WASHINGTON — President Obama said Monday that Iraqi special forces, backed by American war planes, had retaken a strategically critical dam near Mosul, the latest in what he described as a string of positive steps in halting the march of Islamic extremists across the country.
“This operation demonstrates that Iraqi and Kurdish forces are capable of working together to take the fight to ISIL,” Mr. Obama said in remarks in the White House briefing room, using the acronym for the Sunni extremist group, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. “If that dam was breached, it could have proven catastrophic.”
Still, Mr. Obama said, “This is going to take time; there are going to be many challenges ahead.” He said that the American military campaign would continue for the foreseeable future.
The recapture of strategically important Mosul dam from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is the government’s most significant success against the Sunni militants since they began their sweep through northern Iraq more than two weeks ago.
While there were no indications that the militants planned to use the dam as a weapon, according to Iraqi officials, the threat was enough to convince Washington to launch a concerted campaign of airstrikes to assist the joint effort.
American war planes and drones unleashed 35 airstrikes near the Mosul dam in the last two days, more than half of all the attacks conducted countrywide since President Obama authorized the use of military force on August 8th, the same day the dam fell to ISIS.
The impact of the American involvement has been decisive, Kurdish officials acknowledged. They were optimistic that coordination between the Iraqi forces and the Americans would deepen, now that the former prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, had stepped aside, as the Obama administration had demanded.
“The circumstances in Iraq are very different from the circumstances just a week ago because of political changes,” said Fadhil Merani, the political secretary of the Kurdish Democratic Party, whose military forces have supplied most of the troops in the Mosul Dam operation. “The effort to coordinate with our new acting prime minister is very different from our friend Mr. Maliki.”
Such is the euphoria among the pesh merga that Kurdish officials have openly talked in recent days about positioning themselves for a potential push towards Mosul itself, though such talk remains highly speculative.
The rout of the ISIS forces, if confirmed, comes after a string of successes since the American military unleashed jet and drone attacks on the militants, stopping an advance that threatened the major Kurdish city of Erbil and the lives of thousands of Yazidi refugees. Now, the American intervention seems to be backstopping a major Kurdish effort to reclaim lost territory.
The strikes aimed around the city of Mosul and the dam have severely hampered the Sunni militants, reducing their freedom of movement and forcing them to retreat from areas they once dominated.
The smoke from what appeared to be fresh airstrikes was visible from the town of Badriya, northwest of the dam, where the pesh merga forces were running a checkpoint. More than a dozen armored personnel carriers full of Kurdish fighters came through, heading to the dam. The forces manning the checkpoint were on edge, forcing cars to turn back and even challenging the ability of pesh merga forces to enter the area.
A large truck passed through the checkpoint at midday from the direction of the dam and carrying more than two dozen metal cylinders, strewn with wires. Idris Mohammed, a Kurdish military officer, said they were bombs that Kurdish sappers, or military engineers, had removed from a village near the dam.
The airstrikes appeared to have forced the insurgents to flee, or at least to seek cover, and only light clashes were reported as Kurdish forces approached the dam. As a result, hundreds of residents who had fled villages in the vicinity returned Monday, hoping to check on their homes. For the most part, though, they were turned back.
The dam is on the Tigris River, about 30 miles from Mosul. It is also a control point for the water supply for a larger area, and the seizure of the dam by the ISIS militants raised fears that a 65-foot wave of water could be released over northern Iraq.
Source: Whitehouse.gov and NYtimes
