Iraq Crisis: Some Islamic State Commanders Retreat Back to Syria

U.S. Airstrikes Cause Scramble in Ground Leadership of Insurgents

By Nour Malas, The Wall Street Journal

21 August 2014

ERBIL, Iraq—Iraqi officials say U.S. airstrikes have driven some ground commanders of the Sunni radical group Islamic State from northern Iraq across the border into Syria.

Buoyed by a victory over the insurgents at Mosul Dam this week, the Iraqi military renewed efforts to retake Tikrit, a key Sunni city. But the operation appeared to stall on its second day Wednesday.

The U.S. announced a new series of airstrikes that hit Islamic State forces near the dam, while President Barack Obama denounced the group for beheading an American journalist in retribution for the airstrikes.

“We are noting a retreat of some emirs because the strikes have been effective, and are also starting to create panic,” a senior Iraqi counterterrorism official said.

Emir is the title Islamic State members and supporters use for commanders in charge of a province—local leaders of what they envision as statelets in a cross-border Islamic caliphate they hope to establish.

Pentagon officials said they have seen no indications the group’s leadership was retreating to Syria as a result of the airstrikes.

According to the Iraqis, the commanders went to eastern Syria, where Islamic State has built an operational base amid the chaos of civil war over the past few years. The insurgents are able to dash across the border into Syria, where that base continues to offer the space to recruit and reorganize largely unchallenged.

“They’ve got much better cover in Syria than they do in Iraq,” said Will McCants, an expert on militant Islam at the Brookings Institution and a former State Department adviser. “When they have that kind of strategic depth, they’re just allowed to live another day.”

Iraqi officials and counterterrorism experts say they see signs of leaders scrambling in the immediate aftermath of U.S. airstrikes that began on Aug. 8. However, they said the retreat doesn’t reflect a broader exodus by the Islamic State, which continues to solidify its grip on Iraqi territory under its control.

The Iraqis said this was the first time since the insurgency began in June that they had detected the commanders—who are normally on the ground directing battles—moving into Syria.

U.S. military officials said there were signs the American attacks had demoralized the fighters and prompted some to defect, but there were no details on how many had done so. U.S. officials say the flow of some fighters into Syria was expected because, in their view, Islamic State treats Syria and Iraq as one interchangeable battlefield.

Until recently, Islamic State militants operated without threat in the Syrian provinces of Raqqa and Deir el-Zour. But Syrian government airstrikes began in recent weeks to target some of their positions.

Mr. McCants said it would not be surprising for local leaders to pull back into Syria, where they know aerial surveillance and targeting capabilities are much weaker. And the strategy fits into a broader pattern of their operations in Syria in which the militants sometimes cede ground to regroup and then hit back with “lightning strikes” later.

It wasn’t clear whether Abu Baker al-Baghdadi, the self-appointed Islamic State caliph or leader, also retreated into Syria and whether that would make any operational difference on the group’s offensive in Iraq.

He is believed to have been based in Iraq and appeared in a video in July purporting to show him at a mosque in Mosul, the major northern city that Islamic State captured in June. Some Iraqi military and security officials say they believe he recently did go to Syria. U.S. officials believe his movements are fluid.

In Iraq, Kurdish officials at the front lines of this week’s battle to successfully seize back the strategic Mosul Dam from the Islamists said U.S. airstrikes were critical in the victory. Not only did they strike Islamic State convoys and weaponry, but the bombings also appeared to begin to have a psychological effect on the insurgents.

“We know they are tired and not wanting to fight,” Gen. Mansour Barzani, the Kurdistan region special forces commander leading the operation at the dam, said Sunday. The joint offensive by Iraqi and Kurdish forces, backed by U.S. air power, completed the takeover on Monday.

Gen. Barzani referenced intelligence reports from Mosul that he said pointed to a split in the group on how to proceed now that American airstrikes were in the mix. Most of the Islamic State fighters retreating from the dam took refuge in Mosul.

“Somehow, they are shaken,” Gen. Barzani said. On Tuesday, he said he believed the local Islamic State emir leading the fight at the dam had been killed in the counteroffensive.

Since Aug 8., the U.S. has conducted 84 airstrikes in Iraq.

Islamic State released a video on Tuesday that showed the beheading of American journalist James Foley and said it was in retribution for U.S. airstrikes on the group in Iraq. Mr. Foley was kidnapped by Islamist militants in Syria in 2012.

Officials in the government of the semiautonomous Kurdish region in Iraq’s north say joint operations between Kurdish Peshmerga forces and the Iraqi Army, with U.S. air support and military guidance, have succeeded in halting the group’s advance toward their region’s border. But they stress the need to push the militants further back to create a security belt, which they say won’t be possible without continued U.S. strikes.

“U.S. has total air superiority and ISIS isn’t used to fighting this kind of enemy,” said Aaron Stein, a fellow at the London-based think tank The Royal United Services Institute. “So they’ve turned tail.”

In the fighting in Tikrit, troops backed by Iraqi airstrikes made some early gains on Tuesday. But they then got bogged down on major roads leading to the city that were laden with explosives planted by militants, an official with knowledge of the operation said.

While the push for Tikrit is seen as part of a political assurance to the nation’s Sunnis by the Shiite-dominated government, it also contains a strategic military goal: to open up access points to the nearby Beiji oil refinery north of Tikrit.

The official said the Iraqi military has struggled to coordinate troop advances with the air support in the curren counteroffensive. Last month, an attempt to liberate the city of insurgents only involved a ground campaign.

Ahmed Abdulla, the governor of Salahuldin province where Tikrit is located, said 4,000 residents have been recruited to “liberate” the cities of the province and were awaiting deployment by security officials.

The Iraqi military, which capitulated under the rapid Islamic State assault that began in early June, has relied heavily on citizen militias to assist in the fight as it seeks to regroup.

Copyright 2014 The Wall Street Journal

 Featured Image: Shi’ite volunteers who have joined the Iraqi army to fight against militants of the Islamic State take part in field training in Najaf, Iraq, Wednesday. Reuters

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