Baghdad: Top Iraqi officials ignored ample warnings of an impending attack on the second city of Mosul and grossly mismanaged the ensuing crisis that saw Daesh terorrists seize it, a parliamentary report obtained by AFP says.
Daesh’s capture of Mosul in June 2014 could have been avoided if senior officers and officials had acted competently and paid attention to multiple detailed intelligence reports warning of the attack, the inquiry found.
The report names a number of top officials, including ex-premier and now-vice president Nouri Al Maliki, as responsible for the fall of the city in Nineveh province.
“Those who were informed about the security situation in the province knew... that this situation would surely happen,” said the report, the product of a parliamentary inquiry that has been referred to the judiciary for possible legal action.
“All the information clearly indicated that,” said the report, which has not been publicly released. “The only surprise was the speed with which the military units collapsed.”
“The poor performance of the security commanders who led the battle... destroyed the last hope for the city’s resistance. These commanders made a number of grave mistakes that accelerated the security collapse.”
Al Maliki did not have an accurate assessment of the danger in Nineveh because he relied on “misleading reports” he did not bother to confirm, and left it up to commanders to decide how to proceed after military units collapsed, it said.
But the military leaders Al Maliki chose were not competent to make that decision, among other glaring deficiencies.
He dispatched two top officers - General Aboud Qanbar, an army deputy chief of staff, and General Ali Ghaidan, the ground forces commander - to address the crisis in Mosul three days before the city fell. Al Maliki has dismissed the report as being “of no value”.
According to the report, Qanbar misunderstood the situation in Mosul, and was responsible for “great confusion that hit the command of the battle”.
The night before the city fell, he withdrew from western Mosul with “more than 30 armoured vehicles carrying people, greatly harming the morale of the fighters”.
Daesh used the withdrawal “to spread news of the escape of the leaders” from that sector.
And he later failed to withdraw units to a safe area and reorganise them for a counter-attack.
Ghaidan meanwhile had failed to resupply units there with soldiers and equipment, and also withdrew units from Nineveh for deployment in other provinces.
And he did not monitor the performance of commanders, and did not assign responsibility for securing roads between provinces, including that from Baghdad to Nineveh, much of which was under Daesh control even before Mosul fell.
Acting defence minister Sa’adoon Al Dulaimi meanwhile “did not follow security events in Nineveh province (as) he was focused on Anbar province,” and did not communicate with commanders either before or during the battle.
After overrunning Mosul, Daesh seized Nineveh province and then swept south, overrunning a third of the country.
Backed by air strikes from a US-led coalition against Daesh, Baghdad’s forces have regained ground in two provinces north of the capital, but much of western Iraq remains under Daesh control.
