ISIL military offensive in northern Iraq against Iraqi government (2014)
The Northern Iraq offensive (June 2014) began on 4 June 2014, when the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, assisted by various insurgent groups in the region, began a major offensive from its territory in Syria into Iraq against Iraqi and Kurdish forces, following earlier clashes that had begun in December 2013 involving guerillas.
The Islamic State and its allies captured several cities and surrounding territory, beginning with an attack on Samarra on 4 June, followed by the seizure of Mosul on 10 June, and Tikrit on 11 June. As Iraqi government forces fled south on 13 June, Kurdistan Regional Government force’s took control of the oil hub of Kirkuk, part of the disputed territories of Northern Iraq.
The Islamic State called the battles of Mosul and Saladin Governorate "the Battle of the Lion of God al-Bilawi" (), in honor of Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi.
A former commander of the Iraqi ground forces, Ali Ghaidan, accused former Prime Minister of Iraq, Nuri al-Maliki of being the one who issued the order to withdraw from the city of Mosul.
By late June, the Iraqi government had lost control of its borders with both Jordan and Syria. Prime Minister of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki called for a national state of emergency on 10 June following the attack on Mosul, which had been seized overnight. However, despite the security crisis, Iraq's parliament did not allow Maliki to declare a state of emergency; many Sunni Arab and Kurdish legislators boycotted the session because they opposed expanding the prime minister's powers.
Background.
Beginning in December 2013, clashes involving tribal militias, Iraqi security forces, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) had been occurring throughout western Iraq. In early January 2014, ISIL militia successfully took control of Fallujah and Ramadi, bringing much of Al Anbar Governorate under their control. Afterwards, the Iraqi Army began conducting an offensive against the Anbar region, the stronghold of ISIL, with the stated goal of bringing the region under government control. Prior to conducting this counter offensive, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gave a controversial speech in which he charactized the military campaign as a continuation of the ancient sectarian war between "the followers of Hussein and the followers of Yazid", a reference to a 7th-century defining battle for Shi'ites, thereby alienating the Sunnis of Anbar who had prior collaborated with the Iraqi government.
The advances ISIL made in neighboring Syria—a source of their weapons—substantially strengthened their position. In early June, insurgents began to advance up over to central and northern part of Iraqi land following the Iraqi Army's capture in the Anbar industrial zone. At that point, they were still in control of most of Fallujah and Garmah, as well as parts of Haditha, Jurf Al Sakhar, Anah, Abu Ghraib and several smaller settlements in Al Anbar Governorate.
On 29 June 2014, ISIL announced a change of name to Islamic State, and declared a 'Caliphate' that includes Syria and Iraq. They then declared Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the Caliph and leader of all Muslims.
Possible causes.
Some trace the beginnings of the offensive to the Syrian civil war which gave ISIL and other Sunni jihadi groups a cause and a battlefield when it looked like their campaign in Iraq was in decline while critics of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 believe the root of these events should trace back to unsuccessful nation-building as well as sectarian and ethnic division in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's removal from power. U.S. Foreign policy on Iraq under the Barack Obama administration had shifted, and there had been a withrawal of U.S. troops and military presence. Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote that had Obama forcibly intervened in the Syrian civil war, it "could have stopped the carnage spreading today in Syria and in Iraq," while Fareed Zakaria, editor of "Time" and former Middle Eastern policy advisor for the Bush administration, alleged that counterproductive western intervention in Iraq and Syria served to accelerate sectarian infighting in both countries and empowered radicals on all sides. The "Financial Times" described the conflicts spanning Iraq and Syria as religious wars akin to Europe's Thirty Years' War.
According to the Iraq's government critics, the pro-Shia policies of al-Maliki have been considered one of the main reasons of alienation Sunni Arabs and Kurds, which has played a significant role in the deterioration of security and the reemergence of Sunni extremists. Conversely, al-Maliki has accused Saudi Arabia of backing the militants of ISIL, who want to carve out a Sunni caliphate in the heart of the Middle East. This view was supported by writers in "Foreign Policy" magazine and "The Daily Beast" who asserted that the Saudi government, viewing the political ascendancy of Iraq's Shia populace as a threat, elected to provide the Sunni opposition with arms. Michael Weiss traces the origins of ISIL to Ansar al-Islam's infiltration of Iraqi Kurdistan through Iran prior to the invasion of Iraq, and further cites a variety of evidence to claim that Syrian officials intentionally abetted the rise of ISIL to damage the reputation of moderate Syrian rebels.
The Iraqi army which took responsibility for holding northern Iraq, collapsed when militants including ISIL and its allies, with less than 1,000 militants, attacked and seized Mosul and Tikrit easily. The Iraqi army ceded control of Kirkuk to the Kurdish Peshmerga. There are different reasons offered for this event. According to "The Guardian", one scenario is that the three Iraqi generals responsible for Mosul, Tikrit, and Kirkuk didn't want to fight for a state that wasn't working. According to "The Daily Telegraph", the other view is that the generals in the military headquarters of these cities had shared the same Ba'athist ideology and were the first to flee. Another scenario is that the Iraqi troops quickly realized they were no match for battle-hardened and ideologically motivated jihadis heading their way. A third theory is that the Kurds had long ago lost faith in prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's ability to serve either their interests or those of Iraq.
