12/02/15 – Mitchell Prothero – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright y'all, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton, it's my show, Scott Horton Show.
On the line I got Mitch Prothero.
Writing for McClatchyDC.com from Irable in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Welcome back Mitch, how are ya?
I'm doing alright, we're just sort of wrapping things up here at the end of the year in Iraq, I'm sure everything will be fine January 1st.
Oh yeah, they're finally gonna, they're stand up, we stand down kind of thing, huh?
Oh perfect, yeah, no, it's gonna work great.
Alright, well, so, I think last time we heard from you here on this show anyway was, or actually at least, I don't know if we did talk about this.
Anyway, a recent piece by you was something along the lines of everything the Shiastan government in Baghdad does, fails.
And you were, I think, talking about Fallujah-Ramadi-Mosul, although maybe there was more to it than that.
But then since then, you've covered the liberation of Sinjar, and also some kind of progress by Iraqi forces in the outskirts of Ramadi.
So, can you please fill us in?
Sure, well, I mean, the operation up on Mount Sinjar and in the city itself of Sinjar was by the Peshmerga and a motley coalition of Kurdish allies sort of spanning the whole Kurdish political scene.
The central government of Iraq didn't have much, if anything, to do with it.
In fact, they announced they were about to liberate Ramadi in the middle of it, I think hoping to get attention drawn away from the Kurdish victories.
But, you know, that was a pretty good operation.
I don't think Sinjar was particularly heavily defended, but it certainly, you know, is going to allow them to start rebuilding it and send some of these hundreds of thousands of Yazidis possibly home over the next year as they clean up.
And, you know, I was in the place that was pretty badly destroyed and pretty heavily mined.
But more importantly, what we've seen in the last week or so is some progress by the Iraqi forces to isolate and sort of cut off Ramadi from outside supply lines.
Now, they haven't actually started going into the city to, you know, so liberate it.
But they say they're going to in the next couple of days.
They've said things like this in the past.
We're just going to have to wait and see what happens.
Yeah.
Well, can you tell the difference between when, you know, they're just blowing smoke like always and when they really mean it?
Is there a tell?
That can be a little bit hard.
But in the case of Ramadi, we have definitely seen progress by the Iraqi forces with no matter what anybody says, some American special operations help on the ground to, you know, sort of surround and isolate Ramadi.
Whereas until about a week ago, they still had an open line of supply and transport basically up through Deir ez-Zor into Syria.
You know, the Islamic State was able to use to reinforce their positions there.
That has definitely been cut.
So we have seen tangible.
You can point to it on a map progress, you know, something that was held by the Islamic State that was important that's now held by the government.
So Ramadi is basically isolated.
It's just going to be, you know, it's a very large city.
It's nearly a million people.
Unlike some of the other places that the Islamic State took over in the past.
Most of the civilians, you know, were unable to flee and thus are still inside making airstrikes on the part of the U.S. coalition led.
Very difficult.
You just simply can't wantonly drop bombs and million person cities like you can in the desert side or as they were able to do in Sinjar, where it was almost completely abandoned by civilians.
So that's going to be a tough, tough fight.
The Iraqis have not shown a propensity for being able to do urban warfare particularly well.
It's hard.
As one guy told me, it's hard for a well-trained army and the Iraqis do not have a well-trained army.
So this next part could get a little nasty.
Well, yeah.
I mean, just on the face of it, they kind of lost the city in two parts.
Right.
And then they finished losing it when?
Last spring?
Yeah, it may.
I mean, they've been losing territory around it, you know, for about a year and a half, a year.
They lost Fallujah actually well before Mosul.
They lost it in January of 2014.
But I just mean, the point I'm getting to is whether, you know, in the less than a year since Ramadi fell, is there any reason to believe that the same government forces that weren't able to hold on to it will be able to then invade and retake the place?
Well, they're applying a lot more, you know, material and manpower.
Back in May, they were fighting on a bunch of different fronts.
The Islamic State, that's one of the things we're waiting for.
They've been very good at forcing you to react to them instead of you, you know, taking the initiative when you fight them.
So they were able to also, you know, sort of push on Baiji and some other areas that were basically a distraction to the Iraqi forces, who now seem solely, you know, more or less focused on taking this objective.
So we'll see how it goes.
I'm skeptical that it will be done easily or quickly, as the government says.
But I do think that if they remain committed and throw lots of men in there, they will be able to, you know, eventually take it over.
The big question is what will be left over and what's going to be the fate of the civilians stuck inside?
