Facing brutal urban warfare in Mosul and with their push slowed by the presence of one million residents, Iraqi commanders examined changing strategy last week to help civilians leave to give the army a free hand to strike Daesh fighters.
The proposal, a sign of frustration at slow progress in the six-week campaign against Daesh in Mosul, was ultimately dismissed by Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi and his generals, military sources said.
Abadi and his advisers feared that fleeing residents could be massacred by the ultra-hardline militants who still control three-quarters of the city, and that authorities and aid agencies were in no position to handle a mass exodus.
But the fact they considered changing a central element of their plan, confirmed by two military sources and a government adviser, at the meeting on Nov. 24 points to growing anxiety about getting bogged down in a war of attrition in Mosul.
Daesh which has controlled the city since mid-2014 have waged a lethal defense, deploying snipers, mortar fire and 600 suicide car bombers, as well as attacks launched from a network of tunnels beneath residential neighborhoods.
“Supreme commanders order us to make advances, and at the same time make sure to give priority to civilian safety,” said an officer in the army's Ninth Armored Division, which is fighting in the southeast of the city. “How can we do that? It's mission impossible,” said the officer, who refused to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
At current rates of progress the battle will stretch well into next year, threatening a humanitarian crisis in the city over the winter plus further heavy losses among army ranks.
“Last week our commanders discussed with other commanders in the joint military operation command the option of giving the chance to civilians to flee Mosul ... to lift the burden from the advancing forces and allow them to engage freely with Daesh elements,” the army officer said.
A soldier in the elite Counter Terrorism Services (CTS), which is spearheading the offensive, said that with civilians out of the way the US-led coalition, which is supporting Iraqi forces could also step up airstrikes.
Commanders agree that the move would “hasten the military advance”, but felt the risks still outweighed the benefits, he said, citing an officer who he said attended the meeting.
“They instead decided to stick with the current plan,” said the soldier who also refused to be identified. “In previous operations, either in Tikrit, Ramadi or Fallujah, there were no civilians ... (we had) freedom of action to use our weapons,” operations commander Lt. Gen. Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah said.
“The instructions from the commander-in-chief (Abadi) are for the civilians to stay in their homes,” he told Iraqi TV on Thursday night, adding that without that constraint CTS forces would have already recaptured the eastern half of the city.
“That's why you see a delay,” he said.
Commanders hope that security forces still stationed a few miles south of Mosul will advance soon and open a new front inside the city, with the aim of stretching the militants' defences more thinly. Hisham Al-Hashemi, who advises the government on combating radical militants, said there were probably 4,000 Daesh fighters still in Mosul.
Meanwhile, Iraqi forces seized a new neighborhood on Friday and took full control of a densely populated Mosul neighborhood, according to an Iraqi field commander.
Lt. Col. Muhanad Al-Tamimi of the special forces said his men were now in full control of the Zohour neighborhood, more than a week after they first entered the district.
He said his men also captured the neighborhood of Qadissiyah-2, bringing to 23 the number of neighborhoods retaken by the special forces in the eastern sector of the city since the campaign to retake Mosul began on Oct. 17. There has been some discrepancy over the exact number of neighborhoods retaken from Daesh thus far, something that Iraqi commanders explain as a possible result of the use of different maps of the city or the exceptionally small size of some neighborhoods.

Source: Arab News