In the summer of 2014, two-and-a-half years after the withdrawal of the last of the U.S. combat forces from Iraq, President Barack Obama authorized a small U.S. task force to return. The mission of the task force was to help Iraqi and Kurdish Forces protect the capitals of Iraq and the Iraqi Kurdish Region from the relentless advance of the terrorist “army” of the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham1 (ISIS), and also to help secure the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. Consulate in Erbil.
Hunting the Caliphate provides a vivid, first-hand account from two key members of the U.S. task force. In so doing, it describes what began as an effort to reconstitute and support Iraqi forces and evolved into a revolution in how the U.S. fights wars against extremists like those in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.
In the months leading up to the task force’s deployment in mid-2014, ISIS had established a Caliphate in an extensive area of western and northern Iraq and northeastern Syria. It was administered in accordance with an extreme interpretation of Islamic law. In conquering such a vast area, ISIS elements had demonstrated both enormous brutality and impressive skill on the battlefield. ISIS elements also used social media and the internet to share their successes—and barbaric actions—with the rest of the world, seeking to recruit Muslims from the region and beyond to join them. ISIS worked particularly skillfully in exploiting a sense of Sunni Arab alienation in Syria and Iraq. Initially, in fact, its fighters were welcomed by the Sunni communities they’d “liberated” from predominantly Shia Syrian and Iraqi forces—a welcome the communities would quickly learn to regret as the brutal, repressive nature of ISIS became increasingly evident.
ISIS grew out of the extremist group Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which had been destroyed by elements of the Multinational Force-Iraq and Iraqi Security Forces during the “surge” of 2007 and 2008, a period during which I was privileged to be the Multinational Force commander. In the years that followed, U.S. and Iraqi special operations and intelligence elements continued to pursue the remnants of AQI until the departure of American combat forces in late 2011. The lack of subsequent focus on the remaining AQI cells allowed them an opportunity to reconstitute, an effort that was given a significant boost when the highly sectarian actions of the Iraqi prime minister, in the wake of the departure of U.S. combat forces, alienated the Sunni Arab population and prompted enormous Sunni demonstrations—which were put down by very heavy-handed, often abusive, Shia-led Iraqi forces.
For those who had served in Iraq, especially during the surge and beyond, it was tragic to watch the fabric of the Iraqi society that we had worked so hard to bring back together be torn apart once again by the actions of the Iraqi government. As before the surge, Sunni Arab provinces once again became disenchanted with the government in Baghdad, and they turned into breeding grounds for Sunni extremists. ISIS took full advantage of the situation as it rebuilt its capabilities.
A similar dynamic arose in Syria in late 2011, as the repressive, brutal Alawite/Shia government of Bashar al-Assad violently put down peaceful Sunni demonstrations when Arab Spring discontent with “kleptocratic” leaders spread to Syria. The brutal actions of the Assad regime forces led to growing resentment and violence in the Sunni areas of Syria, and ultimately led to the start of the Sunni-Shia Syrian Civil War that has raged so horrifically for the past eight years. ISIS rightly assessed that it could exploit the anger in Syria and gain additional fighters, leaders, and resources in the Sunni areas—especially in the north and east (which also contained the bulk of Syria’s oil production). They subsequently did just that.
By the summer of 2014, ISIS had already seized Mosul—the largest city in northern Iraq—and a number of cities in western Iraq. It was spreading down the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys like a virulent plague, threatening Ramadi and Baghdad in central Iraq, and also Erbil—the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government—in northern Iraq. And it controlled a vast area of northeastern Syria that was contiguous to the areas it controlled in Iraq.
It was the threat to Baghdad and Erbil, in particular, that led President Obama to approve deployment of U.S. forces to those cities. They would become the hubs of the U.S.-led coalition that sought to help Iraqi forces halt the advance of ISIS and then to advise, assist, and enable the Iraqis as they conducted an increasingly impressive counter-offensive against heavily armed, dug-in ISIS elements. Though the U.S. task force was initially modest in size, it grew over time and ultimately became very lethal and effective in support of the Iraqi forces on the ground. And it did so with a fraction of the 165,000 American men and women in uniform that deployed in Iraq during the height of the surge.
The counter-ISIS effort included numerous strange bedfellows, among them forces from dozens of the countries that comprised the U.S.-led coalition, Iraqi military and police forces, Kurdish Peshmerga, Sunni tribal elements, and even Iranian-supported Shia militia. Over the ensuing several years, a new way of waging war evolved, largely unprecedented in its methodology and application of modern technology. The employment of an enormous constellation of manned and unmanned intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets together with air- and ground-launched precision strike munitions—all guided by the industrial-strength fusion of all forms of intelligence—in order to enable host nation forces with whom coalition advisors were located, has been a path-breaking approach. And, over time, the ability to conduct precise airstrikes on a significant scale without forward controllers on the ground added a hugely important component.
Hunting the Caliphate tells the story of this effort—of the men and women of the U.S.-led coalition that enabled Iraqi Security Forces to halt the advance of one of the most barbaric and extreme forces the world has ever seen, and then commence the counter-offensive operations that would ultimately lead to the defeat of ISIS in Iraq and in Syria.
We read of this fight from two different vantage points—that of the task force’s commanding general, Major General Dana Pittard, and that of one of the special operations forces’ most experienced Joint Terminal Attack Controllers,2 Wes Bryant. Both were highly talented professionals who had served with distinction in Iraq and elsewhere previously, and already had achieved enviable reputations as accomplished warfighters and leaders. They knew Iraq and the Iraqis well, and they served the citizens of the “Land of the Two Rivers,”—and our own country—with extraordinary skill and competence.
The resulting narrative offers a riveting, no-holds-barred account—hitherto untold—of what transpired as new approaches for battling a determined, highly capable (and extremely barbaric) enemy were developed while American and coalition elements sought to help Iraqi and other partners in the fight against ISIS from Iraq to Syria to Afghanistan. This is a compelling, important story—and Hunting the Caliphate captures it vividly and clearly.
—General David H. Petraeus, U.S Army (Ret.), Arlington, Virginia