President Obama’s envoy to the coalition against the Islamic State said Tuesday that efforts to free the Iraqi city of Mosul from the terrorist group are on track, and indicated that the city could be liberated early next year.
“ISIL terrorists are now trapped in Mosul. They’re unable to resupply or replenish their dwindling ranks,” said special envoy Brett McGurk at a White House briefing Tuesday.
McGurk said he couldn’t be specific about a timeline, but noted that the coalition effort is now two months old, and that prior efforts to dislodge entrenched Islamic State forces have taken more time than that.
“We’re often asked how long is this going to take. And the answer is, in Mosul, it’ll take as long as it takes,” he said. “I think it’s useful to remember other campaigns against ISIL … each of them took about six months. Some have gone faster.”
He said coalition forces have conducted more than 500 airstrikes in Mosul in the last two months, and have destroyed more than 100 car bombs, 100 tunnels and 300 bunkers.
But he said Islamic State terrorists are using the civilian population in Mosul as human shields.
A big factor in the timetable in Mosul will be when the Islamic State starts running out of supplies and fighters.
“Eventually they reach a culmination point,” McGurk said. “They simply cannot resupply, they run out of suicide bombers, and they culminate. And in Mosul, we don’t know when that’ll come. It could come very soon, it could come a couple of months from now.”
But he said the coalition is generally seeing far fewer foreign fighters joining the group from outside Iraq and Syria. He said the coalition continues to make strides against the terrorist group by degrading and destroying Islamic State supply chains, its ability to make money by selling oil, and its global media campaign.