And then the big question, which is always the big question when dealing with the Islamic State and in particular the Shia dominated government of Iraq.
What are you going to do once you've retaken this area?
It's still filled with people who are extremely distrustful of the central government.
They're just about as scared of the Shia as they are of the Islamic State.
And they have not really as a government reached out properly to the Sunni tribes to come up with a solution to sort of the ultimate reason why they lost control of the province in the first place.
Well, this is the thing.
I mean, we hear, you know, the official policy is still, well, we got to get the Baghdad government to make more concessions to the Sunnis to bring them back into the fold and this kind of thing.
But it seems like it's just one dollar leader after another.
And they just don't mean to do that.
And isn't it kind of too late for that anyway?
Well, it's never too late.
I mean, people are always going to be co-optable with money and power, which is how you do this is, you know, you take a tribal shake and you hand them, you know, ten million dollars and he gets his people on board and his tribe becomes more powerful.
There's always guys looking for that sort of opportunity.
But it is true that, you know, the central government has failed virtually on every front to bring the Sunnis into the fold in any way.
There is a strong impression you get that they don't care, that they simply consider basically Sunnis across the board to be terrorists.
And, you know, really, they can rot as far as the central government's concerned.
But meanwhile, over here, they say, well, what we got to do is we got to redo the awakening.
And sort of like you said, there will always be guys who are willing to do what they're told for ten million bucks or whatever.
That's, I guess, the crux of the issue.
Are there enough Sunnis to be bought up who have the ability to oppose the Islamic State inside what's now their territory?
Well, I mean, yeah, you could do it.
It's just that it would take a commitment from Baghdad that Baghdad seems unwilling to make.
The guys that they'd have to be working with, they don't consider any better than the Islamic State.
So there is a disconnect between the reality on the ground and American policy.
But I also think to a large extent, you know, it's become clear that, you know, Iraq is run by a fractious group of, you know, Shia militias now.
These guys aren't particularly interested in peace.
One of the running jokes is that they're going to mount an operation any day now for Mosul.
When most of us are convinced nobody's ever going to mount an operation for Mosul because nobody cares about Mosul.
All right, we're right there, Mitch.
We got to stop.
We'll be right back, everybody.
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All right, you guys.
Welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, Scott Horton Show, etc., etc.
I'm talking with Mitch Prothero at McClatchy, D.C.
He's reporting now to Earable on, well, one of the wars.
There's a lot of wars.
So at the break, you were saying something real interesting and follow-upable there, I think, about how the consensus among the Shia militias and the Iraqi Shia-stan state that exists there between, well, including Baghdad and all the way down to Kuwait there is forget Mosul.
They don't have any motive to all go die to liberate Mosul.
And that makes sense to me because that was the Dawa Party's position all along was Iran would have us break Iraq in three, so let's do it.
There's no surprise there.
I've been doing this a decade, and they've been saying that a decade at least.
But then the question is, why do they care about Ramadi or do they?
I mean, apparently they do.
But and then so same question about Fallujah then.
To what degree is the Iraqi Shia-stan government willing to go die to kick the Islamic State out of Sunni-dominated Anbar province and northwestern Iraq, Mitch?
Well, Anbar controls the approaches to, you know, from Baghdad to Syria and Jordan.
So it's a very important place as opposed to Mosul, which is way up north.
So it's all about the highway and the river.
But otherwise, the people there can go to hell, though, is that it?
The people there are not exactly popular among Shia circles in the south.
No.
And there also lies in the problem, because essentially those places have access to the south.
You can easily run operations out of Fallujah against Baghdad and even against Karbala and Najaf by taking, you know, by going down the highways to connect them.
Whereas, you know, if you're up in Mosul, you're pretty much stuck way up at the top and are much more containable.
So it's a it's a strategic value and also tactical value for the Iraqi government to to retake control of all Anbar province.
And they might prove me wrong and eventually go after Mosul and reunify the whole country.
It's just that that coalition of Shia militias, Iraqi army, Kurdish Peshmerga and Western and Iranian advisers all working together to undertake that would be, you know, sort of hard to imagine in the current political climate.
Yeah.
Well, and to what degree are the you mentioned the special forces?
We got to talk about that.
To what degree and including airpower are the Americans and the Iranians and the Shia militias working together on Ramadi, for example?
Well, the Americans and the Shia militias really don't work very well together.
They've they fought each other in the past and and neither really has a political upside to openly cooperating.
And I think there's a lot of bad blood.
Having said that, you know, special operations troops are working both very closely with the Peshmerga in the Kurdish areas.
