of Mosul east of the Tigris River. Pre-battle estimates by the Iraqis credited Daesh with 5,000-6,000 fighters in the city. The Iraqi government has deployed a polyglot force of 100,000 Defense and Interior Ministry troops, Kurdish peshmerga militia, and Shi’ite paramilitary fighters, supported by Western ground and air support, which have mostly surrounded the city. While official casualty estimates have not been announced, the Iraqis claimed to have killed 955 Daesh fighters and captured 108 on the southern front alone.

Despite the months of preparation and a clear objective, The Washington Post‘s Loveday Morris recently reported that Iraqi Army commanders were still “shaken” by the character of the fighting in Mosul’s urban environs. Although confident they will ultimately prevail, they doubt they will meet the objective set by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to bring the city under control by the end of the year.

Although the Iraqi military leaders profess surprise at the complexity of urban combat, their descriptions of do not reveal anything unprecedented in historical experience. Many comments reflect recurring problems the Iraqi Army has faced in its recent operations to clear Daesh from central and western Iraq.

  • It is a bitter fight: street to street, house to house, with the presence of civilians slowing the advancing forces. Car bombs — the militants’ main weapon — speed out of garages and straight into advancing military convoys.
  • “If there were no civilians, we’d just burn it all,” said Maj. Gen. Sami al-Aridhi, a counterterrorism commander. He was forced to temporarily pause operations in his sector Monday because too many families were clogging the street. “I couldn’t bomb with artillery or tanks, or heavy weapons. I said, ‘We can’t do anything.’ ”
  • Militants wait to move between fighting positions until people fill the streets, using their presence as protection from airstrikes.
  • Col. Arkan Fadhil calls in airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition, but they are less forthcoming than in previous battles because of the presence of families, and are used only to defend Iraqi forces rather than backing them when they attack.
  • Just a few Islamic State militants hidden in populated areas can cause tremendous chaos. [E]lite units stormed [six neighborhoods on] Nov. 4, on a day that was initially trumpeted as a success before it became clear that their early gains were not sustainable. After pushing forward with relatively little resistance, the forces were ambushed and cut off.
  • Low-ranking officers in the field made some mistakes…such as pushing forward without waiting for other units or without properly clearing and securing areas, later getting ambushed and becoming surrounded and trapped. Since the pitched battles of Nov. 4, the [Iraqi] counterterrorism troops have adjusted their pace.
  • [Iraqi counterterrorism forces] said they have had to slow down as they wait for other fronts to advance on the city. Whether they can fight inside when they reach it also remains to be seen. In the battle for the city of Ramadi, the elite counterterrorism troops ended up leading the entire fight after police and army forces struggled to move forward in their sectors.
  • Restrictions in the use of airstrikes also slow their advance. But on Tuesday morning, more than half a dozen rockets roared overhead into the Mosul neighborhood of Tahrir. Officers identified them as TOS-1 short-range missiles, which unleash a blast of pressure over an area of several hundred square meters, devastating anything in their wake. The officers said they had been informed that there were no civilians in the target area. “We only use these missiles in empty areas,” Aridhi said. “We don’t use them in places with families in it.” They sometimes are used when Iraqi forces are under heavy direct fire, he said, because it is faster than sending coordinates to the coalition.

The Iraqi government has not yet released casualty figures for the fighting, but losses are perceived to be heavy by the combatants themselves.

Given the extreme ratio of forces involved, it would seem that Iraqi military leaders are on firm ground in their confidence of ultimate success. It also seems likely they are correct about the amount of time that will be needed to secure Mosul. The defending Daesh fighters are unlikely to be reinforced and cannot replace their combat losses. Simple arithmetic will do them in sooner or later. It also appears clear that the Iraqis are holding open an avenue of retreat to the west, in the hopes that surviving Daesh forces will simply withdraw rather than fight to the last.

It is somewhat unexpected that the Iraqi Army would be surprised by the character of urban fighting in Mosul, given that they have a good deal of recent experience with it. Although they did not lead the fights, Iraqi Army elements participated in the battles for Fallujah in 2004 and Sadr City in 2008. Iraqi government forces cleared Basra with Coalition assistance in 2008, and recaptured Tikrit, Ramadi, and Fallujah (again) over the last year.

