Uniting Iraqis and Kurds
DANA PITTARD
Mid-August 2014
Having their offensive against Erbil spoiled in early August was the first time ISIS had been stopped since they’d seized the city of Mosul two months earlier. Temporarily halting the ISIS juggernaut was a landmark event, but it would all be for nothing unless it was followed by vigorous offensive action by the Iraqi Security Forces and Kurds.
General Austin and Lieutenant General Terry supported my outlook, though they were convinced the Iraqis would not be capable of counterattacking ISIS until at least the spring or summer of 2015. I was on the ground in Iraq, though, and I saw things a little differently. I believed that with U.S. airpower the Iraqis could begin counterattacks immediately—they just needed the will to fight.
General Austin agreed, to an extent. He just wasn’t sure the Iraqis were up to the task—will or no will. He was angry about ISIS having captured the Mosul Dam. He felt strongly that ISIS could be planning to blow up the dam and consequently kill thousands of innocent people. He ordered us to get the Kurds to recapture it.
I agreed on the need to quickly recapture the dam. I also felt it could be an opportunity for the Iraqi Army to be part of the operation—a way to get the Kurdish Peshmerga and Iraqi Army to work together. The conventional wisdom of American military leaders at CENTCOM, as well as civilian and military leaders at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, was that the Iraqis and Kurds would never work together. They had so many longstanding issues with one another that simply keeping them from fighting each other would be the best outcome to hope for, in the eyes of many.
Getting them to work together would be difficult, I knew…but not impossible. I intended to motivate them to join forces and retake the Mosul Dam. I also wanted to push the U.S. government to support the Iraqi military with airstrikes in addition to supporting the Kurds. I was convinced that the only way to get our government to support the Iraqi military was to demonstrate that they were willing to fight ISIS for all of Iraq—for the Kurds, the Sunnis, and other minorities—and not just the Shia population. I wanted to show that, with our assistance, the Iraqi military had the will and capability to win against ISIS.
While I was in Baghdad with the Iraqi senior military leadership, Brigadier General “Cas” Castellvi was still in Erbil working with the Kurdish leadership. I called and told him my plan. He didn’t think it was possible, but he agreed to do his best to help my efforts to bring the Kurds and Iraqis together.
Cas asked the Kurds if they would invite the Iraqi military to participate in the campaign to retake the Mosul Dam. The Kurds’ national security advisor, Mansour Barwani—son of the Kurdish President Masoud Barwani—replied with absolutely zero hesitation, “Hell no!”
The Kurds felt strongly that they could not count on the Iraqi forces that had so quickly collapsed and crumbled against ISIS two months earlier. I reminded Cas that the Kurdish Peshmerga had not done very well against ISIS, either. He knowingly sighed and said that it was still going to be difficult to get the two groups to even talk to one another, much less fight side-by-side.
Making the Case
There was no way we would ever be able to defeat ISIS in Iraq unless the Kurdish Peshmerga and Iraqi military somehow worked in concert. I changed my approach and decided to talk to the Iraqi military leadership about cooperating with the Kurds. Around 10 p.m. on August 12, I met with Iraqi General Kenani at the Ministry of Defense.
The Iraqis loved to meet late at night. They would stay up late and sleep in the next morning, sometimes even taking naps in the afternoon. At night was when the Iraqi military leadership at the Ministry of Defense often had their most important meetings, made many of their critical operational decisions, and conducted coordination between major commanders.
I sat with General Kenani and some of his key advisors in his office. He had some operational maps of Iraq on the walls around the large room. One side of the room had a heavy, ornate wooden table with eight chairs around it and a large map of Iraq spread out on top. On the other half of Kenani’s office was his own large desk. In front of his desk was a small wooden table with two chairs on each side, facing inward. Those chairs were usually the “seats of honor” for honored guests or close friends. Continuing beyond the seats of honor were two long sofas on each side of the room, with a third sofa across the room facing Kenani’s desk to complete a U-shaped configuration.