We've seen them in some cases.
I mean, we've already had one Delta soldier killed on an operation, you know, a couple of months ago back, I think, October 22nd.
So there's been a combat casualty.
They're supposed to advise and assist.
But, you know, as even the spokesman for the coalition troops here in Baghdad said, you know, the difference between combat and advise and assisting can sometimes be a couple of meters.
So, you know, there's going to be, you know, basically casualties.
And you are going to see, I think, particularly after Ash Carter's statement yesterday, an uptick in American activity in and around different parts of Iraq by special operations troops.
I think they're going to try to go out and kill some more high value targets and make life a little bit easier for both the Peshmerga and the Iraqi government.
To my knowledge, there's already U.S. troops in very small numbers.
And these are special operations forces that the president isn't really obligated to tell everybody that they're using.
As we joke, they're not boots on the ground.
These guys usually wear Merrill hiking sneakers anyway.
You know, Delta 4, SEAL Team 6 type style guys have been seen by people I know operating in combat, or I've seen them even myself very close to combat, up in Mount Sinjar, down in Kirkuk.
And I've talked to people who fought alongside some marine special operations troops in Fallujah, where the guys were basically acting as snipers and forward observers and putting on basically Iraqi uniforms as special operations troops for the Iraqis.
And then going out and helping.
As one guy said, you know, all of a sudden, the Iraqi special forces could hit a guy at a thousand meters out with a sniper rifle, whereas before they couldn't do half that length.
So there has been a little bit of that, but I wouldn't say there's a massive push.
You're talking dozens, maybe scores of guys at any given time engaged in or very close to combat operations here.
There's not a massive push to bring in U.S. troops on the ground.
The Kurds would love it, but I don't see the Iraqi government either wanting it or allowing it.
And certainly the president of the United States doesn't seem to want to do it, and the American people sure as heck don't seem to want to do it.
So I'd be surprised if that happened.
Well, yeah, I mean, the Iraqi government certainly is taking the position publicly that they don't want that.
But now, so what's the relative strength between the army and the Shia militias at this point?
Numbers and strength?
It's really hard to say.
There's probably technically more people in the army, but the Iraqi army...
Including the ghosts or the actual guys?
Well, that's what we don't know.
I mean, who's in a position to audit the defense ministry?
That's part of the problem with Iraq.
I doubt anybody can tell you exactly how many soldiers show up every day for work.
I bet there's no master list.
It's not an organized place.
But I would say that probably there's more soldiers.
It's just you have to understand the way that the armies are used.
And this is actually prevalent throughout the Middle East, is they're what we call checkpoint armies.
Armies aren't really designed to fight against external threats in conventional warfare.
Armies are designed to protect the regime from the people.
So they have a tendency to stand around a lot on corners and check IDs.
In terms of guys that are what we call kinetic and tactical, mobile, able to sort of mount operations and go out there and attack targets and fight on their own, without heavy advisor support and do it relatively quickly.
There are definitely more Shia militia than there are Iraqi army.
The militias are better organized, better trained and led by pretty combat hardened Iranian advisors who can get them into gear.
Whereas the Iraqi army itself really only has a couple of units that I would say are what we would consider traditional military units.
That can say something like, okay, we're going to go take this town and then go do it.
You know, and organize and plan it and set up the logistics and stuff.
The rest of the Iraqi army is simply not capable of that.
And then so you're saying that as far as the special forces that you know of, most of them are embedded with the Kurds and the Peshmerga.
But then there are reports at least of Marine Force recon fighting with the Iraqi army, the Shia forces in Fallujah.
Is that it?
Well, they're fighting with the Iraqi army special forces, a group called the Golden Division, which has actually turned out to be, they're exhausted, but quite good.
I've been told by members of that, that they've had members of what we call MARSOC, which is actually sort of a step above Marines recon.
Sort of the Marine equivalent of Delta Force or the SEALs.
They've had a handful of those guys have basically gone native in uniforms and are sort of operating on the perimeter, mostly in an advise and assist role.
But there's one thing these guys are fantastic at and that's very helpful in this environment, and that's sniping.
And so the joke is suddenly the snipers got like five times as good.
And the suspicion, you know, not the suspicion, I was told it was MARSOC snipers that were really helping them out.
And also these guys are just much, much better and more careful at calling in airstrikes, particularly in urban areas where you're talking about having to drop a bomb on a very specific place.
And if you're off a little bit, you can accidentally take out a school or something.
And so I think they've pushed these guys up to the forefront a little bit more than they've been willing to in the past.
