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David Ignatius 6:00 a.m. ET May 28, 2017

In this May 11, file photo Iraqi special forces advance to their next position in the Islah al-Zarai area in Mosul, Iraq. U.S.-backed Iraqi forces were moving to surround Mosul's Old City after launching a fresh push to drive Islamic State militants from areas they still hold.(Photo: Maya Alleruzzo/AP)

The Manchester terror attack by an alleged Islamic State soldier will accelerate the push by the U.S. and its allies to capture the terror groups strongholds in Mosul and Raqqah. But it should also focus some urgent discussions about a post-ISIS strategy for stabilizing Iraq and Syria.

For all President Trumps bombast about obliterating the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, the Raqqah campaign has been delayed for months while U.S. policymakers debated the wisdom of relying on a Syrian Kurdish militia known as the YPG that Turkey regards as a terrorist group. That group and allied Sunni fighters have been poised less than 10 miles from Raqqah, waiting for a decision.

All the while, the clock has been ticking on terror plots hatched by ISIS and directed from Raqqah. European allies have been urging the U.S. to finish the job in Raqqah as soon as possible.

The horrific Manchester bombing is a reminder of the difficulty of containing the plots hatched in ISIS and the cost of waiting to strike the final blows. ISIS is battered and in retreat, and its caliphate is nearly destroyed on the ground. But a virtual caliphate survives in the network that spawned Salman Abedi, the alleged Manchester bomber, and others who seek to avenge the groups slow eradication.

The Raqqah assault should move ahead quickly, now that the Trump administration has rejected Turkish protests and opted to back the YPG as the backbone of a broader coalition known as the Syrian Democratic Forces. These are committed, well-led fighters, as I saw during a visit to a special forces training camp in northern Syria a year ago.

The Trump administration listened patiently to Turkish arguments for an alternative force backed by Ankara. But the Pentagon concluded that this force didnt have any real battlefield presence, and that the real choice was either relying on the Kurdish-led coalition to clear Raqqah or sending in thousands of U.S. troops to do the job.

The White House rightly opted for the first approach several weeks ago. To ease Ankaras worries, the U.S. is offering assurances that the Kurdish military presence will be contained, and that newly recruited Sunni tribal forces will help manage security in Raqqah and nearby Deir el-Zour.

The endgame is near in Mosul, too. Commanders say that only about 6 percent of the city remains to be captured, with 500 to 700 ISIS fighters hunkered down in the old city west of the Tigris River.

Once Raqqah and Mosul are cleared, the challenge will be rebuilding the Sunni areas of Syria and Iraq with real governance and security so that follow-on extremist groups dont quickly emerge. This idea of preparing for the day after ISIS has gotten lip service from U.S. policymakers for three years, but very little serious planning or funding. It should be an urgent priority for the U.S. and its key Sunni partners, such as Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Intelligence services from several key allies are said to have met in recent weeks with Sunni leaders from Iraq to form a core leadership that can take the initiative. But so far, this effort is said to have produced more internal bickering than clear strategy.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo told me and several other journalists in an interview Tuesday that he plans to move the agency to a more aggressive, risk-taking stance. Heres a place to start.

The Kurds are the wild cards in both Iraq and Syria. The Syrian Kurds are already governing the ethnic enclave they call Rojava. That should be an incentive for Syrias Sunnis to develop similar strong government in their liberated areas. Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurds have told U.S. officials they plan to hold a referendum on Kurdish independence soon, perhaps as early as September.

U.S. officials feel a deep gratitude toward Iraqi Kurds, who have been reliable allies since the early 1990s. But the independence referendum is a potential flashpoint, and U.S. officials may try to defer the Kurdish question until well after Iraqi provincial elections scheduled in September.

Iraq and Syria need to be reimagined as looser, better governed, more inclusive confederal states that give minorities room to breathe. The trick for policymakers is to make the post-ISIS transition a pathway toward progress, rather than a continuation of the sectarian catastrophe that has befallen both nations.

David Ignatius is columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group.

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A path forward in Syria and Iraq, post-Islamic State - NorthJersey.com

The United States coalition partners in the war against the Islamic State are responsible for at least 80 confirmed civilian deaths from airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, according to U.S. military officials. Yet none of their 12 allies will publicly concede any role in those casualties.

