WASHINGTON — The Pentagon, departing from previous reluctance to disclose specifics about the fight against the Islamic State, on Thursday announced plans to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, between April and May.
A U.S. Central Command official, speaking at a background press briefing at the Pentagon, said the operation would involve an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 Iraqi troops, including three Peshmerga brigades. The U.S. estimates 1,000 to 2,000 Islamic State fighters control Mosul.
“Militarily, ISIL is in decline,” said the official, referring to the Islamic State by the name preferred by the U.S. government. The Islamic State “has a very difficult time seizing and holding additional terrain beyond what it has right now. In fact, in Iraq it is losing ground every single day.”
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Michael Horowitz, a senior intelligence analyst at MAX Security Solutions, expressed a similar view. “While the recent video depicting the beheading of the 21 Egyptian Christians has certainly boosted their media presence, the Islamic State has been in Libya for months, since at least October 2014, when a militia based in the eastern city of Derna pledged allegiance to the group’s ‘Caliph.’” Horowitz wrote in an email. “The group was formed by both former Islamic State fighters from a specific Libyan brigade called the al-Battar al-Libya Brigade, and from local jihadists, who were ‘co-opted’ by the group. The recent gains are, thus, significant but they should be put in perspective, as Libya is a mosaic of militias fighting each other.”
Horowitz said the Islamic State is “certainly the most extreme and dangerous” of the country’s radical groups, “but not the largest at this time, as other groups such as Ansar al-Sharia have a broader presence and greater military strength.”
