SUMMARY: Although the Islamic State’s physical territory has dissolved, immense destruction from the brutal battle to eradicate the militant group remains. In the former caliphate’s capital city, Raqqa, survivors sort through the wreckage in search of bodies, recalling the atrocities they’ve seen in this city of the dead. Special correspondent Jane Ferguson reports from Raqqa.
SUMMARY: White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Friday that a few hundred American troops may stay in Syria as a stabilizing force after the majority of U.S. forces withdraw. Still, American allies fear that ISIS will have the capability to create a powerful insurgency as U.S. presence in Syria recedes. Nick Schifrin talks to Judy Woodruff about President Trump's new plan and the reaction to it.
SUMMARY: In Syria, U.S.-backed Kurdish forces are retaking the final territory of the Islamic State. As the caliphate dissolves, however, what will happen to the 40,000 foreign fighters who joined the terror group’s ranks over the past few years? Many of them have been detained, but the path for prosecuting them, and preventing them from driving an ISIS resurgence, remains unclear. Nick Schifrin reports.
SUMMARY: ISIS claimed responsibility for a deadly attack in northern Syria's Manbij that killed four Americans, countering the Trump administration's assessment that the terrorist group had been defeated. While Vice President Pence repeated that the U.S. is now able to "hand off" that fight to allies, other officials expressed concern that withdrawal plans have enlivened the enemy. Nick Schifrin reports.
SUMMARY: The U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria released its latest estimate of civilians killed by U.S. airstrikes since 2014. Over the past four years, 1,139 civilians were killed by accident. But how was this figure calculated, and is it accurate? Larry Lewis of the Center for Naval Analyses, a former official at the Defense and State Departments, joins Nick Schifrin to discuss.
SUMMARY: In addition to recovering and rebuilding after a brutal war with ISIS, Iraq is facing a dire water shortage. Levels in the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers have plummeted, in part because neighboring Turkey built a dam upstream that restricts the flow into Iraq. The remaining water is too salty to sustain life. Special correspondent Jane Ferguson reports on the crisis and its agricultural impact.
SUMMARY: A recently discovered trove of thousands of documents offers new insight into the horrors of life under the Islamic State militant group. Driven out of Mosul in late 2016 after months of fighting, ISIS left behind evidence of how the controlled the city and their would-be caliphate. Amna Nawaz learns more from Rukmini Callimachi from The New York Times.
SUMMARY: Turkey's military appeared ready on Friday to invade a Kurdish area of Syria and attack a force who, backed by the U.S., helped liberate Raqqa from the Islamic State. While the U.S. wants to convert them into a stabilization force, Turkey's president says they are a grave threat. Nick Schifrin talks with former Pentagon official Andrew Exum and Mona Yacoubian of the U.S. Institute of Peace.
SUMMARY: Emergency crews swarmed the streets near Times Square this morning after a man detonated a homemade pipe bomb in the New York subway, creating a panic during rush hour. The suspected attacker, identified as 27-year-old Akayed Ullah, was taken to the hospital with minor burns. Officials believe he was inspired by the Islamic State group. William Brangham reports.
SUMMARY: What do officials know about the attempted morning attack of a New York subway and the motives of the alleged bomber? Nicholas Rasmussen, outgoing director of the National Counterterrorism Center, joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the difficulties of preventing such attacks and the chances of another 9/11-style event.
SUMMARY: Attackers unleashed mayhem and carnage on a crowded mosque in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Friday. At least 235 people were killed by militants who detonated explosives and shot worshippers as they tried to escape. Judy Woodruff learns more from Declan Walsh of The New York Times.
SUMMARY: U.S. bombing played a major role in driving the Islamic State group from cities in Iraq and Syria. But a report by The New York Times finds that thousands more civilians were killed in those bombing runs than originally admitted by the Pentagon. Hari Sreenivasan learns more from investigative reporter Azmat Khan.
SUMMARY: Iraq may have ousted Islamic States militants from the city of Mosul over the summer, but the major task of finding and destroying the mines, booby traps and bombs remains. A security firm hired by the U.S. and Iraqi workers are making progress to clear major areas, but it could take years or even decades. Special correspondent Marcia Biggs reports on the safety of Mosul after ISIS.
SUMMARY: U.S.-backed forces in Syria have declared victory in the city of Raqqa, the self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State. But four years of ISIS control and four months of fighting have left a majority of the city uninhabitable. Special correspondent Nick Schifrin reports on what this milestone means for Raqqa and what's next for ISIS as it plans to revert to its roots and go back underground.
