Grinding through western Mosul; AQ deputy killed in Syria; No F-35 to Mideast for a few years; SecNav pick bows out; and just a bit more...
Iraqi troops are patching a key bridge in Mosul as civilians flock out of the western half of the city by foot, by cart, and through tons of dust, Reuters reports on location this morning. “U.S.-backed army and police units advanced through populated western districts, fighting tough street battles, and announced they had captured Mosul's southernmost bridge. Once repaired, the bridge could help bring reinforcements and supplies from the eastern side, piling pressure on the militants dug in the western side among 750,000 civilians.”
About those leaving: “About 1,000 civilians arrived in the early hours of Monday at the sector held by the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), the wounded taken to the clinic of this elite unit, while men were screened to make sure they are not Islamic State members...Several thousand militants, including many who traveled from Western countries to join up, are believed to be still in Mosul.”
Power move: Iraqi forces have seized a power station that supplies electricity to the entire city of Mosul, Baghdad’s defense ministry said Saturday. Iraqi tanks also stormed through three districts of south Mosul that sit against the Tigris, Rudaw news reported. Car-bomb attacks persist, and one killed Rudaw reporter Shifa Gardi traveling with Iraqi troops in the city on Saturday. (The Telegraph has a remembrance of her, here.)
ISIS has a counter-surveillance system in West Mosul—many, many long white sheets spread across alleys and streets. See how it works in this aerial photo from AFP’s Iraq bureau chief, Jean-Marc Mojon.
Had enough live war footage? If you want to see the Mosul offensive in on-the-ground, 360-degree video, the LA Times’ Nabih Bulos has your fix, here. It’s part of a broader written report on the “stunning resistance” put up by ISIS fighters in the last bastion of Mosul, and you can read that, here.
One more thing: If you’re having a badass patch made, you may want to spell “special forces” properly. Or not. LAT’s Bulos found someone who missed the target just a bit, here.
AQ deputy leader reportedly killed in Syria. The son-in-law of Osama bin Laden was killed in a U.S. drone strike in northwestern Syria, The Guardian reports. “Abu al-Khayr al-Masri – who has been part of the global jihadi organisation for three decades and was a son-in-law of its founder, Osama bin Laden – was killed on Sunday when a missile fired from a drone hit the small car in which he was travelling. Masri had also been a close aide to al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, a fellow Egyptian.”
He has also “been implicated in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in which more than 200 people, mostly civilians, died.”
The Pentagon has been quiet so far, confirming only that “it had carried out a strike in north-west Syria, but did not say whom the attack had targeted,” writes The Guardian. “Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, the al-Qaida-inspired group that Masri had worked alongside in Syria, acknowledged the death, as did individual jihadi leaders.”
But already this morning, there are reports al-Masri has been buried in Syria, according to the Middle East Institute’s Charles Lister. Lister called the strike “the biggest blow to al-Qaida since the killing of Nasir al-Wuhayshi in Yemen in June 2015. As a long-time member of al-Qaida’s central Shura council and one of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s closest long-time confidants, Abu al-Khayr was jihadi royalty, meaning his death will almost certainly necessitate some form of response, whether from Syria or elsewhere in the world.” More—including how the Trump administration could spin this to their pretty clear and distinct benefit just two days ahead of his first address to a joint session of Congress—here. Or you can read a bit more on al-Masri’s known past, via The Long War Journal from 2015, here.
While we’re on jihadis: President Trump’s National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster has reportedly told his staff “that the label ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ is unhelpful because terrorists are ‘un-Islamic.’” That according to The New York Times. More on the rhetorical terrorism debate within the White House, here.
The battlelines in Syria are as murky (and deadly) as ever: Turkey’s allied rebels fought Syrian regime troops and allied militants south of al-Bab this weekend, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The rebels said they killed 22 Syrian regime troops, Reuters reports. Regime troops embarked on al-Bab weeks ago to help clear ISIS from the city. And they clashed with Turkey’s allied troops at least once already. And like that episode, it was reportedly Russia that had to intervene to calm down the violence.
Turkey’s rebels may have largely routed the terrorists of ISIS from northwestern Syria’s al-Bab, but the group’s car bomb attacks remain a threat—as Friday’s attack on a rebel command center a short distance northeast of the city killing nearly 50 showed. AFP has more from that attack, here.
While we’re on Turkey: the country’s Hürriyet newspaper reported this weekend the Turks have completed more than half of their wall along the Syrian border: 290 km of the planned 511 km. More on that, here.
From Defense One
US Air Force to Send F-35 to Fight ISIS … In a Few Years // Marcus Weisgerber: The plane's rotation schedule has the JSF making deployments to Europe and the Pacific before heading to the Middle East, a top Air Force general says.
