Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century. Anthony King

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Map 1.1: The battle of Mosul, 2016–17

      Source: Map courtesy of the Institute for the Study of War: http://www.understandingwar.org/map/map-mosul. Modifications based on Thomas D. Arnold and Nicolas Fiore, ‘Five operational lessons from the battle for Mosul’, Military Review, Army University Press, January–February 2019, 63: https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/JF-19/Arnold-Fiore-Lessons-Mosul.pdf.

The fight for Mosul was desperate, especially once Iraqi forces crossed the Tigris into western Mosul and the Old Town. In a strange echo of Assyrian siege techniques from the seventh century BCE, bulldozers led the way clearing the rubble so that Iraqi troops, tanks and armoured vehicles could advance. From the rear, artillery, mortars and rocket launchers fired heavy bombardments onto identified targets, while attack helicopters, drones, gunships and jet and propellered aircraft monitored the city and struck targets with cannon fire, Hellfire missiles and precision bombs.

      The final acts of the battle were worthy of Stalingrad itself. The last ISIS fighters were trapped in fighting positions in a shrinking pocket near the west bank of the Tigris. As they refused to surrender, the Iraqi forces eventually bulldozed over their positions, eliminating any final resistance with grenades. ‘It reminded me of something you would watch on a World War II video of Iwo Jima; marines burying Japanese die-hard defenders on Iwo Jima. I never thought I’d see that.’⁹ Although some escaped, most of the ISIS fighters were killed. Officially, 1,400 Iraqi soldiers were killed and 7,000 wounded, but casualties were probably much higher.¹⁰ Although thousands left Mosul before the battle, estimates of civilian deaths vary wildly. The lowest suggest that 3,000 died, the highest 25,000. Any figure within this range seems possible.

The Urban Revolution

Mosul may, indeed, have been one of the greatest urban battles of the twenty-first century, but it was far from unique. On the contrary, urban warfare has become normal, even the norm, today: ‘Warfare, like everything else, is being urbanized.’¹¹ Of course, since the early 2000s, there has been extensive fighting in rural and mountainous areas in conflicts in Sudan, Afghanistan, Mali, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Eritrea, and in Kashmir and Ladakh. By contrast, in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Georgia, Yemen, Israel, Libya and the Ukraine, populations have been overwhelmingly caught up in the fighting; in these theatres, wars have taken place inside urban areas.

      The rise of urban warfare in the early twenty-first century now has a well-recognized chronology. In October 1993, US Special Operations Forces and Rangers were trapped inside Mogadishu for twelve hours after an attempt to seize a Somali warlord had failed. In stark contrast to the Gulf War, when US Abrams tanks were able to engage Iraqi T-72s in the open desert from several kilometres before the Iraqis had even detected them, the canyons of Mogadishu became a killing zone; two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and in running gun battles with local militia that lasted for more than twelve hours, eighteen US soldiers were killed and seventy-three wounded.

      The battle of Grozny a year later was an even more sobering portent of the urban future. In December 1994, in response to the declaration of Chechen independence by President Dudayev, Russian Army forces advanced into the capital Grozny in order to reassert Moscow’s authority. The Chechen rebels allowed Russian armoured columns to penetrate deep into the city. The 131st Mechanized Rifle Brigade, under Major-General Politovsky, reached the central station, where some conscripts, thinking the conflict was over, even bought rail tickets home.¹² Yet, the war had only just begun. A brigade commander, Colonel Stavin, later claimed that he heard the words, ‘Welcome to hell’, over his radio. At that moment, with complete surprise, Chechen hunter-killer teams ambushed the Russian columns from high-rise buildings, destroying numerous armoured vehicles and tanks, and killing many soldiers, before moving through cellars and sewers to new positions. In the end, the Russians had to mount a systematic clearance of the city, destroying much of it, before the uprising was suppressed in February 1995. Even so, a second bitter battle occurred over the city in 1999–2000, as Russian forces seized Grozny from the rebels once again.

      In 1984, Sarajevo was the site of a very successful Winter Olympic Games. However, only a decade later, Sarajevo came to haunt public imagination as symbol of ethnic war. From May 1992 to December 1995, Serbian forces besieged and bombarded the city as part of its war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The blockade, watched across Europe on nightly news programmes, inflicted terrible suffering on the citizens of Sarajevo, who had to endure constant sniper and artillery fire. There were some notorious incidents, including the Serbian mortaring of Markale marketplace on 28 August 1995, which killed forty-three civilians and injured seventy-five more.

By the late 1990s, Sarajevo, Mogadishu and Grozny were being interpreted not just as significant incidents in themselves, but as the start of a trend. They denoted an epochal turn to urban warfare. The past couple of decades have only affirmed this trajectory. Since 2000, urban warfare has been almost continuous. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for instance, a few engagements took place outside urban areas, but the battles inside Iraqi cities were far more significant. The battle of Nasiriyah on 23–24 March 2003 was notorious. There were other major battles: in Baghdad, Samawah and Najaf.

      The Iraqi invasion was rapid, but it established the tone for the rest of the campaign. From 2003 to 2008, US-led forces were engaged in an urban counterinsurgency campaign against Al Qaeda terrorists, and Sunni and Shia militias. The most intense urban battles occurred in November 2004 with the second battle of Fallujah and, in March to May 2008, when Shia militias were finally suppressed in Sadr City and in Basra. Yet, the US also conducted major operations in Tal Afar in 2005 and Ramadi in 2006. Most of the campaign took place in the towns and cities of Iraq, with US coalition forces fighting to control the streets. Sometimes the situation was relatively benign. In Basra, British troops wore berets on patrol until 2004, but, for the most part, coalition forces wore helmets and body armour and moved in protected vehicles because of the threat from IEDs, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. It was a high-intensity urban guerrilla war, with Ramadi, Fallujah, Mosul and Baghdad the sites of extreme violence and, sometimes, grotesque atrocity.

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