Publication
A Tale of Two Mosuls, The resurrection of the Iraqi armed forces and the military defeat of ISIS
A story of Two Mosuls, The Resurrection of the Iraqi Armed Forces and the military defeat of ISIS. In this article, published in the Journal of Strategic Studies, the authors Maarten Broekhof, Martijn Kitzen and Frans Osinga discuss the military adaptation by the Iraqi armed forces and their role in the military defeat of ISIS in Iraq.
- Author
- Maarten P. Broekhof & Martijn W. M. Kitzen & Frans P. B. Osinga
- Date
- 12 December 2019
- Links
- A Tale of Two Mosuls, The resurrection of the Iraqi armed forces and the military defeat of ISIS.
Military learning and military adaptation has long been an important part of military study. So far, little attention has been paid to the adjustments made by the Iraqi armed forces in their fight against ISIS. Previously, the literature focused mainly on the Western armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nevertheless, in three years from 2014 the Iraqi army succeeded in taking back almost all the lost territory of ISIS. The central question is how this was possible? This article discusses the military adaptation by the Iraqi armed forces and their role in the military defeat of ISIS in Iraq. The authors of the article make use of an academic theoretical framework on military adaptation in combination with a primary source study on the Iraqi armed forces against ISIS. The mixture allowed the authors to reconstruct how the Iraqi armed forces learned from their mistakes in 2014 and what role this process played in the military defeat of ISIS in Iraq.