Iraqi Major General Najm al-
Jubbouri, a top commander in the offensive against the Islamic State (IS) group in the Iraqi city of Mosul, peered through binoculars at flames after his men shot dead an IS suicide bomber.
It was a small victory for a man whose war against Muslim extremists is deeply personal.
Photo: Reuters
“You are heroes,” he said through a walkie-talkie as Iraqi forces cleared another village, hoping to open a new route to the militants’ stronghold of Mosul. “You are heroes.”
Last year, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi asked al-Jubbouri to return home from the US to help lead the fight against the IS, which swept through Mosul and other parts of northern Iraq in 2014 and imposed a reign of terror.
Al-Jubbouri is upbeat as he paces on the rooftop of a house that serves as a makeshift command center, surveying the battlefield and tightly managing advances.
However, he is acutely aware of what the IS is capable of.
Last year, he watched an IS video broadcast on social media which showed the drowning of prisoners who were locked inside a steel cage and slowly lowered to their deaths in a pool.
Some of the victims were al-Jubbouri’s cousins, he said.
“My relatives and citizens suffered a lot from al-Qaeda and ISIS. I decided to return back here. In Mosul, ISIS killed a lot from my tribe and from my friends,” he told reporters, using a common acronym for the Islamic State.
Al-Jubbouri left his family and his job at the National Defense University in the US behind and put on his military fatigues again at home.
Eager to avenge the deaths of his relatives and help stabilize Iraq, al-Jubbouri is trying to figure out ways to overcome the complex challenges of fighting the IS in Mosul, home to about 1 million people.
Iraqi forces cannot move heavy weapons and tanks through Mosul’s narrow streets, and the IS is using civilians as human shields to slow government advances, said al-Jubbouri, who served in former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s army for decades.
In the desert just beyond al-
Jubbouri are two army trucks mounted with machine guns, primed to attack any suicide bombers in vehicles who try to approach the makeshift command center, which is surrounded by bodyguards.
“We want to remove the cancer [of the Islamic State] from the body and this is a very difficult mission inside Mosul,” al-Jubbouri said.
Al-Jubbouri, who moved to the US in 2008, is acutely aware of the dangers posed by Muslim militants, and the sectarian animosities which have destabilized Iraq.
As mayor of the northwestern Iraqi city Tel Afar from 2005 to 2008, he cleared out al-Qaeda fighters and promoted reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites.
Iraq has been struggling to find a formula for stability since a US-led invasion toppled Saddam in 2003.
Even if the IS is defeated in Mosul, Iraqi leaders must ensure that the same ethnic and sectarian hostilities which helped the group establish a widespread presence in the country do not creep up again.
The group initially won over Sunni supporters because that sect felt marginalized by the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.
Al-Jubbouri called for an end to a governing system which allocates top posts based on sects.
“It won’t be rosy. Many difficulties,” he said. “Some politicians will not like to change because many of them would lose their positions.”
For now, he is focused on the fight against the IS.
Al-Jubbouri said Iraqi forces had set a six-month timetable for the Mosul campaign.
However, he is confident of victory by the end of this year, predicting the group will collapse.
So far, Iraqi forces have captured about 60 percent of eastern Mosul, and the western part of Iraq’s second-biggest city could prove far more dangerous.
“In the beginning, everyday we faced between 60 and 70 car bombs. Now we are facing about two or three,” al-Jubbouri said, as his forces fired mortar bombs and rockets at an asphalt factory where militants strapped with explosives were positioned.
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