Apocalypse soon in the battle of Mosul?
Brian M Downing
The fight for Mosul is underway. Surrounding villages have fallen, ISIL has launched spoiling attacks, Iraqi special forces are nearing the city itself. ISIL fighters have the advantage in combat effectiveness and in fighting from defensive positions in urban areas, as did forces in Stalingrad and Berlin. Opposing troops have the advantage in numbers and unlimited air support.
ISIL has another advantage – one not mentioned in Clausewitz. The jihadis hold the fates of over a million civilians. Exceptional cruelty is in their creed and in their fighters’ hearts. The battle for Mosul may bring new meaning to the term “human shields” and lead to one of the most horrific mass slaughters since the end of World War Two.
Apocalyptic ideology
ISIL believes it will bring about the end times. Existing leaders, corrupt and decadent and secular, will be brought down and a messianic figure, perhaps ISIL’s leader himself, will restore the caliphate and rule the Islamic world.
Acts of barbarity demonstrate resolution and indifference to the norms and laws of the dying order. Each act assures the apocalypse is at hand. As Norman Cohn says of ISIL’s predecessors in medieval Europe, they are “an elite of amoral supermen . . . the proof of salvation was to know nothing of conscience or remorse.”
As defeat looms, and as commitment to the creed may be fading, both in Mosul and in the region, a new display of faith and triumph over civilization’s opinion – one of far greater enormity – may be coming. ISIL undoubtedly has the resolve. It also has a million captives.
Strategic withdrawal
ISIL may feel it has the fighting spirit and defensive positions to repel the impending assault. Iraqi special forces units are few in number. The bulk of the army lacks the discipline and will to take the city. More likely, however, ISIL will recognize the city will fall. The leaders may put off a fight to the death for another day and opt to withdraw to the Syrian city of Reqqa, where Iraqi troops will not follow and where Arab-Kurdish enemies are weaker.
ISIL troops attempted to break out of Fallujah earlier this year but were cut to pieces by airpower. Exfiltrating small numbers is an alternative but it risks desertions, interdiction, and incremental annihilation. Another option is to surround convoys with human shields – a tactic ISIL used last summer as its troops retreated from Manbij in northern Syria. The firepower of Kurdish militias and American aircraft was neutralized, and ISIL got away.
A similar tactic, though on a much larger scale, is available to the garrison of Mosul. ISIL may signal Iraqi and American troops that it will head to the west with tens of thousands of civilians as human shields marching alongside the convoy. ISIL’s resolve and disdain for civilians can be made plain in predictable ways.
Ceasefire and enclave
ISIL may stave off defeat by massacring large numbers of civilians, then signaling Baghdad and Washington that the rest of the population will share the same fate, unless a ceasefire is put into effect. No more assaults, no more airstrikes, no more support for insurgents inside the city. For what it’s worth, ISIL could agree to halt its bombing campaign throughout Iraq.
Mosul will become an ISIL enclave, protected by constant threats of mass slaughter. The city might even be periodically resupplied, if reluctantly, by leaders fearful of cataclysm.
Immolation
If ISIL fails to repel the attacks of Iraqi special forces, and if the withdrawal and enclave options are unavailable, it may conclude that the honorable course is to perish in a supreme act of faith. In accordance with their creed, fighters will fall in battle, their places in an afterlife assured.
Consistent with their apocalyptic vision, and also with passages in the Koran, the faithless people of Mosul will die with them, either by mass shootings, drownings in the Tigris, poison gas, or setting so many buildings ablaze that an immense firestorm consumes the city. Leaders in Reqqa will ask, Is Mosul burning?
As defeat loomed, Japanese generals thought their people should all perish in battle, the Nazi leadership desired a Wagnerian end for the German people. ISIL cannot restore the caliphate but it can place itself alongside the war criminals of Japanese militarism and the Third Reich.
Copyright 2016 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.