There exists a significant body of conventional wisdom that holds that urban combat is bloodier than non-urban combat, requires a higher ratio of attackers to defenders to be successful, and will be prevalent in the future. None of these conclusions is borne out by historical evidence. TDI has done a significant amount of analysis challenging the basis and conclusions of this conventional wisdom. War by Numbers, the forthcoming book by TDI President Chris Lawrence, goes into this research in great detail.

Syria and Iraq After The Islamic State

As Iraqi forces close in on the northern city of Mosul, the commander of U.S Joint Task Force-INHERENT RESOLVE, Army Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, indicated on Wednesday that preparations are being accelerated for isolating Raqaa, Syria, the capital of the Islamic State. The attack could begin within two weeks, The Daily Beast’s Nancy Youssef reported on Thursday. Townsend stated that the timing is being influenced by evidence of Daesh planning for terrorist attacks on unidentified targets in the West.

According to Townsend, the projected offensive against Raqaa will include elements of the Syrian Kurd YPG militia. “The only force that is capable on any near term timeline are the Syrian Democratic Forces, of which the YPG are a significant portion,” Townsend said. “We’ll move soon to isolate Raqqa with the forces that are ready to go.”

Although YPG has not stated whether it is willing to participate in an attack on Raqaa, Turkey has expressed its opposition to involving the Syrian Kurds, which it says will “endanger the future of Syria.” Turkey is actively fighting a domestic Kurdish insurgency and has launched military strikes on Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish forces.

The U.S.’s willingness to back the Syrian Kurdish forces over Turkey’s objections are a clear harbinger of the challenges facing the region even after Mosul and Raqaa are liberated from Daesh control. Liberating Raqaa will not end the civil war in Syria and will not spell the end of Daesh. Daesh forces still control wide swaths of territory in Syria. Will the U.S. remain committed to fighting Daesh in Syria after Raqaa falls?

U.S. and Iraqi military leaders have predicted that Daesh will continue to wage an insurgency in Iraq as a potent guerilla force. After Mosul falls, the Iraqi government faces the prospect of a grinding, open-ended counterinsurgency effort fueled by unresolved sectarian divisions. Is the U.S. prepared to maintain its support for open-ended Iraqi counterinsurgency operations after Mosul is recaptured?

Interwoven into these questions are bigger, regional questions. Will the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds be allowed political autonomy in those parts of Syria and Iraq liberated from Daesh control? Will the Free Syrian Forces become the de-facto government over the parts of Syria not under Assad’s control? What is Iraqi Kurdistan’s future in Iraq? While the liberation of Mosul and Raqaa will constitute manifest defeats for Daesh, these forthcoming victories do not appear that they will be decisive in resolving the ongoing local and regional political conflicts.

Dabiq Falls To Free Syrian Rebels

(The Guardian)
(The Guardian)

The Sultan Murad group, a Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel militia backed by Turkey, announced today that it had captured the town of Dabiq in northern Syria, following the retreat of Daesh fighters. Part of Operation Euphrates Shield, initiated by Turkey in August following a Daesh suicide attack on the city of Gaziantep, FSA forces have cleared a section of Syrian territory north of Aleppo with the aid of Turkish tanks, aircraft, and special operations forces.

Dabiq’s fall is significant for Daesh’s self-proclaimed caliphate, given the role accorded to the city in the group’s propaganda. In hadith, or sayings attributed to the Prophet Mohammad, Dabiq was to be the location of the final battle between Muslims and infidels before Doomsday. Daesh featured Dabiq prominently in its messaging and used it as the title for its sophisticated online journal. Several American and British aid workers were executed there.

“The Daesh myth of their great battle in Dabiq is finished,” Ahmed Osman, head of the Sultan Murad group, told Reuters.

The fall of Dabiq is the latest in a succession of military defeats Daesh has suffered this year, including losing control of the historic city of Palmyra and much of the territory it had controlled in northern Syria. Iraqi forces retook Fallujah and most of Anbar province, and the beginning of a long-planned operation to free Mosul in northern Iraq appears imminent.

