Establishing functional governance in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul is going to be more of a challenge than winning an imminent battle to retake it from the Islamic State, former CIA Director and retired Gen. David Petraeus said on Sunday.
“The outcome is not in question. The question is what happens afterward,” Petraeus said in an interview on ABC News. “There are a lot of grievances. There are Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Turkmen, there are Kurds from three different political parties, Yazidis, Christians, Shabak, [with] a lot of grievances, scores that may be settled. In that kind of complexity, governance is going to have to emerge.”
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Petraeus said it was probably clear to those on the ground that the Islamic State’s fighters were “dead men walking,” stressing the fight would be brutal. “It’s going to be orders of magnitude larger than any fight that the Iraqis, with our assistance and the coalition support, have taken on. There will be a ring of fire, dug-in troops, tunnels, suicide bombers, improvised explosive devices.
“The Iraqi forces will prevail. The Islamic State fighters in Mosul are dead men walking, and I think they know it. They’re trying to desert and are being executed. There’s no question about the outcome of the fight. The challenge here is actually after the fight. It’s governance. Can a government be established that is representative of and responsive to the most complex human terrain in all of Iraq … it is a huge challenge.”