Washington Institute for Near East Policy analyst Michael Knights noted that mutual opposition to the Shia-led government allowed for an alliance between the hitherto ideologically opposed ISIL and secular Ba'ath influenced insurgents such as the Naqshbandi order. Coordination between both groups granted ISIL the assistance of underground networks of former military, insurgents, Sunni officials and tribal groups sympathetic to the Ba'ath era government, thereby allowing a relatively small number of militants to execute a "coup" in Sunni regions where the banned Ba'ath party still retains a degree of support. The presence of Naqshbandi, MCIR and other secular insurgent groups led to tribes and some Awakening Councils opposed to ISIL supporting the insurrection. Additionally, Knights reported that in the years preceding the insurrection, the Naqshbandi led by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri aggressively forged ties to elements of Sunni civil society opposed to the Maliki government, encouraged the establishment of protest camps at sites including Hawija and attempted to co-opt Sunni militia. The arrival of ISIS militants from Syria ultimately serving as the final catalyst behind a broader revolt.
Offensive.
Assault on Samarra.
On 4 and 5 June 2014, ISIL militants attacked and captured parts of the city of Samarra. The ISIL operatives blew up a police station south of Samara overnight, killing several policemen, before they advanced on the city in pick-up trucks, raiding checkpoints along the way. They entered the city from the east and west and quickly captured the municipality building, university and the two largest mosques. The insurgents had reached to within from the Al-Askari Mosque, which was defended by three security belts. Militants targeted command centres near the shrine. Soon, government reinforcements were sent from Baghdad and the military managed to regain control of the city, pushing militant forces out of Samarra. 12 policemen and several civilians were killed in the fighting, while an army official claimed 80 militants also died.
Fall of Mosul and push into Kirkuk.
On 6 June, ISIL attacked Mosul from the northwest and quickly entered the western part of the city. The ISIL forces numbered approximately 1,500, while there were at least 15 times more Iraqi forces. The assault started at 02:30 in the morning when ISIL convoys of pickup trucks advancing from the west shot their way through the two-man checkpoints into the city. By 03:30, street fighting was raging in Mosul. In southern Mosul, five suicide bombers attacked an arms depot killing 11 soldiers. Two suicide bombers also killed six people in the village of Muaffakiya, near Mosul. Heavy fighting continued in the city the next day. Over the two days, 61 militants, 41 government troops and seven civilians were killed.
As the militants advanced they seized military vehicles and weapons and reportedly hanged soldiers and lit them ablaze, crucified them, and torched them on the hoods of Humvees. On the western edge of Tamoz 17 neighborhood, police from the Fourth Battalion made a stand against the insurgents as government forces were order to form a defensive line to cordon off the besieged western Mosul neighborhoods from the Tigris River.
While fighting raged in Mosul, on 8 June, a double bomb attack, including a suicide bomber, against the Kurdish PUK party office in the town of Jalawla left 18 people dead, most of them members of the Kurdish security forces. At the same time, ISIL advanced to the east of Mosul, capturing the Hawija, Al Zab, Riyadh, and Abbasi areas west of the city of Kirkuk, and Rashad and Yankaja to its south after government forces retreated.
By this time, insurgents surged into Mosul, sleeper cells hiding in the city had been activated and neighbourhoods rallied to them. The insurgents bombed a police station in the al-Uraybi neighbourhood and charged into the area around the Mosul Hotel, on the western bank of the Tigris, where a battle post was set up for 30 police SWAT members.
The next day, ISIL forces executed 15 security forces members captured near Kirkuk. Four days later, on 13 June, in the eastern part of the province, Kurdish military forces (Peshmerga) advanced and took the city of Kirkuk, after government forces abandoned their posts in the face of the ISIL offensive, expanding the Kurdish zone of control in Northern Iraq. Kurdish forces then awaited further orders before moving towards the areas controlled by ISIL. A Peshmerga spokesman said, "The whole of Kirkuk has fallen into the hands of Peshmerga, no Iraqi army remains in Kirkuk now." Ten tanks and dozens of Humvee vehicles that had been abandoned by the Army were seized by Kurdish forces.
By the afternoon of 9 June on Mosul's front, some 40 members of the Fourth Police Battalion were among the last local police fighting to hold back the jihadists in western Mosul. The rest had either defected or deserted. At 04:30 in the afternoon, a military water tanker, rigged with explosives, raced towards the Mosul Hotel where the policemen were stationed. The subsequent explosion wounded the battalion's commander, Colonel Dhiyab Ahmed al-Assi al-Obeidi, whose leg was ripped open by the blast. Other police officers then transported him by boat across the river. This attack broke the defensive line in the west of the city.
That night, generals Aboud Qanbar and Ali Ghaidan decided to withdraw across the river, leaving Lieutenant General Mahdi Al-Gharrawi, the operational commander of Nineveh Governorate, at his command post without any orders. Ghaidan and Qanbar's retreating convoy created the impression that Iraq's security forces were deserting and so Iraqi Army soldiers started to flee Mosul. The 2nd Division had deserted the city within a few hours and both Ghaidan and Qanbar arrived in Kurdistan the next day.
On the morning of 10 June, Gharawi and 26 of his men, who were still at the operation command centre in the western part of the city, decided to fight their way across a bridge to eastern Mosul. On the east bank, their five vehicles were set ablaze and after coming under heavy fire, during which three of the soldiers were killed, it was every man for himself, as Gharawi said. In the east, Gharawi and three of his men commandeered an armoured vehicle with flat tires and headed north to safety. The militants were in control of much of the city by midday on 10 June. The militants seized numerous facilities, including Mosul International Airport, which had served as a hub