SUMMARY: At the end of a brutal campaign to retake Mosul in Iraq, and as the fight for Raqqa continues, where does the battle against the Islamic State stand? Judy Woodruff speaks with Special Presidential Envoy Brett McGurk, who says the Islamic State is “radically shrinking” and that President Trump's decision to delegate rapid decision-making has greatly assisted their efforts.
SUMMARY: On his first trip abroad, President Trump met this weekend with Arab leaders in an attempt to reset relations between the U.S. and Middle East. How is this president changing U.S. foreign policy? Judy Woodruff speaks with Elliott Abrams, a former administration official under George W. Bush, Robin Wright of the United States Institute of Peace, and Daniel Benjamin of Dartmouth College.
SUMMARY: President Trump is in Israel, where he spent the day talking up peace prospects in the region. John Yang reports on the president's arrival and recaps Mr. Trump's high-profile address in Saudi Arabia over the weekend, then Judy Woodruff gets an update from Tamara Keith of NPR, who's reporting from Jerusalem.
SUMMARY: President Trump met privately with Pope Francis on Wednesday, his first audience with the leader of the Catholic Church, and with whom he has clashed publicly in the past. Last year, the religious leader disavowed Candidate Trump's pledge for a border wall, prompting Mr. Trump to dig back. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports on their interaction at the Vatican.
SUMMARY: At his first meeting of NATO leaders, President Trump again criticized the allies for falling short on their share of defense spending. Mr. Trump was also the first U.S. President to not explicitly endorse NATO's collective dense clause. Special correspondent Ryan Chilcote, reporting from Brussels, joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the reactions from European leaders and more.
SUMMARY: President Trump spent the final day of his first trip abroad in Sicily at a G-7 Summit, where he met with several world leaders to discuss issues such as climate change and trade. It wrapped up a busy week with stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel and the West Bank, the Vatican and the headquarters of the European Union and NATO. Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Margaret Talev of Bloomberg News.
SUMMARY: The Pentagon has authorized the deployment of 400 additional troops to Syria in the ongoing fight against the Islamic State militant group. Judy Woodruff discusses the U.S.'s deepening military involvement and the complexities with former Defense Department official Andrew Exum and Bulent Aliriza of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): United States military involvement in Syria has deepened since President Trump took office. The Pentagon has authorized the deployment of 400 more troops, some of whom are already there. Five hundred special operations forces sent by the Obama administration are also on the ground. War planners reportedly are seeking to send an additional 1,000 American troops to Syria.
Yesterday, in Tabqa, Syria, American forces aided Syrian rebel and Kurdish forces in the taking a strategic dam and road from ISIS. All this comes on a complex battlefield and under the wary eye of Syria's northern neighbor Turkey.
For more on what's happening now and what may come, I'm joined by Andrew Exum. He served in the Obama administration until this January as deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East policy. He's also a former Army Ranger and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. And Bulent Aliriza, he's the director of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It's a Washington think tank.
And we welcome both of you back to the program.
Andrew Exum, to you first.
How much of a change is what we are seeing right now in Syria from what was going on in the Obama administration?
ANDREW EXUM, Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense: So, significant in one way. Significant in terms of the numbers. It is clear that the Trump administration doesn't have the same reticence that the Obama administration did in terms of putting more boots on the ground, especially conventional troops, as opposed to special operations troops.
Where it is similar is that what we are trying to do, it seems, is replicate the success we have had in Iraq working, by, with and through local forces, so no direct combat themselves, but really enabling local forces to try to win the fight.
It seems what the U.S. military is trying to do is put the same infrastructure on the ground that has proved successful in helping the Iraqi army in Mosul in Syria to help the Syrians successfully take Raqqa.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, if the Trump administration seems to be headed toward 2,000, assuming this next 1,000 contingent gets there, is that where the Obama administration would have eventually gotten, or is that not even clear?
ANDREW EXUM: So, it's a really good question.
Over the past 18 months, we have steadily ramped up our commitment in terms of resources to both Iraq and Syria, and certainly, as the fight developed in Iraq, we continued to put more troop there, for example, building up the Qayyarah West Airfield in presentation for the fight against Mosul.
So, you could say the Obama administration might have eventually done something similar to this. We really don't know. In some ways, this is typical of the ramping up of the strategy so far.
