Tag Archives: U.S. Backed troops

Trump’s son-in-law, Kushner, flies into Iraq with top U.S. general

U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner (L) speaks with Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before departing for Iraq from Ramstein Air Base, Germany April 3, 2017. DoD/Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dominique A. Pineiro/Handout via REUTERS

By Phil Stewart

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, flew into Iraq on Monday with the top U.S. military officer to get a first-hand assessment of the battle against Islamic State from U.S. commanders on the ground and to meet Iraqi officials.

For Kushner, who has not been to Iraq before, the trip comes at a critical time as Trump examines ways to accelerate a U.S.-led coalition campaign that U.S. and Iraqi officials say has so far been largely successful in uprooting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

The visit appears to demonstrate the far-reaching portfolio of Kushner, 36, who is part of Trump’s innermost circle and who has been given a wide range of domestic and foreign policy responsibilities, including working on a Middle East peace deal.

Marine General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he invited Kushner and Tom Bossert, White House homeland security adviser, to accompany him so they could hear “first-hand and unfiltered” from military advisers about the situation on the ground and interact with U.S. forces.

“I said, ‘Hey, next time I go to Iraq, if you’re interested, come and it’d be good,” Dunford said, adding he extended the invitation weeks ago.

That kind of ground-level awareness of the war helps inform strategic decisions, Dunford said, adding it was the same reason he regularly leaves Washington to visit Iraq.

“The more appreciation you could have for what’s actually happening on the ground, the more informed you are when you start talking about the strategic issues,” Dunford said.

Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, did not speak with reporters during the flight to Iraq.

Dunford’s spokesman, Navy Captain Greg Hicks, said Kushner was traveling on behalf of Trump to express the president’s support and commitment to Iraq’s government and U.S. personnel helping combat Islamic State.

Trump, who campaigned on defeating Islamic State, has yet to announce any dramatic shift in war strategy.

U.S. ROLE AFTER MOSUL FIGHT

The trip to Iraq comes as Iraqi security forces engage in fierce, house-to-house fighting to retake Mosul, Islamic State’s last major stronghold in Iraq and the city where leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate nearly three years ago.

Nearly 290,000 people have fled the city to escape the fighting, according to the United Nations.

Although the loss of Mosul would deal a major defeat to Islamic State, U.S. and Iraqi officials are preparing for smaller battles even after the city is recaptured and expect the group to go underground to fight as a traditional insurgency.

What happens to the U.S. military role in Iraq after Mosul is recaptured remain unclear.

Influential Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has previously called on Iraq’s government to order the withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces after the battle of Mosul is over.

Dunford said Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi understood the need for continued U.S. military support.

“It’s not our judgment that the Iraqis will be self sustaining and self sufficient in the wake of Mosul. More importantly, it’s not Prime Minister Abadi’s assessment,” Dunford said.

Across the border in Syria, a U.S.-backed campaign to isolate Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa is advancing ahead of an eventual assault on the city.

U.S.-backed Syrian forces repelled a major counter-attack by Islamic State militants holding out at the country’s largest dam and in the nearby town of Tabqa, the group and activists said on Sunday. The dam is a strategic target in the military campaign, located about 40 km (25 miles) to the east of Raqqa.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Giles Elgood)

U.S. backed Iraqi forces battle their way toward Mosul airport

By Stephen Kalin and Maher Chmaytelli

SOUTH OF MOSUL/BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) – U.S.-backed Iraqi forces fought Islamic State fighters on Monday to clear the way to Mosul’s airport, on the second day of a ground offensive on the jihadists’ remaining stronghold in the western side of the city.

Federal police and elite interior ministry units known as Rapid Response are leading the charge toward the airport, located on the southern limit of the Mosul, trying to dislodge the militants from the nearby hilltop village of Albu Saif.

The Iraqi forces plan is to turn the airport into a close support base for the onslaught into western Mosul itself.

Islamic State militants are essentially under siege in western Mosul, along with an estimated 750,000 civilians, after they were forced out of the eastern part of the city in the first phase of an offensive that concluded last month, after 100 days of fighting.

“They are striking and engaging our forces and pulling back toward Mosul,” Major Mortada Ali Abd of the Rapid Response units told a Reuters correspondent south of Mosul. “God willing Albu Saif will be fully liberated today.”

Elite Counter-Terrrorism Service units headed to frontlines around the western side of Mosul, a city that is divided into two halves by the Tigris River.

Helicopters were strafing the Albu Saif hill to clear it of snipers, while machine gun fire and rocket propelled grenades could be heard. The advancing forces also disabled a car bomb – used by the militants to obstruct attacking forces.

The Iraqi forces have been advancing so far in sparsely populated areas and there were no families seen escaping. The fighting will get tougher as they get nearer to the city itself and the risk greater for civilians.

Up to 400,000 civilians could be displaced by the offensive as residents of western Mosul suffer food and fuel shortages and markets are closed, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq Lise Grande told Reuters on Saturday.

Commanders expect the battle to be more difficult than in the east of the city, which Iraqi forces took control of last month after three months of fighting. Tanks and armored vehicles cannot pass through its narrow alleyways.

