[In and around Mosul, American and allied
warplanes have destroyed nearly three dozen car bombs in the three weeks since
the offensive began — bombs that could have been used against advancing Iraqi
forces or been driven south to Baghdad. They have also wiped out about a dozen
car-bomb factories around Mosul and other northern Iraqi towns.]
By Eric Schmitt
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The site of a Baghdad
blast that killed more than 300 people in July, one of the
deadliest car bombings in
Iraq in over a decade. Credit Ahmad
Al-Rubaye/Agence
France-Presse — Getty Images
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WASHINGTON
— In July, the Islamic State
carried out one of the deadliest car bombings in Iraq since the American
invasion in 2003, killing more than 300 people in Baghdad.
The Pentagon responded by rushing a
three-star general to the capital to offer the Iraqi authorities new
technology, tactics and advisers to help thwart additional attacks. And in the
weeks before the current Iraqi push to reclaim Mosul, the American-led air
campaign against the militant group redoubled its strikes on car bombs and
car-bomb factories.
So far, the strategy has worked. The threat
by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, to retaliate for the Mosul
assault with crippling car bombings in Baghdad has been largely neutralized.
Such bombings, military officials fear, could terrorize the capital and unleash
a new spiral of violence, undermine the government of Prime Minister Haider
al-Abadi and pressure it to divert troops to defend Baghdad.
“There’s no silver bullet or magic machine,”
Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, who was the top American military commander in Iraq
until August, said about the need to combine tactics, technology and
intelligence to identify and combat car bombs. “The enemy is adaptive, and we
need to be adaptive, too.”
But given the long history of terrorism in
Baghdad, the efforts have not completely quieted the worries of Iraqi
officials. “We don’t deny that we still have fears that they will target
Baghdad, especially from the outskirts of Baghdad,” said Gen. Tahseen Ibrahim,
the spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. “ISIS is still there, although
less so because of our intelligence efforts.”
Immediately after the July attack, Mr. Abadi
announced a series of new security measures, most prominently an order that the
Iraqi police and soldiers stop using bomb detectors sold by a British company
that were determined to be fake. The wandlike devices had been used for years
at Baghdad’s checkpoints and were derided by a public that was angered by the
government’s inability to protect its citizens.
At the same time, Lt. Gen. Michael H.
Shields, the head of the Pentagon’s Joint Improvised Threat-Defeat
Organization, brought to Baghdad several military bomb squad experts and other
technical advisers to help train Iraqis on a range of skills to harden the
capital’s defenses against huge bombs carried by cars and trucks. General
Shields also studied new ways to combat the Islamic State’s growing fleet of
exploding drones.
Since then, Americans and Iraqis have worked
closely to set up layers of checkpoints, using new X-ray devices in the
inspections. The Iraqi authorities are honing their skills in finding, defusing
and destroying various explosive devices. Intelligence networks were bolstered,
as was aerial surveillance, using drones and manned aircraft.
In and around Mosul, American and allied
warplanes have destroyed nearly three dozen car bombs in the three weeks since
the offensive began — bombs that could have been used against advancing Iraqi
forces or been driven south to Baghdad. They have also wiped out about a dozen
car-bomb factories around Mosul and other northern Iraqi towns.
General Tahseen, the Ministry of Defense
spokesman, said that since the bombing in July, the United States had made a
priority of working more closely with Iraqi intelligence agencies to blunt the
Islamic State’s ability to target Baghdad. He said the United States had given
the Iraqi government more equipment, such as surveillance drones, and had
shared more intelligence.
He also said that an Islamic State cell in
Diyala Province, which had been responsible for many attacks in Baghdad, was
recently destroyed with the help of the Americans. The siege on Mosul, which
has kept the terrorists busy defending the city, has also, at least temporarily,
reduced the number of attacks in Baghdad.
Part of the planning for the fall of Mosul
involves stepped-up security around Baghdad in anticipation that the Islamic
State will lash out in the capital, General Tahseen said. Saad al-Mutalbi, a
member of the Baghdad Provincial Council’s security committee, echoed the
general, saying, “I expect Baghdad to be targeted once ISIS loses Mosul.”
Indeed, even with all the protective measures
around Baghdad, and the increased targeting of car bombs, the capital has
hardly been immune to violence, although nothing on the scale of the July
bombing has occurred since.
On Oct. 30, a parked car bomb exploded in
Huriya, a neighborhood in northwestern Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and
wounding 34. The bombing, which hit a popular fruit and vegetable market in the
predominantly Shiite neighborhood, was the fifth such explosion in the capital
that day.
Despite the smaller bombings, a general sense
of calm has enveloped the streets of Baghdad in the months since the July
attack. While Iraqis are nervous that it will not last, many said they now had
more confidence in the government’s ability to prevent attacks, a sentiment
that has rarely been heard in Baghdad in recent years.
“We feel much better because there are fewer
explosions,” said Labid Ahmed, 23. “The situation will be very good after Mosul
is liberated, and I think that the explosions have been reduced because of the
security checkpoints, and also intelligence is playing a role in this.”
“ISIS has become broken and defeated,” said
Shahab Ahmed, 29, who works in a grocery store. “I don’t think ISIS will be
able to carry out attacks if they lose Mosul, because the security forces are
fully ready to deal with any situation.”
Murtada Majid Muhsin, who works at a clothing
shop in the capital, said: “I feel kind of better. But I am still afraid of
explosions.” He said many of his customers quickly found what they wanted and
left, preferring not to linger.
Ahmed Salah contributed reporting from
Baghdad, and Falih Hassan from Erbil, Iraq.