Some back-of-the-envelope calculations

Keying off Shawn’s previous post…if the DOD figures are accurate this means:

  1. In about two years, we have killed 45,000 insurgents from a force of around 25,000.
    1. This is around 100% losses a year
    2. This means the insurgents had to completely recruit an entire new force every year for the last two years
      1. Or maybe we just shot everyone twice.
    3. It is clear the claimed kills are way too high, or the claimed strength is too low, or a little bit of both
  2. We are getting three kills per sortie.
    1. Now, I have not done an analysis of kills per sorties in other insurgencies (and this would be useful to do), but I am pretty certain that this is unusually high.
  3. We are killing almost a 1,000 insurgents (not in uniform) for every civilian we are killing.
    1. Even if I use the Airwars figure of 1,568 civilians killed, this is 29 insurgents for every civilian killed.
    2. Again, I have not an analysis of insurgents killed per civilian killed in air operations (and this would be useful to do), but these rates seem unusually low.

It appears that there are some bad estimates being made here. Nothing wrong with doing an estimate, but something is very wrong if you are doing estimates that are significantly off. Some of these appear to be off.

This is, of course, a problem we encountered with Iraq and Afghanistan and is discussed to some extent in my book America’s Modern Wars. It was also a problem with the Soviet Army in World War II, and is something I discuss in some depth in my Kursk book.

It would be useful to develop a set of benchmarks from past wars looking at insurgents killed per sorties, insurgents killed per civilian killed in air operations (an other types of operations), insurgents killed compared to force strength, and so forth.

I Don’t Usually Do Body Counts, But When I Do…

(Photo: Dos Equis)
(Photo: Dos Equis)

Over at Foreign Policy, Michah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has taken a critical look at the estimates of Daesh fighters the U.S. has killed provided by various Department of Defense sources since 2015. Despite several about-faces on a policy of releasing such figures, the lure to do so is powerful because of the impact they have on public opinion.

Zenko notes the inconsistent logic in the the numbers released, the lack of explanation of the methodology at how they were derived, and how denials about their validity undermine the public policy value of providing them in the first place. There is also the problem of acknowledging noncombatant deaths but asserting that only 55 civilians have been killed in over 15,000 confirmed airstrikes.

Here is the list Zenko compiled of Defense Department cumulative estimates of Daesh fighters killed in Iraq and Syria by U.S. airstrikes:

January 2015:                6,000
March 3, 2015:               8,500
June 1, 2015:             ~13,000
July 29, 2015:               15,000
October 12, 2015:        20,000
November 30, 2015:     23,000
January 6, 2016:           25,500
April 12, 2016:          25-26,000
August 10, 2016:           45,000

Chris cited an article two weeks ago in the New York Times, that provided an estimate by a Defense Department source that there are currently 19-25,000 Daesh fighters in Iraq and Syria.

Pouring Cold Water in ‘Boots on the Ground’

Both Chris and I questioned the proposed force size figures being bandied about by advocates and opponents of a U.S. ground force intervention to combat Daesh in Iraq and Syria. It turns out that we were not the only ones who found these figures to be curious. Kevin Benson, a retired U.S. Army colonel and the Deputy Chief of Staff, J-5 for the Army component of U.S. Central Command in 2002, found these proposed force levels to be far too low on simple logistical grounds. In an analysis published on War on the Rocks, he summarized the challenges and requirements:

In the case of a campaign against ISIL, the length of the lines of communication in this theater of war, from seaports and airports to key ISIL-held cities, is daunting. From our bases in Kuwait, it is roughly 1,000 kilometers to Mosul.  To Raqqa it is another 400 kilometers.  If we were to attack ISIL through the Syrian port of Latakia, the distance to Raqqa is 300 kilometers.  We can assume these lines of communication will be contested.   It may well only require two U.S. brigade combat teams, along with French, Russian, Turkish, Kurdish, Jordanian, and Iraqi forces to defeat ISIL in combat.  Nonetheless, it will take a lot more than 10,000 soldiers to deliver two brigade combat teams to Mosul and Raqqa in the form required to engage in battle with an enemy who clearly knows how to fight.

Two BCTs would be a minimum force level commitment just to defeat Daesh on the battlefield. They would clearly be insufficient for follow-on stability or counterinsurgency operations.

