US Sending More Troops To Iraq After Kurds Kill High-Ranking Islamic State Operative

Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced in a surprise visit to Baghdad on Monday that the United States will send 217 more troops to Iraq and has also given the green light for the use of an undisclosed number of Apache attack helicopters in order to help Iraqi and other coalition forces combat the Islamic State.

Def Sec Carter in Baghdad w/ Iraqi counterpart. My intvw w/Carter about new US push against ISIS @NBCNightlyNews pic.twitter.com/533XiyWHHw

— Lester Holt (@LesterHoltNBC) April 18, 2016

The move comes after a raid, which also happened on Monday, after which the Kurdish Regional Security Council declared that Kurdish and American forces had killed a wanted Islamic State militant by the name of “Suleiman Abd Shabib al-Jabouri.” Al-Jabouri, who also went by the name “Abu Saif,” was a military councilman for the Islamic State, reported Vice News.

This newest addition of U.S. forces brings the total number of Americans operating in Iraq up to 4,087, reported the Wall Street Journal.

The current understanding is that most of the troops will be special forces, who will advise the Iraqis and be closer to the action than they have been in the past. USA Today reported Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, who is a Pentagon spokesman, as saying that “they’re not engaged in direct on-the-ground combat.”

USA Today also reported Josh Earnest, who is a White House spokesman, as saying, “It does not change the basic elements of the strategy, which is that this has to be a fight that is led by local forces with the support and assistance of the United States and our coalition partners.”

The troops being sent are meant to help support the Iraqi army in taking back the city of Mosul, which has been an Islamic State stronghold since June of 2014. The Huffington Post reported that the Iraqi government estimates the number of Islamic State insurgents in Mosul to be around 10,000 and that according to new estimates, the total number of troops needed to take back the city could be anywhere between 24,000 and 40,000.

Nick Heras, a member of the Center for a New American Security, said that “taking Mosul will require more fighters than the Iraqi security forces have, and those new forces have to be trained, thereby requiring the additional U.S. presence,” reported CNN.

Reuters reported that President Obama backed the plan in an interview he gave with CBS News in which he said, “As we see the Iraqis willing to fight and gaining ground, let’s make sure that we are providing them more support.”

The article also mentioned that the Pentagon will be sending roughly $415 million to the Kurdish Peshmerga, who are fighting the Islamic State in the northern part of Iraq, as well as saying that Defense Secretary Carter spoke of “deploying an additional long-range rocket artillery unit to support Iraqi ground forces in the battle for Mosul.”

The personnel who are not special forces will include security for the advisers and maintenance teams for the Apache helicopters, reported the Times of Israel.

The death of Al-Jabouri on Monday follows a string of successes against the Islamic State, including the death of Abu Omar al-Shishani, who was killed in a United States airstrike back in early March. Al-Shishani was the Islamic State’s “minister of war.”

Back in December of 2015, Iraqi security forces managed to take back the city of Ramadi, which had been under Islamic State control for seven months, Newsweek reported.

Back in October, U.S. and Kurdish forces conducted a raid on an Islamic State compound in Hajiwa, where one American soldier was killed.

The military is said to have seized a “significant cache” of intelligence from the raid, Buzzfeed reported Secretary of Defense Ash Carter as saying.

Sixty-nine hostages were also rescued from the Islamic State compound, which can be seen happening in the video below.

[Photo by John Moore/Getty Images]