The militants have developed a network of passageways and tunnels to enable them to hide and fight among civilians, disappear after hit-and-run operations and track government troop movements, according to residents.

Western Mosul contains the old city center, with its ancient souks, government administrative buildings, and the mosque from which Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his self-styled caliphate over parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

The city is the largest urban center captured by Islamic State in both countries.

The U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, has said he believes U.S.-backed forces will recapture both of Islamic State’s major strongholds – Mosul and the city of Raqqa in Syria – within the next six months.

Islamic State was thought to have up to 6,000 fighters in Mosul when the government’s offensive started in mid-October. Of those, more than 1,000 have been killed, according to Iraqi estimates.

The remainder now face a 100,000-strong force made up of Iraqi armed forces, including elite paratroopers and police, Kurdish forces and Iranian-trained Shi’ite paramilitary groups.

The westward road that links the city to Syria was cut in November by the Shi’ite paramilitary known as Popular Mobilization forces. The militants are in charge of the road that links Mosul to Tal Afar, a town they control 60 km (40 miles) to the west.

CIVILIAN LIVES

Coalition aircraft and artillery have continued to bombard targets in the west during the break that followed the taking ofeastern Mosul.

The United States, which has deployed more than 5,000 troops in the fighting, leads an international coalition providing key air and ground support, including artillery fire, to the Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis arrived in Baghdad on Monday on an unannounced visit to assess the war operations.

“The coalition forces are in support of this operation and we will continue … with the accelerated effort to destroy ISIS,” he said, using an acronym for the militant group.

Mattis also said the U.S. military was not in Iraq to seize the country’s oil, distancing himself from remarks by President Donald Trump.

A U.S. serviceman died on Monday in a non-combat related incident outside the Iraqi city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, the U.S.-led coalition said, giving no further details.

Islamic State imposed a radical version of Islam in Mosul, banning cigarettes, televisions and radios, and forcing men to grow beards and women to cover from head to toe. Citizens who failed to comply risked death.

Capturing Mosul would effectively end the Sunni group’s ambitions for territorial rule in Iraq. The militants are expected to continue to wage an insurgency, however, carrying out suicide bombings and inspiring lone-wolf actions abroad.

About 160,000 civilians have been displaced since the start of the offensive in October, U.N. officials say. Medical and humanitarian agencies estimate the total number of dead and wounded – both civilian and military – at several thousand.

“This is the grim choice for children in western Mosul right now: bombs, crossfire and hunger if they stay – or execution and snipers if they try to run,” Save the Children said, adding that children make up about half the population trapped in the city.

The involvement of many local and foreign players with diverging interests in the war, heightens the risk that they could clash between themselves after Islamic State is defeated.

Influential Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who is openly hostile to Washington’s policies in the Middle East, on Monday said U.S. troops should leave as soon as Mosul is captured.

”The Iraqi government has to demand that all occupying and so-called friendly forces leave Iraq in order to preserve the prestige and the sovereignty of the state,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Baghdad and Isabel Coles in Erbil; Editing by Dominic Evans)

U.S. backed force in Syria closes in on Islamic State held city

Men, who the Democratic Forces of Syria fighters claimed were Islamic State fighters, walk as they are taken prisoners after SDF advanced in the southern rural area of Manbij

BEIRUT (Reuters) – U.S.-backed Syrian fighters have surrounded the Islamic State-held city of Manbij from three sides as they press an offensive against the jihadists near the Turkish border, a spokesman for the fighters said on Monday.

The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), including the powerful Kurdish YPG militia and Arab allies, launched the attack last week with the ultimate aim of dislodging Islamic State from its last foothold at the Syrian-Turkish frontier.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that reports on the war, said the U.S.-backed forces had cut the road north from Manbij to Islamic State-held Jarabulus at the Turkish border, which is also expected to be targeted.

Sharfan Darwish, spokesman for the Manbij Military Council, said the U.S.-backed alliance had advanced to within 6 km (4 miles) of Manbij, and the attack backed by U.S. special forces was going to plan. Over 150 jihadists had been killed, with 50 of the bodies in SDF hands, he said.

“If we had wanted to reach (Manbij) before this time, or if we wanted to arrive directly, we could have, but as you know the area is vast and there are a large number of civilians,” he said. “Our forces are surrounding Manbij from three directions.”

He said there were dead among the SDF and the number would be announced later. They included the commander of one of the groups, Faysal Abu Layla of the Sun of the North Battalions. He had died of wounds caused by a mortar bomb.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attacking forces were less than 4 km from Manbij at the closest point. Its director, Rami Abdulrahman, said 56 IS members had been killed so far, and 19 SDF fighters had died.

He said IS fighters had sent their families out of Manbij, but disputed Darwish’s account that IS fighters had also left the city. Darwish said many homes being used by IS members were now empty as they had left with their families. “They took everything they could and left the city,” he said.

Reuters could not independently confirm the account.

“Manbij will fall, but the time frame is linked to events and developments,” Darwish said.

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Alison Williams and Anna Willard)