SUMMARY: The battle for Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State militant group in Syria, is coming. The U.S. military is sending 400 additional troops to join 500 Special Operations troops already on the ground, along with an array of Turkish, Russian, Syrian and rebel forces. Hari Sreenivasan speaks with Michael Gordon of The New York Times about the challenges ahead.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): The coming battle for the ISIS capital, Raqqa, in Syria is beginning to take shape; 400 additional American troops, Marines and some Army Rangers will join 500 U.S. Special Operations troops already on the ground, with an array of Turkish and rebel forces. Russian and Syrian army troops are also there.
The top American general for Middle East operations, General Joseph Votel, was on Capitol Hill today in the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Chairman John McCain pushed him on a particular flash point: U.S. support for Syrian Kurdish forces, whom Turkey considers terrorists.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-Ariz.: I think there's a possibility of an impending conflict between Turkey and the Kurds, as opposed to us all working together to try to defeat ISIS and remove them from Raqqa. Do you see that as a scenario that we should be concerned about?
GEN. JOSEPH VOTEL, Commander, U.S. Central Command: I do, Mr. Chairman. And to that end, we are trying to take actions to prevent that from occurring.
HARI SREENIVASAN: For more, I spoke with Michael Gordon, the chief military correspondent for The New York Times, who said U.S. troops will play a key role in the upcoming battle.
MICHAEL GORDON, The New York Times: If you look at what we're doing in Iraq right now, and I have been there, the United States is providing artillery support, along with the French. It's providing — firing surface-to-surface rockets into Western Mosul. It's providing air support. And it's providing advisers.
And this is what has enabled the Iraqi forces to move forward in what is a very difficult fight. Well, something very similar is needed in Syria in we want the Syrian fighters to go into a town that's defended by 3,000 to 4,000 ISIS militants.
State Department sanctions a former soldier in the French Foreign Legion as a senior plotter as French authorities roll up an ISIS network said to be planning new attacks.
U.S. and European counterterror officials are zeroing in on Islamic State masterminds of a terror campaign against Europe that continues despite military setbacks for ISIS in the Middle East.
On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department announced that it had put a suspected plotter of last November's attacks in Paris on a list of specially designated global terrorists. The announcement came the day after French authorities said they had arrested seven suspects and foiled a plot directed by senior ISIS figures in Syria to carry out major coordinated attacks in Paris and Marseilles during the Christmas holidays.
Separately, French and Belgian counter-terror officials said this week they have identified a second ISIS figure involved in directing operations against both countries.
The State Department sanction targeted a Moroccan-born suspect named Abdelilah Himich, who grew up in France and fought in the French Foreign Legion in Afghanistan before traveling to Syria and joining the Islamic State, according to court files and counterterror officials.
Last month, ProPublica and the PBS program Frontline reported that U.S. intelligence officials believe Himich, 27, was part of an ISIS unit in Syria that directed the terror attacks against Paris and Brussels. Composed largely of youthful European fighters, the external operations unit oversaw a campaign in which up to 200 operatives were deployed to Europe using forged documents, encrypted communications techniques and support networks supplying arms, transport and safe houses, Western intelligence officials say.
“Abdelilah Himich, also known as Abu Sulayman al-Faransi, is a senior foreign terrorist fighter and external operations figure,” the State Department said in a statement today. “Himich created the Tariq Ibn Ziyad Battalion in 2015, a European foreign terrorist fighter cell that has provided suicide operatives for ISIL attacks in Iraq, Syria, and abroad; at one time the battalion numbered as many as 300 members. Himich was also reportedly involved in the planning of ISIL's November 2015 Paris attacks and March 2016 Brussels attacks.”
U.S. intelligence believes Himich was a “conceiver” of the Paris attacks, according to U.S. counterterror officials. But details of his activities remain unclear, especially because several ISIS fighters use the same nickname as he does. While French and U.S. intelligence agencies agree that Himich is a senior foreign fighter, they differ about his degree of involvement in the Paris and Brussels attacks. Such discrepancies are not uncommon in intelligence circles, especially when it comes to murky underworld of the Islamic State.
“It's possible he was involved, but we don't have evidence that he played an important role in the Paris plot,” said a senior French counterterror official who requested anonymity. “We do know he led a battalion of foreign fighters in Syria. If the Americans have specific intelligence of his role in the Paris attacks, they haven't shared it with us.”
The U.S. government uses terrorist designations to put international pressure on top suspects, block their assets and bar U.S. persons from doing business with them.
In recent weeks, U.S.-backed Iraqi military forces have hammered the Islamic State in its bastion of Mosul and elsewhere, damaging the group's ability to deploy fighters to Europe and direct attacks in the West.