These dozen partner nations have launched more than 4,000 airstrikes combined, the vast majority of which were undertaken by the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Belgium, and the Netherlands. However, they have so far claimed a perfect record in avoiding civilian casualties. An Airwars investigation for Foreign Policy has now uncovered evidence that disproves that assertion.

These confirmed deaths caused by non-U.S. airstrikes came to light in the most recent coalition civilian casualty report, released April 30. The report quietly referred to 80 new deaths referenced only as attributable to coalition strikes to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria from August 2014 to present [that] had not been previously announced.

Three U.S. Central Command officials confirmed to Airwars and Foreign Policy that the 80 deaths occurred in incidents that U.S. investigators concluded were the responsibility of partner nations. But allies pressured the United States and the coalition against releasing details of the strikes in question.

In reference to the 80, said one Centcom official, those do reference non-U.S. strikes.

Coalition spokesman Col. Joseph Scrocca said that Centcom officials had arrived at the tally of 80 civilian deaths prior to handing over investigations to the alliance in late 2016.*

For over a year, some senior U.S. officials have been frustrated that their allies have not stepped forward to admit their own errors. U.S. forces first admitted their own civilian casualties in May 2015, and have so far confirmed their responsibility for 377civilian deaths including 105 killed in a single incident in Mosul in March.

U.S. officials efforts to release information about casualties caused by their partner nations, however, came at a cost. As the result of a deal struck among the coalition partners, civilian casualty incidents included in monthly reporting will not be tied to specific countries. That means the United States will in the futureno longer confirm its own responsibility for specific civilian casualty incidents either a move toward greater secrecy that could deprive victims families of any avenue to seek justice or compensation for these deaths.

Deny, Deny, Deny

Yet even when confronted with this confirmed evidence of civilian deaths, no coalition partner would publicly admit any responsibility.

Airwarsand FPreached out to all 12 non-U.S. members of the coalition to ask which were responsible for the 80 deaths. The responses ranged from outright denials of involvement (Australia, Canada, Denmark, and Britain); to no response (Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates); to several ambiguously worded statements.

Despite these statements, Airwars and FPconfirmed that every coalition member identified as responsible for any of the 80 deaths were informed by U.S. officials of their assessed involvement. The allies have known for months if not longer of these findings, according to U.S. officials but those nations responsible chose not to admit it when questioned by Airwars and FP.

Britain is the most active member of the coalition after the United States, having carried out more than 1,300 airstrikes since October 2014. The British government has boasted of zero civilian casualties, despite the high tempo of the campaign and the fact that most strikes now take place on Iraqi and Syrian cities and towns.

For 2016 alone, Airwars flagged 120 incidents to the British Ministry of Defense where Royal Air Force aircraft might have been involved in civilian casualty events in Iraq and Syria. Nearly all of these cases were investigated and dismissed, according to the Defense Ministry. For 11 incidents, however, a senior British official noted that we cannot make any definitive assessment of possible UK presence from the evidence provided, but I can confirm that there was no indication of any civilian casualties in our own detailed assessments of the impact of each of our strikes over the period concerned.

Asked whether Britain had been responsible for any of the 80 non-U.S. deaths reported by the coalition, a spokesman pointed to a March 25 Defense Ministry statement asserting, we have not seen evidence that we have been responsible for civilian casualties so far.

Other partner nations were not so willing to give a straight answer. Asked whether its own forces had caused civilian casualties, France twice evaded the question, noting only that no comment is made on the 80 additional cases recognized by the Coalition.

The Netherlands which claims it is still investigating one possible civilian casualty event that occurred in 2014, and a second unknown case failed to respond to 11 queries on the 80 civilian deaths from Airwars and FP, including a May 9 letter sent to Defense Minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert.

Belgiums ministry of defense, responsible for several hundred airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, informed Airwars and FPthat it would only share the information about our operations in the appropriate [closed session] parliamentary committee. The Belgians directed further inquiries to Centcom, which in turn said it would not officially identify any partner nations.

