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Coalition bombing in Iraq: tactical victory, strategic defeat?

(B2) While the Arab-Kurdish forces (FDS) are fighting one of the last battles against the Islamic State, a French officer present on the spot warns: the battle is won, the war... it is not certain

Artillery (Task Force Wagram) of Operation Chammal (credit: DICOD / EMA)

In an article published in the National Defense Review, one of the strategic thinking bodies of the French army, Colonel François-Régis Legrier dissects an aspect of the French and American operation in Iraq: The Battle of Hajin: Tactical Victory, Strategic Defeat? ". The author knows what he is talking about. Corps commander of the 68th African artillery regiment, he was the commander of the Wagram Task Force in the Levant since October 2018.

The article would undoubtedly have gone unnoticed by the greatest number, despite its quality, if it had not given rise to a political warm-up, revealed by Michel Goya in his blog The Way of the Sword. The article was deprogrammed from the website of the National Defense Review, in the name of a principle: " we do not talk about operations in progress without authorization " at the highest level.

A review of the current strategy

The colonel's remarks are indeed implacable for the strategy of France and the military coalition in Iraq. He comes to pose a 'technical' disavowal to all political demonstrations tending to prove that the battle against Daesh is about to be won. In passing, he castigates the American and Western tactic of zero losses in the ranks of the military, and of an essentially bombing campaign which is particularly destructive.

Daesh is not defeated

The enemy (aka Daesh) was not destroyed by the airstrikes” as much as we wanted to believe ". Regular reports of enemy casualty estimates (BDA as Battle Damage Assessment) are " impressive "but they stay" calculated statistically and not by visual observation ».

The terrorist movement may have kept some forces warm. Defeat has become inevitable, he fled to refuge areas to continue the fight in insurrectionary mode, leaving only a handful of foreign fighters behind. »

An illusion of aerial efficiency

The 'power projection', i.e. destruction projection, without 'force projection', of soldiers on the ground does not work denounces the colonel. " It destroys without mastering reconstruction and creates chaos. There is a real illusion of air efficiency: certainly, it allows some initial savings but it never leads to the expected result. At the end of the endings, it is always necessary, in one way or another, to control the space »

A strategy that causes more civilian casualties to spare the military

Worse... if the battle of Hajin was won, on the ground, it was not without consequences for the populations. "By refusing the engagement on the ground, we have unnecessarily prolonged the conflict and therefore contributed to increasing the number of victims among the population. We have massively destroyed the infrastructure and given the population a detestable image of what a Western-style liberation can be, leaving behind us the seeds of an imminent resurgence of a new adversary. »

Collateral damage overexploited by Daesh

Movement " Daesh has been able to exploit the slightest tactical success to enhance it and make it a strategic success. Similarly, Western strikes and their real or fictitious collateral damage have also been widely publicized with success. » What to ask about " the shift in perspectives: where Daech, in a strategic vision, addresses Western public opinion, the Coalition, a military tool with no real political thought, is forced to remain at the tactical level and cannot exploit its successes in the information field with the same reactivity as the enemy ».

A strategic question

The way the official speech highlighting the reduction of pockets that dragged to a question on the “ strategy followed for years. Where is the real issue? Destroy Daesh or contain Iran? In the end, the officer asks himself: We have in no way won the war for lack of a realistic and persevering policy and an adequate strategy. How many Hajin will it take to realize we're on the wrong track »

Commentary: keep quiet or debate

It is understandable that the Ministry and the General Staff of the Armed Forces were moved by such fierce questioning of the intervention in Iraq, when it is not over. But the subject is argued, and the questions asked are legitimate. One can even wonder if this would not require a real debate, broader, within the national parliament on the contours of the French intervention in Iraq.

(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde)

Nicolas Gros Verheyde

Chief editor of the B2 site. Graduated in European law from the University of Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne and listener to the 65th session of the IHEDN (Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Défense Nationale. Journalist since 1989, founded B2 - Bruxelles2 in 2008. EU/NATO correspondent in Brussels for Sud-Ouest (previously West-France and France-Soir).

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