82nd Airborne reinforces Mosul; Getting ready for Raqqa; Russia’s next hack attack; Will Trump’s buildup leave grunts behind? And just a bit more...
The U.S. military has sent reinforcements to Mosul, as the coalition faces intense scrutiny over the rising death toll from operations to push the Islamic State from that northern Iraqi stronghold, Military Times reported Sunday. “An unspecified number of combat soldiers from the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division have been ordered to northern Iraq, marking the Pentagon's latest escalation in what's been a slow-moving campaign to flush Islamic State fighters from their stronghold in the city of Mosul.”
The line from U.S. officials in Baghdad: “Additional members of 2/82 BCT are deploying to Iraq on a non-enduring temporary mission to provide additional 'advise and assist' support to our Iraq partners as they liberate Mosul.”
In another key development, the Iraqi military said this weekend the epic March 17 “blast that killed scores of civilians in western Mosul was triggered by an Islamic State booby trap, contradicting local officials and residents who claimed a U.S.-led coalition airstrike caused the deaths,” The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
“The March 17 airstrikes — which Iraqis said had led to the deaths of possibly 200 people — could have produced among the highest civilian death tolls in an American air mission since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003,” The New York Times reported.
The Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights said this weekend more than 3,800 civilians have been killed in the West Mosul offensive, whereas East Mosul operations killed 2,190. (The East was declared “liberated” on January 24.)
One possibility given this weekend for the rising death toll in the West: "Iraqi officials said that the Trump administration had appeared to loosen restrictions on the rules of engagement, making it easier for the Iraqis to call in airstrikes,” the Times reported, adding, “The Iraqis had been frustrated by the Obama administration’s deliberate approach.”
More than 200,000 people have fled western Mosul, and half a million are still believed to be trapped in the western half of the city, according to the Journal. “Many [of the survivors] have emerged with stories of leaving behind relatives buried under rubble from blasts—whether militant bombs or mortars or government-allied strikes.”
“Escape means dodging ISIS snipers and coalition bombs,” writes said WSJ’s Peter Wonacott.
Said one shell-shocked survivor: "I saw them die in front of me," he told The Guardian. Also in that story: a map of West Mosul, isolating the location of the neighborhood where the devastating explosion caused so much damage.
To their credit, the Iraqi security forces are reportedly upping their GPS game as they press further into West Mosul, as these photos reveal.
Worth noting: Amid all the devastation, the overall situation in Mosul still “defies usual sectarian narratives,” with “volunteers from Iraq’s deep south doling out hot meals to displaced Moslawis (before NGOs provide aid),” writes Patrick Osgood, Kurdistan bureau chief for Iraq Oil Report.
Osgood was referring to a group that traveled more than 350 miles from Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad, to join the Mosul recovery effort. That incredible story, from The Daily Beast’s Florian Neuhof, here.
From Defense One
This Is How Russian Hackers Will Next Attack the U.S. // Nicole Softness, via Quartz: The U.S. needs to be planning now how it will respond.
Get “Foreign Military Sales Under the Trump Administration,” a new ebook from Defense One. During the eight years of the Obama administration, the defense industry’s requests to export weapons were approved at a record clip. Now companies are waiting to see how Donald Trump will do business. Download the ebook, here.
Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. #OTD1886: Geronimo, an Apache leader, surrenders to U.S. Army forces in Mexico. (Got a tip? Let us know by clicking this link to email us: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.)
Raqqa (pre-)offensive update: The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces seized the Tabqa airport on Sunday—then announced a four-hour pause in their eastward march to isolate Islamic State-held Raqqa, Syria, Reuters reports this morning.
The reason for the brief pause: to allow for an assessment of the Tabqa Dam, the scene of intense recent battles between the SDF and ISIS. “The dam, Syria's largest, stretches 4.5 km (2.8 miles) across the Euphrates river. Islamic State captured the dam and a nearby air base, located about 40 km (25 miles) upstream from Raqqa, at the height of its expansion in Syria and Iraq in 2014.”
Fear of the dam’s collapse is causing panic in Raqqa, “Families packed into cars and onto motorcycles as they zipped through the streets trying to flee, causing several traffic accidents,” The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. “Footage provided by activist groups online showed residents blaring car horns while speeding through intersections...The ensuing mayhem marked a striking contrast to the strict order Islamic State has typically imposed on the city, which has been sealed off from the world for the past few years.”
Also in that story: ISIS commanders may be trying to move families out of Raqqa among other civilians. Read on, here.
See some photos of the structure here; then see how ISIS portrays the dam in their recent photos, here.
While we’re on Syria: Damascus is reportedly telling Tel Aviv, via Moscow: “We will fire Scuds into Israel if you carry out any more airstrikes,” according to this Sputnik news story on Sunday.
Also in Syria: Al Qaeda has built its largest guerrilla army ever in the country with 10,000 or more men, Politico’s Nick Short wrote of this look at the threats that may have informed the laptop ban, by The Long War Journal’s Thomas Joscelyn.
Pentagon confirms death of AQ leader in recent Afghanistan airstrike. “Qari Yasin, who "plotted the Sept. 20, 2008, bombing on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad" was killed in a U.S. airstrike on March 19 in Paktika Province,” AP reported this weekend.
For what it’s worth, the Pakistan Taliban confirmed his death five days ago.
Read more on Yasin’s bio, via The Long War Journal, here.
For your eyes only: Here’s video of U.S. troops exercising with allies in Korea. And here’s U.S. and NATO equipment crossing the Czech-Polish border, near Kaliningrad, en route to Poland.
Also in video: Some of the advanced Russian weapons in use by separatists in eastern Ukraine. That presentation, via Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, here.
A bill for an ally? Citing multiple anonymous sources, London’s Sunday Times reports that Trump slipped German President Angela Merkel a “bill” citing some $375 billion “owed” for past protection of Germany. Read (free reg. req’d), here. The White House denied that Trump did any such thing.
Will grunts be left out of Trump’s buildup? Longtime defense journalist David Wood notes that there’s little for the average trooper in the Trump administration’s proposed $54 billion defense plus-up. “Not included in those plans: money for the best infantry weapons, the safest troop-lift helicopters, the most protective lightweight body armor. Instead, grunts will have to settle for budget leftovers with antiquated rifles, helicopters built for their grandfathers during the Vietnam War and communications gear that is overweight and unreliable,” he writes.
That reminds us of the warning from CSIS’ Todd Harrison that simply adding endstrength and big-ticket gear isn’t the same as increasing readiness. ICYMI, here.
Two senators want Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula reclassified as a war zone, Military Times reported this weekend. The lawmakers: John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. It’s a somewhat understandable move considering ISIS considers itself to have a province in the Sinai. More here.
And lastly today, an offbeat story from the extremist trail: “The Jihadi Who Turned to Jesus,” by the NYT’s Patrick Kingsley. The jihadi’s name: Bashir Mohammad. “His is a story that began in a Kurdish part of northern Syria, Afrin, where he grew up in a Muslim family. Mr. Mohammad flirted with extremism in his teens...But when war broke out in Syria, after the country’s 2011 uprising, Mr. Mohammad initially joined the secular Kurdish forces in their fight for autonomy...When a friend invited him to defect in summer 2012 to the Nusra Front, a group that seeks to establish an extremist state, Mr. Mohammad readily agreed.” The story descends into brutal depths for some time before Mohammad fled Nusra for home in Afrin—and from there, on to Turkey with his wife. Worth the click, here.