At the Oscars: Syrians, White Helmets, and Migrants Lead Picture Nominees // The Atlantic’s Sarah Feldberg: Four films at the Academy Awards might interest you: '4.1 Miles,' 'Watani: My Homeland,' 'The White Helmets,' and 'Fire at Sea.'
Welcome to Monday’s edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. #OTD1991: President George H.W. Bush announces that “Kuwait is liberated.” (Got a tip? Let us know by clicking this link to email us: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.)
Chinese private security firms go global. Beijing is not yet sending military forces on routine deployments abroad, but its private-security industry is already there, the Financial Times reports: “Its growth has echoes of the prominent and often controversial part played by western contractors such as Blackwater, now known as Academi, and DynCorp in Iraq and Afghanistan after the September 11 2001 attacks. The logic is the same: contractors are convenient and deniable. But they and the military are in reality two sides of the same coin.” Read on, here.
Meanwhile, NYT has this update from Djibouti, where Beijing is building its first overseas naval installation: “With increasing tensions over China’s island-building efforts in the South China Sea, American strategists worry that a naval port so close to Camp Lemonnier could provide a front-row seat to the staging ground for American counterterror operations in the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa.” Read, here.
ICYMI: here’s a 2016 oped recommending the U.S. push back on the Chinese port, and a response from the Djiboutan foreign minister.
Trump’s pick for Navy secretary pick bows out. Financier Philip Bilden decided he’d rather not sell off assets as required by conflict-of-interest laws. (His Sunday statement came six days after White House spokesman Sean Spicer tweeted, “Just spoke with him and he is 100% commited to being the next SECNAV pending Senate confirm.”) USNI News reports, here.
Meanwhile, Iran’s navy today wraps up its biggest annual war game, a two-day exercise spread across 2 million square kilometers just outside the Strait of Hormuz. AP notes that “the drill does not involve Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force the U.S. Navy often criticizes for harassing its vessels.” Read, here.
There are roughly 4,000 Russians fighting in Syria and another 5,000 from other ex-Soviet states, The Moscow Times reported in a short write-up this weekend off remarks from President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.
The war in Ukraine: The Trump State Department called on “Russia and the separatist forces it backs to immediately observe the cease-fire, withdraw all heavy weapons, and allow full and unfettered access” for conflict monitors after separatists seized a surveillance drone from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Reuters reported Sunday.
Map of the day: Where do former Soviet states get their heavy weapons? Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has a map with the seven different answers—including Canada (Ukraine’s largest supplier)—here.
The Pentagon wants to escalate the war against Shabaab in Somalia, AP reported this weekend. Officials have reportedly sent a set of recommendations to the White House “allow U.S special operations forces to increase assistance to the Somali National Army in the struggle against al-Shabab militants... [and] give the military greater flexibility to launch airstrikes against extremists that appear to be a threat.”
So, what’s different? “Currently, U.S. forces can transport and accompany local troops. But they must keep their distance from front lines and can only engage the enemy if they come under attack or if Somali forces are in danger of being defeated. The new proposal would give U.S. forces the ability to move along with Somali troops into the fight if needed...Officials said that under the new recommendations, the military would be able to launch airstrikes against militants on a more pre-emptive basis. For example, the U.S. could target al-Shabab fighters gathering for an attack rather than waiting until friendly forces were under fire.”
For the record: “Currently there are about 50 U.S. commandos rotating in and out of Somalia to advise and assist the local troops. The new authorities could result in a small increase in the number of U.S. forces in Somalia, officials said.”
SecDef James Mattis “has approved the recommendations and sent the plan to the White House earlier this month,” AP’s Lita Baldor writes. “But no final decisions have been made, and the proposal could prove politically sensitive” because of the 1993 fiasco immortalized in the film “Black Hawk Down.” Read the rest, here.
Oh, and Shabaab had a message this weekend, too: nothing has changed in their war against the government, which group spokesman Ali Dhere reportedly calls a “puppet of the west and no different from previous apostate Somalia leaders.”
Not far from the coast of Somalia, Yemen’s Houthi insurgents showed off some new drones over the weekend. Take a look at those—which appear to be largely restricted to surveillance—here. Or watch video of the display, here. This would be the second recent advance in Houthi unmanned war technology, following the report they deployed a suicide drone boat to strike a Saudi frigate on January 30. Defense News’ Chris Cavas had that exclusive, in case you missed it, here.
Lastly today, President Trump could decide to order a 15-6 investigation into the Yemen raid in late January that led to the death of Navy SEAL Ryan Owens, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on ABC's "This Week" television program Sunday.
And Owens’ father told the Miami Herald he wants clarity on that operation, too. He also reportedly refused to meet with the president when he flew to Delaware to receive Ryan’s body in late January. Much more to Owens’ family story, here.