Ultimatum in northern Syria; Planning for post-Mosul peace; Trump: US might not defend NATO members; Navy warship meets explosive end; and a bit more.
Ultimatum in northern Syria. The U.S.-backed Kurdish and Arab Syrian Democratic Forces have given ISIS 48 hours to leave the “jihadist bastion” of Manbij, in Aleppo province, believed to be one of the last transit routes for Islamic State supplies and foreign fighters, AFP reports.
“This initiative is the last remaining chance for besieged members of Daesh (IS) to leave the town,” announced the Manbij Military Council, part of the SDF. “In order to protect civilian lives and property and to protect the town from destruction we announce that we accept the initiative under which besieged IS members would leave with their individual light weapons.”
Impetus: “We took this decision now after IS used residents as human shields, after the media pressure on us, and to protect whatever civilians are left in the town,” an SDF commander told AFP.
Word of the ultimatum comes just two days after a suspected coalition airstrike allegedly killed at least 56 (or 73, or even as many as 117) civilians at a village north of Manbij—a claim the SDF shed a little light on with a statement to The Guardian, saying “that they had provided intelligence for airstrikes on Tokkhar, although they insisted the bombs hit an Isis group and denied any civilians were killed.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday the coalition would investigate the claims, which contributed to the rise of a trending hashtag #PrayforSyria on Twitter Wednesday.
“An official release of airstrike information from US Central Command early on Wednesday did not include the claims of civilian deaths, but instead said that three of its airstrikes near Manbij on 19 July destroyed Isis fight positions, 12 of its vehicles and a command ‘node,’” The Guardian adds.
Human shields could be a factor, the U.S. military says: “We have seen Da’esh using more civilians as human shields in the Manbij area. We’ve seen them during the fight pushing civilians toward the lines of the SDF to try to draw fire. While the investigative process will provide details on this particular incident, and we don’t know what happened, I won’t be surprised if this is somehow a factor,” coalition spokesman, U.S. Army Col. Christopher Garver, said.
CENTCOM Commander, Gen. Joseph Votel, “said the Manbij operation was a ‘very difficult fight’ with IS jihadists appearing in various locations,” AFP writes. “And so when it's a dynamic situation like that... we have to respond. And I think that's the situation in which we found this particular” operation in Manbij.
After months of shaping operations for an offensive on ISIS-held Mosul in Iraq, coalition military leaders said Wednesday that they need more planning for what happens next, Defense One’s Kevin Baron reported from Joint Base Andrews, just north of Washington, D.C.
“Despite the unexpected speed with which Iraqi forces liberated Fallujah to the south and their relatively unopposed move northward, the Battle for Mosul does not appear imminent,” Baron writes. “At closed-door meetings at this military base just outside Washington, D.C., coalition leaders called for more preparation, including an after-battle plan for Mosul’s security, reconstruction, and something largely out of their hands: politics.”
Mosul is “a big city, two million people, large geographic area, so we want to make sure we are well prepared,” CENTCOM Chief Votel said. “Things like force generation, making sure we’ve got the right stabilization plan in place, and [that] we’ve got the right political aspects in place here to help manage that city after the fight is done… I think we generally all coalesced around that idea this morning, as we talked about it.”
Added Secretary Carter: “Most of our conversation today was not, in fact, about the movements of forces, because that was planned a long time ago. And that’s going fine… Most of our conversation today was, as Gen. Votel indicated, about what happens after the defeat of ISIL in Mosul. Stabilization plans, reconstruction plans, and so forth. And we’re identifying the requirements there, which are large, because as Gen. Votel indicated, it’s a large city.”
So what is the plan currently, and what failures or successes have informed what comes next? Read the rest, here.
And what is Iraq doing to prepare for an offensive on Mosul? “As Iraqi forces inch forward, more and more families are fleeing the other way - escaping with their lives from the clutches of IS, but entering another kind of hell,” The BBC’s Lyse Doucet reports from Iraq. “The hope is to reach pledges totalling almost $2bn (£1.5bn) for operations linked to the Mosul campaign, but also $284m (£215m) to prepare for it,” she writes, as the “world's aid community is already struggling to help care for almost 3.4 million people left homeless by earlier battles.”
Doucet’s bottom line: “To take back and hold Mosul, and take care of its people, Iraq needs much more help from the world.” That, here.
U.S. State Secretary John Kerry echoed much of that sentiment in remarks Wednesday ahead of a joint session of coalition defense and foreign ministers that will get underway today at Andrews. More on that, here.
For a bit of background on lessons learned in Iraq since the fall of Ramadi in January, see this interview with Gen. Charles Brown Jr., Air Forces Central Command commander, by Air Force Times’ Oriana Pawlyk.
From Defense One
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The fight over consumer encryption is moving into a strange new phase. Law enforcement officials say it’s on the tech world and privacy advocates to prove that a backdoor would undermine data security. Tech Editor Patrick Tucker reports, here.