Nonetheless, the threat persists. French authorities are on heightened alert as the Christmas holidays approach. Over the weekend, French police arrested seven suspects in Strasbourg and Marseilles who had been under surveillance for months. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said authorities dismantled a network directed by ISIS from Syria that was about to unleash attacks.
The raids prevented “a long-planned terrorist attack on our territory,” Cazeneuve told reporters in France on Monday.
The DGSI counterterror agency arrested six suspects in Strasbourg and one in Marseilles. At least two suspects were trained by ISIS in Syria last year and were sent back to France to await further orders, according to French counterterror officials. Some of the suspects were associates of three Frenchmen who killed dozens of concert-goers at the Bataclan theater last November, officials said.
The lengthy investigation first identified a terrorist financing network in France that used fraudulent loans and other swindles to send up to $20,000 back to Syria. French intelligence then monitored a French-speaking ISIS leader in the Syrian city of Raqqah who used long-distance communications to oversee two separate terror cells trying to acquire arms for attacks, the senior counterterror official said.
When a suspected Moroccan operative who had lived in Portugal traveled to Marseilles recently to advance the plotting, French authorities decided to dismantle the network, the official said. The plotters intended to carry out coordinated holiday attacks on public places in Paris and Marseilles, officials believe.
“It was a sophisticated operation,” the senior French counterterror official said. “It was all controlled and coordinated by ISIS from Raqqa. The two cells were compartmentalized. They had no contact with each other, just with the leader in Syria. It would have been a major attack like the one in Paris last year.”
Investigations in Europe have shed light on the workings of ISIS plots against the West. In addition to Himich, French and Belgian police have identified another suspected ISIS leader – a shadowy figure in Syria who directed the Paris plotters last year using encrypted communications and the alias Abu Ahmad.
Officials said the suspect is a 32-year-old Belgian named Osama Atar, according to European and U.S. counterterror officials. (The identification of Atar as the mysterious Abu Ahmad was first reported by Le Monde newspaper of France.)
Atar has a remarkable history. In 2005, the U.S. military captured him in Iraq on suspicion of fighting for al Qaeda. He was held in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and the U.S.-run Camp Bucca detention center, where his fellow inmates included future Iraqi leaders of the Islamic State such as Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, according to Western counterterror officials.
An Iraqi court sentenced Atar to ten years in prison. But he won early release in 2012 thanks to a campaign by Belgian politicians and human rights advocates, who claimed that he was ill with cancer and had been unfairly treated. Now critics say their efforts freed a committed fighter who quickly returned to the fray.
“It has never been confirmed that he had cancer,” said Eric Van der Sypt, a Belgian federal prosecutor, in a telephone interview. “He joined ISIS in Syria soon after he was released.”
Investigators believe Atar played a central role in training and directing the ten-man attack team who struck Paris and killed 130 people, according to Van der Sypt and other officials. He then spent four months communicating from Syria via encrypted messages with the surviving operatives who planned their next attack from hideouts in Brussels. The fugitives directed by Atar included his Belgian cousins, Ibrahim and Khalid Bakraoui, officials said.
Atar gave the fugitives bomb-making instructions and helped them plan the suicide attacks they carried out against the Brussels airport and a subway station in March, killing 32 people, according to investigators. He used the nickname Abu Ahmad during the online exchanges, investigators say.
Atar's photo has been identified by a captured ISIS operative in French custody, according to European counterterror officials. Atar remains a fugitive. Belgian police believe that he secretly returned to Belgium a few months after the Brussels bombings. Two more of his relatives were arrested in June on charges of plotting to attack an open-air “fan zone” set up in downtown Brussels for viewing of the European soccer championships.
“We are practically sure he was in Brussels in August of this year,” Van der Sypt said. Atar's whereabouts now are unknown, he said.
If Atar is in fact Abu Ahmad, he left a detailed trail of communications recovered from a laptop discarded by the Brussels bombers. It has been more difficult to determine the precise identities of the other masterminds, such as Himich. Investigators believe Himich's military experience helped him rise through the ranks of the Islamic State and join the external operations group.
Despite the differing analyses of French and U.S. intelligence agencies about his role, parts of Himich's story are well-documented in French court records obtained by ProPublica. Investigators used intercepts, credit card receipts, interrogations of accomplices and other evidence to build a picture of his journey to Syria and life in the combat zone.
