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Reuters
BARTELLA
When Iraqi forces faced a fierce Islamic State counter-attack last month at a hospital in Mosul they had stormed without enough troops to hold it, US advisers behind the front lines shepherded them to safety.
And as they punched through the city's northern limits a few weeks later, it was again the Americans who counselled them how best to avoid roadside bombs and head off Islamic State suicide car bombers.
Washington, leading an international coalition against the jihadists in Iraq and Syria, has launched thousands of air strikes over the past 2-1/2 years and provided aerial surveillance vital to pushing them back.
But American guidance to Iraqi counterparts all the way up to the commander-in-chief has taken on greater significance in the Mosul campaign, which entered its fourth month this week, as advisers integrated with the Iraqis to an unprecedented level for conventional U.S. forces. As the Iraqis have made rapid gains in a renewed push since the turn of the year, retaking nearly all of eastern Mosul, US soldiers have moved closer to the fight.
The coalition insists that on the battlefield the Iraqis"own the plan". But Iraqi commanders say the Americans' advice, like their firepower, has become indispensable. Lieutenant Colonel Salah Kareem al-Kinani, from the 9th armoured division which briefly seized the Salam Hospital in December, said his troops were surrounded, running out of ammunition and moments away from disaster when the United States launched air strikes that provided a"lifeboat". The help didn't end there.
"The Americans were instructing us on the routes we should take to retreat and avoid Daesh ambushes," he said by phone, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
"Without them, we would have been blind on the ground."
Colonel Ahmed al-Taie from the 16th army division fighting around northern Mosul estimates U.S. support is responsible for half of all battlefield gains."Without the Americans' support, it would have been tough to reverse the tide against Daesh in Iraq," he said.