And certainly the secretary of defense yesterday made it clear that they're going to be more aggressive on this front.
We joked, we believe this had been going on for some time.
But when everybody's yelling at you, you've got to do something.
You might as well announce something you've already been doing but haven't admitted to.
And so to a large extent, I think that's what happened yesterday, was these guys admit that the U.S. government finally admitted that they're going to start doing something that we've known they've been doing for quite some time.
Yeah, that was why they claimed the Delta Force casualty that they usually would never report.
Right.
Well, they will.
I mean, they've got to eventually.
But they don't like admitting that the guy is Delta.
But essentially the way the guy got killed, I mean, he was killed with a very small detachment, 20 to 30, I think, Delta operators were with that unit.
I mean, typically they would have just said in a couple of months, oh, he fell out of a helicopter on a training mission in California or whatever.
Sometimes it depends on where you are and what you're doing and how secret they want to keep it.
They knew they couldn't keep that a secret.
And also I think they wanted to give the guy credit.
You know, I happened to watch the drone footage of that mission.
So I think they knew leaks were going to be inevitable when you're dealing with the Kurds on this who are very proud of the fact that they went out and did this operation.
And it in fact, Delta went along only at the last second because the Kurds told them we're going to go do this.
It would be easier if you came along, but we're doing it anyway.
The Kurds don't lack for groups of soldiers that can mount their operations on their own, unlike the Iraqis.
And in this case, Delta said, OK, fine, if you guys are intent, it'll turn out better if we come along.
And then the way the fight went, I watched it, watched the drone footage.
The Delta guys were there just to advise and assist.
And at the last second, they came under fire from another house while other units were raiding the targets.
And instead of diverting guys away from the targets to go take care of that house, Delta decided to go do it themselves.
They kept the Kurdish guys on the mission they were on, which was to rescue hostages.
So once you saw, you know, I saw the whole thing sort of break down by FLIR image drone, it really made sense.
And it felt like an appropriate use of special operations troops to me, what I saw.
I feel bad for the guy's family, but basically he died doing exactly what he was trained to do.
And, you know, I didn't see anything irresponsible or duplicitous in that mission.
Well, yeah, I mean, assuming the legitimacy of his presence in that country at all.
But well, yeah, he's completely invited by the government of Kurdistan.
You know, I mean, these guys are they're begging for more.
I mean, they want to they want the 82nd Airborne.
They want everybody.
So, you know, there's no worry about any legitimacy of U.S. troops operating in the KRG.
They would be Americans tired of paying for them and reaping the blow back and all the rest.
But from the local government stand.
Right.
I get it.
That's what I'm saying.
No problem with them being here.
Let me ask you one more thing real quick.
I read a thing again about a body is weak and far weaker than Maliki.
And Maliki and Jafari are actually both still in his government.
The prior two prime ministers and that maybe there's going to be a coup.
What do you think about that?
I think maybe you brought that up with me before.
A year ago or so.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, the possibility of a coup is sort of always out there.
It's just that I think one of the things that might be saving a body right now is that his job is so awful.
Who would want it?
And I think a lot of the guys that could take him out of power already have plenty.
So why not let him be the one that takes the hit?
And also, you know, they do have to balance basically the anger and, you know, free money and weapons that they're getting from the Americans and from the Iranians.
And so people are just more comfortable with him.
So why not leave him in place?
Yeah.
Like Tony Soprano and Uncle Junior, right?
Exactly.
I just I don't I don't think that anybody's ultra motivated right now to get rid of a body because the blowback would be, you know, fairly significant from the international community and even from the Iranians who don't seem to love him, but seem comfortable with the current setup, at least as it is.
And they're probably bashing guys heads together quietly in meetings behind the scenes, trying to get them to work together better.
But, you know, there is no other way to describe the Iraqi government as, you know, basically just a dumpster fire at this stage.
Yeah.
And hey, I have one correction from the chat room here that it's Marsoc.
It's not force recon.
That's something else.
Now, Marsoc.
I said that they're Marsoc guys through special operations.
They are not force recon or they're basically one tier above that.
Yeah.
That was my mistake, not yours.
I just want to clarify that.
All right.
Well, hey, man, thanks again for coming back on the show, Mitch.
I really appreciate you.
No problem.
It's always a pleasure, Scott.
Take it easy, man.
All right, y'all.
That is Mitch Prothero.
He writes for McClatchy DC dot com.
The latest is Iraqi forces succeed in cutting Islamic State supply lines.
Right back with Gareth in a sec.
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