French investigators first became aware of Himich in early 2014 during the surveillance of suspects in Lunel, a picturesque town near Montpellier that has been a hotbed for radicalized young people to join the jihad in Syria.
The son of Moroccan immigrants, Himich went to high school in Lunel. He joined the French Foreign Legion on November 13, 2008—seven years to the day before the Paris attacks, according to court documents. He served with that legendary fighting force in Afghanistan, earning two medals, but then deserted in 2010. He did prison time for drug trafficking in 2012, according to court documents.
In February of 2014, Himich and four others prepared to journey to the Syria by purchasing supplies: camping gear, night-vision goggles, medicine. Himich used a U.S. passport stolen in Paris to rent a luxury BMW sedan, which the group drove to Syria via Italy, Greece and Turkey, according to court documents.
By Feb. 13 of that year, Himich called his girlfriend in Lunel to tell her he was with militants doing a three-week training course, according to the documents.
“Right now, we all have to be at the same level,” Himich said, according to a transcript of a phone call intercepted by French police. “Afterward, if it's a question of who's going to be the chief or what, I'm going to be the chief.”
The girlfriend, a French convert to Islam, joined him that May in Syria, where they married and had children. Himich soon became the emir, or leader, of a 50-man fighting unit. He was wounded by an exploding mortar during a battle in which “fire rained from the sky,” according to intercepted conversations among other militants quoted in the documents.
Himich oversaw the crucifixion of two traitors by the Islamic State and enlisted a pilot to give flying lessons to his trainees, the documents say. Intercepted conversations describe combat, the births of children to militant families, and the deaths of French jihadis, often with photos of the corpses sent to families in France.
The court documents do not make explicit reference to Himich's role in plots against Europe. But a phone conversation intercepted in May, 2015, suggests that Himich may have lived in the same house in Syria as Fouad Aggad, one of the Paris attackers.
The transcript recounts a phone call between Aggad's mother and his brother, who was incarcerated in a French prison. The two discuss what they've heard from Fouad Aggad about his life in the Islamic State.
Six months after the conversation, Aggad died in a gun battle with police during the massacre at the Bataclan nightclub in Paris.
Himich, meanwhile, had disciplinary troubles with the Islamic State this spring, according to French officials. French intelligence has learned that ISIS removed him from his command post in April and temporarily jailed him for some type of misconduct, according to the French counterterror official.
But French and U.S. intelligence officials still consider him alive and dangerous.
SUMMARY: As Iraqi forces continue to gain ground in Mosul against Islamic State militants, thousands of residents are attempting to flee the city. The United Nations reports that ISIS is carrying out mass executions of civilians. Alex Milutinovic, who is directing relief efforts in Iraq for the International Rescue Committee, joins Alison Stewart to discuss the plight of those civilians.
ALISON STEWART, PBS NEWSHOUR WEEKEND ANCHOR: Iraq's government says its security forces, with U.S. support, reclaimed two more districts in Mosul today from ISIS militants. This footage released today by the Iraqi defense ministry shows helicopter attacks on ISIS positions to dislodge militants who have occupied Iraq's second largest city for two years. The defense ministry says it has destroyed more than 40 ISIS hideouts and killed about 900 militants in the past month.
As thousands of Mosul residents try to flee the city, the United Nations reports ISIS is carrying out mass executions of civilians.
Joining me now to talk about this is Alex Milutinovic, who is directing relief efforts in Iraq for the International Rescue Committee. He is in the Iraqi city of Erbil, about 50 miles east of Mosul.
And, Alex, we understand from the World Health Organization, as many as 48,000 people have fled Mosul. Where are they going?
ALEKSANDAR MILUTINOVIC, INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE: At the moment, we have over 50,000 people that have fled the surrounding of Mosul City. Most of the people, two-thirds of them, are leaving towards the camps and the remaining one third of people are living with host community.
ALISON STEWART: Is the Islamic State allowing people to leave? Because there have been reports that the idea is to use civilians — their idea is to use civilians as human shields.
ALEKSANDAR MILUTINOVIC: Unfortunately, the civilians are not allowed to leave the Mosul City. They are being used as a human shield and our concern goes to the people of Mosul City who are now trapped in a very difficult situation. They are basically trapped between the — you know, in the fighting zone and they have a hard time fleeing and finding safety.