Without mentioning details, I can say that [Belgian defense officials] have looked at the list of incidents in the Coalition report and that they have come to the conclusion that there is still no reason to believe that Belgium has caused civilians casualties, one Belgian political official told Airwars and FP. Though they do admit that it was close a few times, not by negligence or carelessness by the Belgian army, but just by bad luck.

Hiding Behind the Alliance

The coalition campaign against the Islamic State, now nearing the end of its third year, has produced reams of firing and targeting data. The number of munitions used and targets attacked are all publicly available. But that has not translated into transparency from many individual members. Though aggregate data is publicly available for overall coalition strikes, the alliance does not confirm which countries carry out specific raids.

This is just the unfortunate evolution of the dynamic of coalition operations, said Christopher Jenks, a professor of law at Southern Methodist University who served in the U.S. military for two decades. Because of coalition dynamics you cant get into the real substantive details of the core issues: whether we believe that an air strike was piloted by a Canadian or French pilot.

From the start of coalition operations through May 22, the coalition says that 4,011 airstrikes in Iraq and 404 in Syria were performed by non-U.S. forces. France and Britain accounted for more than half of these attacks, while partners such as the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and Australia made up the bulk of the remaining non-U.S. actions. Additional countries like Germany provide aerial reconnaissance, but do not conduct airstrikes.

The coalitions regional partners Jordan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Turkey have been responsible for an estimated 150 strikes among them, or less than 1 percent of all actions. None of those countries responded to questions on the 80 confirmed deaths put to their NATO missions or to their embassies in Washington.

Less Sunlight in the War Against the Islamic State

One consequence of the new coalition protocol for admitting civilian casualties is that U.S. transparency in the war against the Islamic State may now be jeopardized.

U.S. officials had wanted to release the information about the 80 additional civilians deaths for many months. That finally occurred on April 30 but it came at a cost. Neither the coalition nor Centcom would provide a breakdown of the events that led to those deaths, such as when or where they occurred or how many civilians had died in each incident. These facts had always been provided in the monthly reports when they referred only to U.S. civilian casualties but not this time.

U.S. officials said the inclusion of the 80 civilian deaths was the product of a compromise among coalition members they could be released, but only attributed as coalition strikes.

Going forward, a total tally of coalition strikes that resulted in civilian casualties will always be included in reports. However, the United States will no longer identify the strikes that were carried out by its own forces. This is due to a concern that allies responsible for civilian deaths could be identified by a process of elimination.

We will just say Coalition, and we wont say if it was U.S. or not, confirmed Centcom Director of Public Affairs Col. John Thomas.

Thomas described the change as an effort to decrease the number of open cases of alleged civilian casualties. By not specifying which national was flying at the time of an incident well be able to more quickly say when a case is adjudicated under our methods and closed, he said.

The move, however, will also set a precedent for more opacity in coalition operations. There are also serious concerns for victims families: If they do not know which country is responsible for a casualty event, it will be impossible for them to pursue solatia, or compensation payments, from individual nations, and exceedingly difficult to request information about the incidents in question from national governments. (In the United States, this would include Freedom of Information Act requests.)

This would be exactly the wrong move on the part of the United States, which is already not doing enough to provide transparency about civilians killed, said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Unions national security project. Generally, in the last decade there has been more transparency about strikes in the context of recognized armed conflict than lethal strikes outside of it, and this seems to be a step in the wrong direction.

Though the coalitions under-resourced civilian casualty unit has over time increased the number of cases it considers and investigates, the obfuscation over the countries that launched the strikes follows a pattern that began early in the campaign. In October 2014, under pressure from European allies, Centcom ceased identifying the coalition members that took part in particular strikes.

At the end of the day, implicit in the way the U.S. and CENTCOM is handling this is placing the coalition dynamic ahead of accountability and transparency, said Jenks.

Rising toll

The coalition has so far admitted to killing 352 civilians since 2014, including the 80 or more non-combatants slain by U.S. allies. However, this may just by the tip of the iceberg: That figure is still roughly 10 times lower than Airwarss own minimum estimate of 3,500 civilian fatalities in the air campaign. That tally is the result of monitoring carried out by our team of researchers, and does not include incidents that are contested or are currently backed by weak evidence.

