The US watched Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) fighters, vehicles and heavy equipment gather on the outskirts of Ramadi before the group retook the city in mid-May. But the US did not order air strikes against the convoys before the battle started. It left the fighting to Iraqi troops, who ultimately abandoned their positions.
US intelligence and military officials told me recently, on condition of anonymity, that the US had significant intelligence about the pending Daesh offensive in Ramadi. For the US military, it was an open secret even at the time.
Daesh had been contesting territory in and around Ramadi for more than a year and had spoken of the importance of recapturing the city. The US intelligence community had good warning that Daesh intended a new and bolder offensive on Ramadi because it was able to identify the convoys of heavy artillery, vehicle bombs and reinforcements through overhead imagery and eavesdropping on chatter from local Daesh commanders. It surprised no one, one US intelligence official told me.
Other observers were willing to speak on the record about how many had seen Daesh’s assault on Ramadi coming. “The operations on Ramadi have been ongoing for 16 months,” said Derek Harvey, a former intelligence adviser to David Petraeus when he commanded the counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. Harvey said many observers had seen the Daesh’s series of probing attacks and psychological operations aimed at the Iraqi army and local tribes: “Everyone knew that Ramadi for some reason was a major focus.” He conceded that he did not know the exact timing of the Ramadi offensive beforehand and acknowledged that he was surprised at how effective the operations were.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, had also been warning in policy papers that Daesh had set its eyes on Ramadi. Kim Kagan, the think tank’s president, told me her institute “assessed that [Daesh] would undertake tactical offensives in different areas of Iraq in April and May in order to disperse the Iraqi Security Forces and prevent them from consolidating their gains after the fall of Tikrit”. She said that “[Daesh] began alternating attacks between Anbar and the Baiji oil refinery in mid-April”, which prompted General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff, to say in Congressional testimony that the US was prioritising the defence of Baiji over Ramadi. Kagan said Daesh’s attack on Ramadi was not a “strategic surprise”.
A spokeswoman for US Central Command declined to discuss any specific intelligence. But she did say the US-led coalition provided both air strikes and surveillance to the Iraqi security forces in support of the Ramadi defence. The US had also conducted air strikes in the past against Daesh forces in Ramadi.
“Conducting air operations in heavily populated areas where [Daesh] hides can present challenges,” the spokeswoman, Genieve David, said. “Through our dynamic targeting process, we carefully consider each target, in collaboration with our coalition partners and Iraqi forces, to ensure we do our best to minimise civilian casualties and collateral damage.”
But other observers said this dynamic targeting process was part of the problem. Dave Deptula, a retired general who was the first deputy chief-of-staff for the Air Force for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, told me that airmen flying sorties in Iraq “have to call back and ask, ‘mother may I’ before they can engage”.
The restrictive rules of engagement for US aircraft were explored last week in a devastating New York Times article that found that there are on an average 15 air strikes per day in Syria and Iraq in the new war, compared to 800 daily air strikes in Iraq in 2003. Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, last week said only one in four air missions actually result in air strikes in the current war.
“If the administration is only going to use air strikes, they are going to have [to] expand what constitutes a target,” Representative Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told me. “I have been concerned for a long time that the limited number of targets would ultimately lead to the fall of many cities in Iraq. This didn’t come as any surprise to me that Ramadi fell.”
Deptula agreed. “The current rules of engagement are intentionally designed to restrict the effectiveness of air power to prevent potential collateral damage,” he told me. “That results in [Daesh] getting the freedom of action so they can commit genocide against civilians. Does this make any sense?”
To be sure, the rules of engagement for US air strikes were not the only setback in the battle for Ramadi. The Iraqi military withdrew from its positions in the city. This prompted US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter to tell CNN last week that the US was surprised the Iraqis lacked the will to fight.
But the forces deployed in Ramadi also were not properly resupplied, according to US military and intelligence officials. Harvey, the former Petraeus adviser, told me that “since September, Iraqi forces deployed to Anbar have had to purchase some weapons and ammunition on the black market because supplies are not getting to them”.
Another problem in the battle was that although the US special operations forces have been training Iraqi troops since the summer in bases, they are still not authorised to accompany the Iraqis into battle. This is standard procedure in Afghanistan and other theatres where the US trains security forces.
“I am hearing a lot within the special operations community that we are leaving options on the table and not employing lower-risk capabilities that would make a difference,” Harvey told me. Harvey added that these low-risk options included using US personnel on the ground to select targets for air strikes, conducting special operations raids on Daesh targets in Iraq and embedding special operations forces with the Iraqi units they were training.
Harvey contrasted this approach to the surge in 2007 and 2008, when US soldiers patrolled Iraqi cities and engaged in direct combat with Al Qaida and other insurgent groups. It is not clear whether Harvey’s recommendations would violate US President Barack Obama’s own red lines against authorising ground combat operations in Iraq. What is clear is that while the US is holding back from those measures nearly a year into Obama’s new Iraq war, Daesh has been able to hold Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, and has just taken the strategically important city of Ramadi.
— Washington Post