Today in “things that happened faster than expected”

Regular readers will recall that I’m skeptical that the current Iraqi campaign to drive ISIS back is sustainable, but I’ll confess that I didn’t expect things to bog down so quickly. The offensive to retake Tikrit has “stalled”:

The Iraqi offensive on the city, supported by the Shia-majority Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU), had initial success, with a number of towns on the city’s outskirts captured quickly and PMU spokesman, Karim al-Nuri, declaring the city would be liberated in “no more than 72 hours” earlier this month.

Yet, the assault on the hometown of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has taken longer than expected, now entering its fourth week. Iraq’s defence minister today claimed that the army has slowed down its operation to prevent potential casualties which could occur if they rushed the assault on the explosive-laden city centre.

Now, I don’t want to say that Iraq’s defense minister is playing fast and loose with the truth here, but it’s unlikely that the US would have started providing aerial surveillance of Tikrit if the problem were simply that ISIS had left a bunch of booby-traps all over the place. It’s even less likely that, if explosives were the real problem, Baghdad would now be talking to the US about adding airstrikes to that surveillance. No, I’d imagine the real problem is as it appears in this McClatchey report: heavy resistance from ISIS and disagreements between the Iraqi army and the Shiʿa militias who have been supporting it over how to proceed. The militias would like a bloody frontal assault that may involve lots of potential war crimes against Sunni civilians, while the army and the government back in Baghdad would prefer something a little less bloody and a whole lot less war crimey.

The Americans would likely be happy to oblige the Iraqi Army (EDIT: and as it turns out, actually began obliging them today), so long as it forces those Iranian-supported Shiʿa militias to stand down and stops accepting direct aid from the IRGC’s Quds Force. That possibility has caused the leader of one of the largest Shiʿa militias to publicly criticize “‘weaklings’ in the Iraqi army” for even considering the idea of dumping Iranian support in exchange for American support. This all really bodes well for the eventual campaign to retake Mosul, which ISIS is bound to defend even more strenuously than it’s been defending Tikrit.