Though the decisive nine-month battle for Mosul will go down in history books as a victory over ISIS by the U.S. military and allied forces, a scathing new U.S. Army report on the operation is not as favorable. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the study found American military units did not have a unified view of the events on the ground and had communication issues with trapped Mosul residents, making coordination more difficult. The report also found fault with the Army’s urban warfare preparedness and an over-reliance on civilian contractors.
While most of the ground combat was done by Iraqi military forces, the U.S. played an advisory and coordination role in the Mosul operation, code-named “Eagle Strike.” The battle to retake the city began in October 2016 and ended in the collapse of the ISIS caliphate in July came with heavy costs —tens of thousands of citizens dead and a million displaced.
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