General Kenani sat behind his desk like a king holding court. I sat in one of the seats of honor. Next to me was my trusted interpreter, Ali—a native Iraqi who later became a U.S. citizen and soldier. We sat across from General Kenani drinking hot, sweetened Chai tea and eating pistachios. A parade of Iraqi generals shuttled in and out with recent battlefield reports for Kenani from the fighting against ISIS throughout Iraq. Each general would stand at attention, stomp his right foot to the ground, and salute General Kenani. He’d return their salutes, take their reports, and send them off after they stomped their right foot again with a final exchange of salutes. (The military custom came from the British Army influence on the Iraqi Army in the 1920s when Iraq was a British Protectorate.1)
General Kenani was even more powerful in Iraq at the time because Prime Minister al-Maliki was finally leaving office and his successor had not yet been elected by the Iraqi Parliament. Technically, that meant General Kenani could actually make military decisions with less interference from the outgoing prime minister. I hoped we might take advantage of this unique opportunity to get the Iraqis and Kurds to cooperate.
During a lull in the reporting from the generals, I spoke directly to General Kenani, addressing him with the respectful term “Sadey” which roughly translates to “Sir” in Arabic.
I leaned forward. “Sadey, we need you to send forces to help the Kurds retake Mosul Dam.”
He chuckled and waved me off with his hand. “General Pittard, Mosul Dam is a Kurdish problem, not my problem.”
I remained calm. It was like a high stakes game of poker.
“As you well know, sadey, Mosul Dam belongs to Iraq. You must help retake it. If the Kurds recapture the dam without the Iraqi Army, they might have a legitimate argument and claim Mosul Dam for Kurdistan.”
He frowned before responding, and then said that he didn’t have enough troops to spare. I decided to break down the real argument. “Sadey, I need you to do this so we can show the world that the Iraqi military cares about all of Iraq. It will also give you more wasta [power] to ask the U.S. for airstrikes in all of Iraq, not just Kurdistan. You can show the world that the Iraqi Army can still fight!”
Our discussion intensified from there. He said that the Kurds did not want the help of the Iraqis, but I told him the old Western adage “when a man is drowning, he doesn’t care who throws him a life raft.” Then I fibbed slightly—I said that the Kurds wanted Iraqi help. That seemed to finally open a door. In the end he relented and agreed to send a small brigade of elite Counter Terrorism Service troops. He would have the near-legendary Major General Fadhil—known as the “Black Scorpion”—lead them. After laying out his terms, General Kenani looked into my eyes intensely and said, “General Pittard, I can only afford to send them for seventy-two hours…maybe ninety-six at most. We will need them back to protect Baghdad.”
I nodded and smiled. “Yes, sadey. I understand.”
It would have to be enough.
Convincing the Kurds
Of course, the truth was the Kurds did not want help from the Iraqis, so our next move was to convince the Kurds to accept it anyway. “Cas” Castellvi had been paving the way by talking with the Kurdish leadership, who were eager for revenge against ISIS. They wanted to make up for faring so poorly in earlier battles.
The Kurds had U.S. Special Forces advisors embedded with them. They were beginning to get their swagger back and were convinced they could retake the Mosul Dam without help from the Iraqi military. They were proud, stubborn, and adamant on the issue. Kurdish leadership categorically refused to allow the Iraqi military to be a part of the operation.
But I was not going to give up on it.
We needed more firepower in the argument, so I enlisted General Lloyd Austin who was well respected by both the Kurds and the Iraqis. He called the Kurdish President Masoud Barzani and somehow convinced, cajoled, or threatened Barzani to allow the Iraqi military to participate. It was a monumental achievement, made possible only by the respect and gravitas of General Lloyd Austin.
We were ready to take back the Mosul Dam.
1 “British Colonialism and Repression in Iraq,” Global Policy Forum, accessed April 24, 2018, https://www.globalpolicy.org/iraq-conflict-the-historical-background-/british-colonialism-and-repression-in-iraq.html.