Recent months have seen record civilian death tolls from airstrikes in both Iraq and Syria. In April alone, Airwars researchers assessed that between 283 and 366 civilians were likely killed by the coalition. Yet despite the continuing bloody battle in Mosul, almost none of those deaths were included, as in most events there it remains unclear whether coalition or Iraqi ground or air actions, or Islamic State attacks, were responsible for casualties. High fatalities have also been reported for some months around Raqqa, despite little media coverage.

As the war against the Islamic State centers on the groups last remaining urban areas, there is little doubt that the fight is resulting in significant civilian casualties. Yet for families who have lost a loved one, their ability to know which country is bombing them or who might be liable is slowly going up in smoke.

Additional research by Eline Westra.

*Correction: This sentence initially said that Col. Scrocca had specified that these 80 deaths were caused by airstrikes not launched by the United States. He did not do so in this statement.

Photo credit:BARAA AL-HALABI/AFP/Getty Images

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The US Is Helping Allies Hide Civilian Casualties in Iraq and Syria - Foreign Policy (blog)

SUMNER As a boy, Keenan Gienau loved his dad. He loved doing stuff with him. And they loved doing the same things. They were into the outdoors, cars and fishing. He also thought it was cool his dad was a soldier.

In 2014, during his senior year at Sumner-Fredericksburg High School, Keenan was asked to give a talk about his dad.

By the time Keenan, now 21, stepped to that podium to speak, his dad had been deceased nine years. Iowa Army National Guard 2nd Lt. R. Brian Gienau was killed in action in Iraq.

Dad left big shoes to fill. And now Keenan is about to fill them. He has enlisted in the U.S. Army.

To be honest, Ive been thinking about it my whole life, he said. He began more seriously considering it over the past year.

When I got out of high school, I at first didnt really want to do it because of what happened, he said. My family didnt want me to do it.

He attended Hawkeye Community College two years, but it really wasnt necessarily my thing.

He looked into job opportunities. I was still feeling adventurous and wanted to go out and do other stuff. So I started looking at different options and decided to join the Army.

When I was a lot younger and my dad was still around, I always wanted to join then because I saw my dad doing it. He let me try on his uniform, play with army guys (toy soldiers), all sorts of stuff like that.

He also got to hang out with his dad at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. Hed take me out to let me look at the tanks that were sitting out there. Id get to climb in them. Pretty fun stuff.

He cherishes those days; it was just prior to his dads Iraq deployment.

But with what happened, I can see the bad side of things. I know the worst-case scenario as well, Keenan said.

Keenans father, 29, was killed Feb. 27, 2005, serving with the Iowa Guards 224th Engineer Battalion. The Humvee he was in hit an improvised explosive device. Another soldier, Spc. Seth Garceau of Oelwein, died later of injuries suffered in the same incident.

Keenan said his father, a Tripoli High School graduate, served in the U.S. Navy on the carrier USS Enterprise, then graduated from HCC, enrolled in University of Northern Iowa ROTC program and joined the Iowa Guard.

He felt the loss of his father more profoundly as the years passed.

When I was really young, 9 or 10, I didnt understand. From when I was 9 until I graduated, it was working with the acceptance and understanding what happened. The time it really set in was right at my graduation. They had a parents moment. I looked up in the stands. I think thats when it really set in that he wasnt there for big things in life such as seeing me graduate from high school, college. Or doing this right now.

But the memories endure. Great memories. Honestly, all good things, Keenan said. He was just a great father; very good mentor. Hed like to teach you more than he would scold you.

He helped drive my interest in what I like nowadays, Keenan added. He liked cars, guns and fishing outdoor stuff, kayaking, four-wheelers, all that stuff. And thats the same stuff I like.

I would say I still want to be like him, Keenan said.

His stepfather, Tim Meyer, an assistant wrestling coach at Sumner-Fredericksburg, interested him in wrestling. It helped him after his dad died.

It made me have more focus on that, kind of filled something there, gave me drive, Keenan said.

He had more than 100 career wins. His mother is Caren Meyer. He has two younger stepbrothers and a stepsister, all at home.