Benson concludes with an excellent point about the pitfalls of spitballing numbers in policy discussions:

Military and security professionals need to overcome policymakers’ fascination with low numbers of troops being the best course of action and their resultant tendency to micro-manage troop numbers down to the tactical level.  Military advice must be solid, fact-based advice on the structure we would need to put into place to truly defeat ISIL on its home turf.  After 14 years at war, we know no plan can look with certainty beyond initial contact with the enemy main body — the enemy gets a vote.  We know friction and the fog of battle are real.  Still, unsubstantiated numbers proposed through the media and other journals do not really help address the issue at hand.  Frankly, Sen. McCain and Gen. Zinni ought to realize that what they are saying about what it would take to defeat ISIL is not helpful in crafting the plans really needed to accomplish this task. Hurling low ball figures without considering the mathematics of war is not rendering sound military advice, it is chasing sound bites and re-tweets.

Iraq/Syria Intervention Scenarios

There are a lot of potential variables to consider in developing a casualty estimate for a potential large-scale intervention. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have floated various proposals to deploy 10,000 U.S. ground combat troops to both Iraq and Syria, with the most recent calling for 10,000 in Syria along with 10,000 Arab allies.

It is not clear if McCain, Graham, or Obama are assuming a U.S.-led ground offensive to be followed by the withdrawal of U.S. troops, or a ground offensive and an open-ended stability/peacekeeping mission. Nor is it clear if they assume an offensive against Daesh only or an attack on the Assad regime as well.

Potential ground offensive scenarios:

1. 10-20,000 U.S. advisors only in Iraq and Syria
2. 10,000 U.S. troops leading a ground offensive against Daesh in Iraq
3. 10,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 10,000 U.S. troops in Syria leading a ground offensive against Daesh only
4. 10,000 U.S. troops in Syria and 10,000 Arab coalition troops leading a ground offensive against Daesh only
5. 10,000 U.S. troops in Syria and 10,000 Arab coalition troops leading a ground offensive against Daesh and the Assad regime

A long-term stability and support operation in Syria would almost certainly require more than 10,000 U.S. and 10,000 Arab coalition troops, even if it were confined to areas currently held by Daesh, and even more if extended into former Assad regime areas.

President Obama’s Casualty Estimates

Well, looks like President Obama is giving out casualty estimates for a potential intervention.

That used to be our job.

His estimate was for “sending significant ground forces back to the Middle East”

The results were:

1. “…could conceivably result in the deaths of 100 American soldiers every month.”
2. “…could take up to $10 billion a month…”
3. “….and leave as many as 500 troops wounded every month in addition to those killed…”

“Mr. Obama explained that his refusal to redeploy large numbers of troops to the region was rooted in the grim assumption that the casualties and costs would rival the worst of the Iraq war. “

Clearly this was a worst case situation based upon some study or analysis done. Do not know who did the study and I not think the study is in the public domain.

This is clearly just applying the Iraq War model to the current situation. In the case of Iraq, we had over 100,000 troops deployed and were directly and often by ourselves engaged with a major insurgency. This was generating 100 deaths on some months. This is 1200 a year. We lost people at that rate for four years in Iraq (2004 = 849, 2005 = 846, 2006 – 823, 2007 – 904).

On the other hand, it appear that most people talking intervention in Syria and Iraq appear to be discussing training missions with some ground support. I do not think anyone is seriously talking about putting a 100,000 troops back in. I think most people are talking about 10,000 to 20,000 troops primarily as trainers for the Syrian insurgents, the Kurds and the Iraq government. This is in effect what we currently have in Afghanistan. Our post surge losses there are more like 100 a year (2013 = 127, 2014 = 55, 2015 = 16).

Needless to say, loss rates are tied to the force size. A force fully engaged of 20,000 is not going to suffer the same number of losses as a force fully engaged of 100,000. And, we are looking at missions that are primarily training and support, which should suffer losses less than forces that are fully engaged.

Of course, The Dupuy Institute did a casualty estimate for a peacekeeping force of 20,000 for Bosnia, and we have done a casualty estimate for major counterinsurgency force of 100,000+ for Iraq. An estimate for a training and support mission of 20,000 people would be much lower than our estimate for Iraq.