Herding Cats
DANA PITTARD
August 2014
Working with the anti-ISIS coalition was like herding cats—wildly cunning feral cats that clawed at each other even as they fought a mutual enemy. Our anti-ISIS forces consisted of a growing coalition of U.S. allies as well as a contentious coalition of Iraqi Security Forces, Kurdish Peshmerga, Shia militias, Syrian Kurds, Iraqi Sunni tribes, and even Syrian Army troops. On top of that, other anti-ISIS forces included our foes Iran and Russia.
If that wasn’t enough of a challenge, we were only allowed to talk to certain members of the anti-ISIS coalition through certain other members of the coalition. And our hands were tied as we saw one opportunity after another to destroy key enemy forces.
Mounting a fight against ISIS was one of the most frustrating experiences I’d yet had in the military. Our commander in chief in Washington certainly had legitimate reasons for wanting to keep U.S. troops out of harm’s way as much as possible. Yet, despite the good intentions of the emerging strategy against ISIS, it forced us to rely on a contentious coalition that was basically at war with itself. My job, and that of my superiors such as Lieutenant General Terry, was to somehow mount a fight against a vicious, aggressive, and disciplined enemy using a pack of petty, squabbling, and warring Kurds, Sunni Iraqis, and Shia Iraqis.
Many of the anti-ISIS coalition members were sometimes more interested in fighting each other than fighting ISIS. The Kurds, especially, drove us crazy because they had adopted a “live and let live” relationship with ISIS since the fall of Mosul two months earlier in June 2014. We wanted the Kurds to help fight ISIS, but they had refused, maintaining an uneasy peace along their unofficial “border” with ISIS. The Kurds hoped to keep their border with ISIS as calm as possible. They didn’t think ISIS would dare attack their territories—but that seemed an inevitability to most U.S. military leaders, myself included.
Sure enough, ISIS began to enter Kurdish territory in early August when its forces attacked the respected Kurdish Peshmerga troops at Sinjar then moved on to the strategically important Mosul Dam. I’d first heard about the ISIS attacks near Mosul Dam and Sinjar—about sixty-five miles southwest of the dam—on August 1 during a meeting at the Ministry of Defense with the Iraqi Joint Forces commander, General Kenani, and the other senior leadership of the Iraqi Security Forces.
Mosul Dam, situated on the ancient Tigris River, was the largest dam in Iraq. Once ISIS controlled it they would have the power to flood Mosul, about thirty miles downriver, and possibly even Baghdad—290 miles south of the dam. An ISIS victory at the Mosul Dam would also pose a serious threat to the Kurdish capital of Erbil, just eighty-two miles southeast of the dam.
Considered a highly effective fighting force, the Peshmerga—whose name translates to “Those Who Face Death”—had become legendary during their many years of fighting Saddam Hussein’s troops.1 However, the vaunted Peshmerga forces had pushed back the initial ISIS attack, but were eventually overrun by the sheer numbers, superior equipment, and aggressive offensive tactics of ISIS. The defeat of the fierce Peshmerga fighters was alarming to the Kurds—and to us. When word came down of their defeat, I made my way to the combined joint operations center in the Iraqi MoD that by then we’d manned with both U.S. and Iraqi personnel.
I saw the worry on the faces of the Iraqi generals. They feared that ISIS would take over all northern Iraq and then Baghdad. The upside was that the aggressive move by ISIS provided us with a huge strategic opportunity to get the Kurds involved in the fight. I was concerned for those in the path of ISIS, certainly, but I saw their move into Kurdish territory as a strategic blunder that we could use to our advantage. I knew the Kurds could no longer stay out of the fight. ISIS threatened their homeland, and they had to defend Kurdistan and their capital of Erbil. I also suspected the Obama administration would not stand by and allow our close allies, the Kurds, to be overrun. My hope was that this event would finally convince President Obama to allow us to unleash U.S. airpower.
I was certain the Kurds and their European allies would ask the U.S. to intervene with airstrikes. And, if we were given the green light to conduct strikes, I anticipated our severely limited rules of engagement would be lifted.
While ISIS forces were making headway at the Mosul Dam and Sinjar, they were simultaneously conducting small-scale attacks in the greater Baghdad area. It was a tactic that was keeping the Iraqi military and their political leadership focused on Baghdad and not the broader and more significant ISIS attacks throughout Iraq.
I met with General Kenani and the senior leadership at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. I needed to get them more focused on the ISIS attacks to the north, near Mosul and the dam. I made the point that the attacks around the greater Baghdad area were only diversions. It was not an easy sell—the Iraqis became enraged, indignant, and were overly focused on even the smallest of threats against the capital regardless of what was going on elsewhere in their country.
The increase of ISIS attacks on the Kurdistan territory in northern Iraq provided the push we needed to get the attention of the Kurdish military and their political leadership. On August 6, General Babikir Zebari—a Kurd and Iraq’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—asked to meet with me in his office. There he pleaded for me to call the White House and ask for airstrikes.
I thought the request was an amazing occurrence since the Kurdish general hadn’t previously been at all inclined to engage his forces with ISIS, even after ISIS had so easily overrun other areas of Iraq. Now that his beloved Kurdistan was being attacked, he was ready to call out the dogs of hell. The irony of that was not missed by any of the other senior Iraqi military leadership.
I couldn’t resist asking General Zebari if the Kurds would now get serious about fighting ISIS. He said the Kurds would fight for their homeland. I pressed him and made the point that it would have been much better if the Kurds had been fighting all along. The general didn’t bother to offer a defense. Instead he gave me a sad, hurtful sort of look.
To me, all the pettiness and squabbling between the Kurds, Sunni Iraqis, and Shia Iraqis always seemed like such a huge waste of energy. We were supposed to be fighting a common enemy, not each other—but such were the traditions and sordid history that tormented the region.
We had all been surprised at how quickly the Peshmerga had folded and begun retreating east toward Erbil. I told General Austin that we could hardly stand by and watch as ISIS took over another major city, especially the Kurdish capital. He agreed with me, but he needed to get the authorization for airstrikes from President Obama. He said he’d get back to me.
Within hours, President Obama authorized us to protect Erbil. However, his administration issued very restrictive guidance: we could conduct airstrikes to protect Erbil but nowhere else in Iraq. 2 It was not quite the green light I’d wanted, but it was at least a step in the right direction. We finally had the opportunity we’d been waiting for—the chance to lethally strike ISIS. We got the gears of war in motion to do just that, and for whatever came next.
1 “Profile: Who are the Peshmerga?” BBC, August 12, 2014, accessed April 24, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28738975.
2 Helene Cooper, Mark Landler, and Alissa J. Rubin, “Obama Allows Limited Airstrikes on ISIS,” The New York Times, August 7, 2014, accessed April 24, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/world/middleeast/obama-weighs-military-strikes-to-aid-trapped-iraqis-officials-say.html.