Keenan leaves July 11 for Fort Jackson, S.C. Hell be involved in repair and maintenance of CH-47 Chinook helicopters and aspires to be a flight crew member on missions. I like mechanics, so I believe Ill enjoy that side of it, he said. Well see where my career takes me.

Hes attuned to the international situation. I know whats going on in Syria and North Korea, he said, but Im not going to let that persuade me one way or the other.

Patriotism is a factor, Keenan said.

The military offers attractive training and job opportunities, but it really comes down to love for county. Youve got to have that. Thats what youre fighting for. Youre fighting for the soldier next to you. Youre fighting for everybody back home. And youre fighting for the flag. Thats the way I look at it.

He summoned up the courage to give a speech about his dad in high school something he repeated at HCC.

I dont like talking about personal stuff. Im not a huge fan of standing in front of people talking, he said. I dont mind talking about my dad. Because Im pretty proud of it.

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Son of fallen Iraq soldier follows dad into service - Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier

British soldiers in southern Iraq, 2003. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

A visceral hostage drama set during the 2003 war on Iraq, this debut novel alternates between the perspective of 19-year-old Cassandra, a gay female recruit to the US army, and that of middle-aged Abu al-Hool, an Egyptian jihadi whose memories of fighting the Russians in Afghanistan and Chechnya make him an increasingly reluctant fundamentalist. As their stories collide, Van Reet (a Texan who himself served in Iraq) cant always prevent a certain staginess seeping in, courtesy of some excessively dutiful glosses of military jargon, while the pathos and dread of the scenario are ratcheted up by a narrative structure that keeps us one step ahead of the characters. Yet Spoils is undeniably engrossing all the same and smart, too, embedding in its structure a sharp appraisal of the conflict, as Van Reets panoptic toggling between rival groups of foreign invaders pointedly leaves no room for any Iraqi point of view.

Spoils by Brian Van Reet is published by Jonathan Cape (12.99). To order a copy for 9.74, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.

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Spoils by Brian van Reet review engrossing Iraq war drama - The Guardian

An Iraqi boy looks on as people collect wood and metal at a site that was targeted by an airstrike a couple of days ago, in Qayyarah, south of Mosul, on Oct. 29.

Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

Several recent reports underline the growing risk to civilians in the U.S.-led war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. On Thursday, the Pentagon released the results of an investigation, finding that more than 100 civilians were killed when the U.S. dropped a bomb on a building in Mosul, Iraq, in March, the largest single incident of civilian deaths since the campaign began in 2014. (Locals have put the number at around 200.) CentCom had initially denied that the strike took place, before announcing the investigation. Officials now say that ISIS had likely placed explosives inside the building, contributing to the deadliness after the bomb was dropped. The battle for Mosul, which has gone on for more than seven months now, has been particularly brutal for civilians, who have often been prevented from leaving by ISIS or advised not to by the Iraqi government.

Meanwhile, a fresh wave of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition reportedly killed dozens of civilians, including children, in Eastern Syria this week. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that 106 people have been killed in Mayadeen since Thursday evening, including IS fighters and 42 children. Eighty of those were killed in an airstrike on a building that housed the families of ISIS fighters. Syrias state news agency put the number at 35, and the coalition has not yet responded to the report.

Journalist Samuel Oakford of the monitoring site Airwars also published an investigation in cooperation with Foreign Policy today finding that non-U.S. members of the anti-ISIS coalition have killed at least 80 civilians in Iraq and Syria since the start of the campaign, but that none of those 12 countries will acknowledge responsibility for any of the deaths. Airwars also reported this week that between 283 and 366 civilians likely died from coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in April, the fourth consecutive month that those deaths exceeded those caused by Russian strikes. This has raised questions about whether the Trump administrations hands-off attitude toward airstrikes has raised the risk for civilians.

The UNs High Commissioner for Human Rights today warned that civilians are increasingly victimized by both the intensified airstrikes, and the retaliatory attacks by ISIS. In once incident, ISIS fighters slit the throats of eight men in a town that had just been bombed, blaming them for giving away coordinates to the coalition. The situation is only likely to worsen as the battle for Mosul grinds on and the campaign against ISISs heavily fortified capital in Raqqa ramps up.

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More Bad News on Civilian Casualties in Iraq and Syria - Slate Magazine (blog)