Battle of Mosul: The Mesopotamia from the perspective of the US strategy

Written by Nasser Kandil,

Washington has a different consideration from Moscow regarding the understandings about Syria. Moscow considers that the cooperation in the war on terrorism and what it includes of the temptation for Washington to get rid of ISIS quickly is a motivation to accelerate the understandings, while Washington seeks rapidly for a military impression in the war on ISIS before the presidential elections, because this gives the electoral battle waged by the Democratic Party a popular push and a moral encouragement to the voters. The US strategy has not changed by depending on the dual containment of the terrorist groups either Al Nusra front or ISIS, so according to America this shows the anticipation to barter the military presence of Al Nusra through the cooperation to isolate it and to give the coverage to target it for occupying positions that are parallel to the size of Al Nusra Battle in the new political equation of Syria, these positions will be occupied by groups of Syria that are related to the US policy, and thus they will get a special status for the eastern of Aleppo outside the scope of the control of the Syrian army, but within the US perspective toward the concept of the settlement. But the most dangerous is Washington’s outlook regarding the war on ISIS, a war this is still far to occur, and Washington wants it to be far in order to barter the presence of ISIS in the Syrian and Iraqi geography for American security and military privileges. This was expressed by the bloody message resulted from the US raid on the sites of the Syrian army in Deir Al Zour.

Washington does not have alternatives for the understandings despite all the intimidation, but it will not give any facility except for the costs which can achieve its interests, it is aware of the cost of going on in the war on Al Nusra and ISIS without it, and of the confusion which results from the war on terrorism, and the war which it talks about with its allies between the Syrian country and the opposition, and it is aware as well of a parallel confusion by provoking the humanitarian issue to exert pressures on Moscow, Damascus, and their allies. The US perspective which theoretically recognizes the geographical unity of Syria and Iraq looks toward the Iraqi and the Syrian geographies as several areas of security, military, and political influence, that are distributed by the international and regional centers, but this area has been given to ISIS by Washington which wages theoretically a war to recapture it and to make it an exclusive area for the US processes in the Syrian and Iraqi territories. This area has got the US focus strategically and for the coming years, but to have a look at the map of ISIS’s deployment, the return to the circumstances of such deployment, the conditions and the nature of the battles against ISIS will allow to identify the size of the American interest and the kind of the US perspective as long as Washington has given and taken.

The area which is located in the Syrian and Iraqi borders and under the dominance of ISIS stretches between Tigris and Euphrates rivers, it occupies what is known historically as the upper Mesopotamian which reaches to Baghdad; the Iraqi capital, where the distance that separates between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers gets narrow, then it expands after the passing of the two rivers of Baghdad to form the lower Mesopotamia. This region which was known as the Mesopotamia was  the historic  escape for the civilizations which played a cultural role in the East, as the civilization of Babylon, Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Chaldeans and where there was half the oil of Syria and a quarter of Iraq’s oil, in addition to enormous irrigated agricultural areas that form the food resources surrounded by the vast deserts and high mountains, it has the same borders with Turkey, the cities in it are spread on the river banks not between them, for example, the cities of  Tebka, Raqqa, and Deir Al Zour are located on the course of the Euphrates, while the cities of  Tiktit and Al Mosul are located on the course of the Tigris. The city of Ramadi is on the Iraqi course of Euphrates. Washington is in need of the entry of the Iraqi and the Syrian armies to these cities to recapture them within the coordination with the US processes, provided that the area of the Mesopotamia remains a US dominance area. This area is easy to be directed because its distance which is approximately one hundred and twenty-five thousand square kilometers is not inhabited by more than one million people if we do not calculate the cities which locate on the courses of the rivers. It is not a coincidence that Turkey is organizing its movement outside the Mesopotamia, it moves to the western of Euphrates in Syria from the gate of Jarablous, and to the eastern of Tigris in Iraq from the gate of Ba’shiqah. However, the focus of Israel and its security were always on this region for its historical symbolism and the symbolism of its hero Nebuchadnezzar in his war on Hebrews. So the remembrance of the contemporary Zionists of Armageddon battle expresses this historic yearning to pick off this region of the Syrian and Iraqi geographies, where the phase of the US invasion of Iraq has carries a lot of literature and the historical dreams of new Armageddon in which the Zionists can revenge for the defeat of their ancestors and in which a new Nebuchadnezzar will be defeated.

Within the American perspective to the management of the dual containment of the relationship between ISIS and Al Nusra, the dual containment of the concept of the Israeli security comes to the mind, where the occurrence of the security stability of Syria, Iraq, and the vital areas of their common geography according to the US perspective will not be achieved but only through a linkage to a security military map in which Washington guarantees the security of Israel. The Mesopotamia is the mandatory corridor for every ground communication between the resistance in Lebanon and Iran and surely between Iran and Syria, it is a compulsory corridor economically for the oil and gas pipelines between Iran and Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea, and a final corridor for any Chinese Iranian commercial coordination to the Mediterranean Sea. So the strategic value of this region makes it an acceptable alternative after the US failure in having the whole Syria or having the whole Iraq not necessarily through the occupation, but through bartering the serious forthcoming war on ISIS to uproot and to extract it for oil and security US arrangements, and maybe through negotiations that transcend Syria and Iraq and their security towards the international and the regional considerations regarding the issue of the security of Israel and the projects of peace on one hand, and the issue of the Russian- Chinese- Iranian cooperation and the access to the Mediterranean Sea after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan on the other hand.

Al Mosul battle is as the battle of Tikrit and the battle of Ramadi and maybe as the battle of Raqqa and Deir Al Zour as long as they are battles for liberating cities, they are battles on the courses of Mesopotamia not on the geography between them. These battles do not disturb Washington as long as they are fought with its own conditions and as long as the Mesopotamia remains a vast area of small number of population in which ISIS is moving as the case of the Afghanistan and Pakistani Waziristan, and where in its airspaces the US drones are moving.

The response was and will remain through a military strategic cooperation between the Syrian and Iraqi armies within the system of cooperation with Russia, Iran and the resistance.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,