Iraqi forces will not be ready for an offensive against Islamic State forces in Mosul by the spring, U.S. intelligence officials told Congress Thursday.
U.S. Central Command said last week that it was training and equipping up to 25,000 Iraqis to retake the northern Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State by April or May. On Wednesday it announced that it was speeding $17 million in equipment to the new trainees, including 250 mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles and 10,000 M-16 rifles.
But Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart told the Senate Armed Services Committee it would be “six to nine months, best estimate” before the new forces are ready for the urban fight in Mosul.
“When we talk about the six to nine months additional training, it is to deal with an urban fight, which is very, very different, very complex, requires a great deal of skill, great deal of precision to be successful,” Stewart said.
The Iraqi Army collapsed last summer, abandoning tanks, vehicles and weapons as Islamic State forces captured Mosul. The U.S. military has about 3,000 trainers at sites throughout Iraq rebuilding the military and training new recruits from scratch to prepare them to retake Mosul from the Islamic State.
In the briefing to reporters last week, Centcom estimated that 1,000 to 2,000 Islamic State fighters are holding the city.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who also testified, said the divisions that did not fall apart after the Islamic State’s advance on Mosul and that the new trainees “have challenges, clearly, with command and control, with leadership, with logistics, so they’ve got a whole range of issues there that need to be attended to before they’d be in a position to certainly unilaterally retake, you know, a place like Mosul.”
A Defense Intelligence Agency official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that the apparent difference in timelines did not mean a spring fight would not take place, and that the general was not talking specifically about Mosul, but about the state of readiness of the Iraqi forces in general.
A spring offensive would not be dependent upon the new trainees or other divisions being ready due to the other forces being used, the official suggested.
The U.S. and coalition forces continue hitting Islamic State targets in Mosul, including two airstrikes against the terrorist group near Mosul Thursday.
This article was originally published at 6:20 p.m. and has since been updated.
