Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi has said Islamic State fighters lack the courage to put up long-term resistance in Mosul as the fight for the country’s second-largest city looks set to extend well into 2017.
“We have seen the whole organisation collapsing in terms of standing in the face of our own armed forces,” Mr al-Abadi said.
“The success of liberating a huge area indicates that Daesh (the Arabic acronym for IS) does not have the gut now or the motivation to fight as they were doing before.”
Mr al-Abadi said Mosul was now completely encircled and that the speed with which the area was secured surpassed his expectations.
He would not say how many Iraqi troops had been killed since the operation began six weeks ago, but said the rate of battlefield losses was “sustainable”.
The prime minister said he expected the incoming Donald Trump administration to grant Iraq a greater degree of logistical support in its war on terror and dismissed the president-elect’s campaign suggestions that he would seize some of Iraq’s oil production as a kind of “reimbursement” for US efforts in Iraq.
“I am not going to judge the man by his election statements,” Mr al-Abadi said. “I am going to judge him by what he does later.”
He called Mr Trump, with whom he spoke by phone soon after his election victory, a “pragmatic man” who would reassess the situation once in office. But Iraqi oil, he said, belonged to Iraqis.
“The Iraqi people will not allow any country to take possession of their own resources,” he said.
Mr al-Abadi stood by previous pledges that Mosul would be retaken this year, despite increasingly slow progress on the ground. Iraqi forces control roughly a tenth of the city.
Iraqi commanders in eastern Mosul say IS resistance there has been fiercer than anything they have seen previously in the fight against the militants, who have targeted Iraqi troops with hundreds of car bombs.
Heavily armoured and often packed with enough explosives to disable tanks, car bombs have long been the deadliest weapon the militants use against Iraqi forces.
In past operations, US-led coalition air strikes were often called in to take out the bombs, but in the cramped fighting conditions in Mosul’s residential neighbourhoods, the explosive-laden vehicles often appear with little warning and the presence of civilians thwarts the use of air strikes.
Since Mr al-Abadi took office two years ago, Iraqi forces have retaken more than half of the territory IS held at the height of its power, when the militants’ controlled a third of the country.
Pressing north from Baghdad, mostly Shiite militia fighters first pushed IS out of large parts of Diyala and Salaeddin provinces, including Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit.
In the north, Kurdish and Iraqi forces recaptured the strategic mountain town of Sinjar, blocking a road that was once a common transit point for militants and weapons. To the west, Iraqi forces under cover of coalition air strikes retook the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah in Anbar province.
Today Mosul is the last urban stronghold IS holds in Iraq and liberating it will lead to the extremist group’s eventual demise as its ability to recruit foreign fighters and attract financing dries up, Mr al-Abadi said.
“This is like a snake, if you hit it in the middle or the tail, it’s no use. I have to hit it on the head,” he said.
“And the head of this terrorist organisation is Mosul. If I remove Mosul from them, this is a huge blow to its efforts to recruit young people from different countries of the world.”
Unlike past operations, in the Mosul fight, Mr al-Abadi’s government has called on residents to stay inside their homes – a strategy that has slowed the military’s advance. But he said it was necessary to avoid creating a humanitarian disaster by fleeing residents overwhelming camps as winter approaches.
“This is the first time where we are liberating a city or a place where civilians are staying at home,” he said. “It’s tough, it’s difficult because the security forces tell me they are being fired at from places where there are civilians and they cannot reply in kind. So this is a very tough thing.”
Mr al-Abadi said he expected to see even greater US support for Iraq under a Trump administration.
“I think it is in the interest of the United States and Iraq to keep this relationship,” he said.
“In my telephone call with President-elect Trump, he assured me that the US support will not only continue, but it is going to be increased. So, I think I am going to be looking forward to more US. support,” he said.
