Inside the US-led coalition war on ISIL

US Brig Gen Rick Uribe talking to reporters in Baghdad's joint operations centre on October 26, 2016. As Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga units close in on Mosul, US military officials offeShow more

BAGHDAD // In a low, windowless building just outside America’s sprawling embassy compound in Baghdad, senior military officials from 19 nations work side-by-side in the war against ISIL.

The front wall of the dreary office space is covered by monitors that provide live video feeds from the drones and warplanes endlessly circling the skies over large parts of Iraq.

As Iraqi security forces and Kurdish peshmerga units close in on Mosul, US military officials offered a quick glimpse of the combined joint operations centre on Wednesday to highlight how coalition intelligence and air power are helping the Iraqis push purge ISIL extremists from Iraq.

US military officials repeatedly stress the war is being led by the Iraqis, but without international assistance it is hard to imagine the campaign could have progressed so quickly to this point.

“It’s their fight, we are supporting them,” said US Brig Gen Rick Uribe, who must approve every single air strike across parts of Iraq, noting that “they are coming up with the ideas. And we are helping them refine their ideas”.

Two years ago, it would have seemed unlikely that Iraqi security forces could now be on the verge of defeating ISIL in Iraq.

Many Iraqi army units had collapsed in disarray, dumping weapons and equipment, as the extremists swept through the country in 2014, leaving a trail of slaughter and atrocities in their wake.

But a string of victories since the US pulled together a 60-plus member coalition to help fight ISIL has helped ensure a string of victories, with each new success bringing experience and confidence to the Iraqi forces.

In the past year, Iraqi troops recaptured Fallujah, a city 50 kilometres west of Baghdad that had been outside government control for more than two and a half years, and Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.

“Our mission right now and our planning is good. Everything is going like what we [were] planning for it,” Iraqi defence ministry spokesman Brig Gen Tahseen Ibrahim said of current anti-ISIL operations.

While Iraqi military and police are better equipped and trained than they were two years ago, they have also benefitted from more than 10,000 coalition air strikes.

Inside the joint operations centre shows a man sprinting across a muddy field, pausing at one moment by a palm tree then stopping a moment later, apparently to dig something from the dirt before running off again.

It is unclear what he is doing, or whether anyone in the room would later deem him a legitimate target for execution via Hellfire missile or coalition bomb.

While total air superiority and technology like this has helped turn the tide for the Iraqi military, training units from the United States, Britain, Italy and other nations have been key on the ground.

Iraqi ground forces are now better drilled in combat skills and discipline. In northern Iraq, the Pentagon has provided peshmerga forces the ammunition and equipment they need to fight the extremists.

This tactic of keeping American personnel largely away from the fighting and waging the war by air has garnered broad criticism in the US, with lawmakers bemoaning an early lack of results and the US public fretting about a perceived growing threat from ISIL.

But US leaders and military officials sound increasingly confident ISIL will soon lose in Iraq.

On Tuesday, Lt Gen Stephen Townsend, who heads the coalition effort supporting and training Iraqi security forces and Kurdish peshmerga, said ISIL would soon be defeated in Mosul.

“[The extremists are] living on borrowed time and their clock is running out. The Iraqi security forces are going to take Mosul back, period,” he said.

* Agence France-Presse