Pentagon wants to automate social-media checks on clearance holders. The program would analyze public posts to help determine an employee’s suitability for Defense Intelligence Agency classified work. Via NextGov, here.
The Pentagon’s massive IT consolidation plan is in trouble. Defense officials can’t project the program’s cost because of its complexity, and because officials can’t even agree what is or isn’t included. Via NextGov, here.
Has your network been hacked? DARPA’s latest tool aims to sound the alarm. The system is intended to track activity across an entire network over long periods of time, seeking out deviations from normal activity. Via NextGov, here.
Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. On this day in 1918, a German U-boat shelled a Massachusetts fishing town. Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.
Trump to NATO: pay us or no defense. An advisor to GOP presidential contender Donald Trump said late Wednesday that The New York Times’ David Sanger and Maggie Haberman misquoted him on U.S. help—or lack thereof—to NATO members under a POTUS Trump.
In the interview, Trump “called into question whether, as president, he would automatically extend the security guarantees that give the 28 members of NATO the assurance that the full force of the United States military has their back,” Sanger and Haberman wrote. “For example, asked about Russia’s threatening activities that have unnerved the small Baltic States that are among the more recent entrants into NATO, Mr. Trump said that if Russia attacked them, he would decide whether to come to their aid only after reviewing whether those nations ‘have fulfilled their obligations to us.’”
The report—and the Trump staff rebuttal—sent waves through social media late in the evening, compelling the Times to release a transcript of the interview in an effort to appease doubting Thomases.
In other 2016 GOP news Wednesday, Trump’s VP, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, “used his national introductory speech at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday to warn that another Democratic presidential victory would mean disaster for the military and danger for America’s national security,” Military Times’ Leo Shane III reported.
“Pence, the son of a Korean War veteran and the father of a Marine Corps officer, echoed many of the same security and foreign policy themes of conservative speakers over the last two nights,” Shane wrote. “He blasted Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s role in the deadly 2012 attack on U.S. embassy facilities in Libya and criticized eight years of President Obama’s leadership as detrimental to America’s reputation.”
Pence also linked “Clinton’s time as secretary of state to the rise of ISIS, saying her policy recommendations in that role ‘helped undo all the gains of the (Iraq) troop surge, a staggering failure of judgement.’” Read the rest, here.
German newspaper Der Speigel were reportedly given ISIS “exit forms” written in Arabic that “have been smuggled out of Islamic State territory and have ended up in the hands of German security officials,” they reported Wednesday. “In total, they provide information about some 400 jihadists who have left IS territory, including around 20 Germans.”
So what’s inside? “Many of these IS personnel files specify why jihadists left the group's territory. Most often, family or medical reasons are noted, but other entries sound more ominous. IS bureaucrats wrote ‘secret mission’ on the form of one man who could be German but whose identity hasn't yet been firmly established. ‘Skills: Murder,’ the form reads.”
The papers have allowed German federal prosecutors to pursue “more than 130 cases in connection with the civil wars in Iraq and Syria, with an additional 50 having been referred to state prosecutors,” Speigel writes. “The numbers are unprecedented, but it has been difficult for justice officials to prove wrongdoing. It is, after all, impossible to question witnesses, carry out raids or monitor telephones in the warzones. As such, it is often difficult to obtain evidence that will stand up in a court of law. But the newly discovered IS files could now help investigators prove that returning jihadists were indeed members of a terrorist organization.” More here.
In Africa, some 80 women and children have reportedly been rescued by the Nigerian military after an attack Tuesday on Boko Haram in the remote northeastern village of Gangere in Borno state, AP reports this morning, adding this stunning statistic: “The military has reported freeing as many as 10,000 Boko Haram captives this year but none of the 219 girls from Chibok school.” More here.
In Turkey, U.S. troops operating out of Incirlik air base will be getting power restored to their facility “soon,” Secretary Carter said Wednesday. But as of this morning, Stars and Stripes reports the power is still off.
Oh by the way: It was Russia who saved Erdogan from that coup by giving him advance warning, Russian and Iranian state-run media would like you to know.
Back stateside, the U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, is still stumbling out of the gate, Bloomberg reported this week: “The $12.9 billion USS Gerald R. Ford — the most expensive warship ever built — may struggle to launch and recover aircraft, mount a defense and move munitions, according to the Pentagon’s top weapons tester. On-board systems for those tasks have poor or unknown reliability issues, according to a June 28 memo obtained by Bloomberg News.” More here.
And finally, an explosive farewell to a Navy warship. The Perry-class frigates were tough, surviving enemy missile and mine strikes and returning to duty. Perhaps this is why the decommissioned USS Thach was selected for target practice at the giant RIMPAC exercise earlier this month. Thach endured several missile and torpedo hits before slipping beneath the Pacific waves earlier this month. Watch the video, here.