SUMMARY: Two weeks into their offensive, Iraqi troops crossed the city limits of Mosul, the last Islamic State stronghold in Iraq. Special correspondent Christopher Livesay filed this report as troops moved in, civilians fled and the Islamic State fighters showed they weren't giving up without a fight.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): As we reported earlier, Iraqi troops crossed the city limits of the ISIS-held city of Mosul today. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said that the militants two choices are — quote — “surrender or die.”
Iraqi special forces fought into the city's eastern outskirts at Gogjali. The road there has been long and dangerous.
Special correspondent Christopher Livesay was there as the troops moved in. And he filed this report.
CHRISTOPHER LIVESAY, Special correspondent: This is the road to Mosul, littered with the scorched debris of ISIS in retreat. But they are not going quietly. The sky is black with smoke billowing from the oil fields ISIS has set ablaze. The terror group held this territory for more than two years, and, in that time, they built an elaborate industry to manufacture IEDs and suicide car bombs.
Only now can they see that up close.
This is a suicide car that they were in the process of packing with TNT, but, apparently, they didn't have enough time before the invasion started. So, they had to run out. But it's still packed with explosives.
The suicide car bomber appeared to have gotten away and set off the fighting this morning in Gogjali, a neighborhood in the outskirts of Mosul, near an army Iraq roadblock.
And these soldiers with a .50-caliber machine gun?
MAN: Machine gun?
CHRISTOPHER LIVESAY: They were able to stop him.
But the driver was still able to detonate his vehicle. His body is now covered by debris, his vehicle lodged in the roadblock. The forces moving on ISIS territory are varied, including Shia militias backed by Iran and security forces from the Kurdish region known as Peshmerga.
But it's the Iraq army that is leading the charge in Mosul proper. By midday, the ISIS side of the battlefront was still for a moment. And these terrified civilians saw their chance to flee the Islamic State after two years of captivity. They are the lucky ones. Reports are mounting of ISIS rounding up locals by the thousands to use as human shields inside Mosul.
One mother didn't even have time to stop and give her name.
WOMAN (through translator): The last time we tried to run away, they shot at us. This time, we had to stay very low, so they couldn't hit us. Today was the first chance that we had.
CHRISTOPHER LIVESAY: We found this 20-year-old shepherd fleeing east with his flock, searching for shelter in hastily built refugee camps. He said ISIS wouldn't allow him to attend school and punished him for breaking strict Islamic dress codes.
MAN (through translator): I spent five days in jail for wearing long pants. They beat me in there, lashed me. Now I know I'm in a safe place, thank God.
CHRISTOPHER LIVESAY: But the relief is bittersweet. He had to leave behind his parents, brothers and sisters. Just when the coast looked clear, ISIS proved it wasn't giving up without a fight.
(GUNFIRE)
CHRISTOPHER LIVESAY: Gunfire cracks all around. At least one Iraqi soldier is shot dead. But Iraqi special forces are quick to rally and return fire on virtually every building lining this road that leads to the heart of Mosul.
MAN (through translator): We are waiting to go inside the city of Mosul. Mosul is our land. We will enter in three or four days. God willing, we will fly our flag on the city.
SUMMARY: As the Iraqi military continues its push into the Islamic State-stronghold of Mosul, how are the disparate forces who make up the coalition working together, and how does Iraq plan to stabilize the city and prevent ethnic tensions? Special Presidential Envoy Brett McGurk talks with Hari Sreenivasan about the operation to retake the city and the coming fight against the militants in Raqqa.
SUMMARY: Iraqi forces and their allies opened an offensive Monday to wrest the city of Mosul from Islamic State forces. While the Iraqi commander issued a confident assessment, balancing the various factions taking part in the fight is a complicated matter. Chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner reports and Jeffrey Brown speaks with former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Mosul and the start of operations to retake Iraq's second largest city from the Islamic State group.
Jeffrey Brown will speak with a former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq in a moment, but, first, chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner reports on today's events.
MARGARET WARNER (NewsHour): Gunfire sounded all day, across the outskirts of Mosul. Columns of smoke billowed from artillery fire and U.S. coalition airstrikes and from oil ignited by ISIS fighters to blind attacking planes.
Long anti-ISIS convoys advanced, and, by late in the day, the overall Iraqi commander issued a confident assessment.
LT. GEN. TALIB SHAGHATI, Iraqi Army (through translator): The operations are going very well and according to plan. Sometimes, we are ahead of the plan because of the high morale and the fighters' strong will to fight the Islamic State group and liberate Mosul, which has been under ISIS rule for the past two years.
MARGARET WARNER: For the Iraqi army, the campaign for Mosul is by far its largest operation yet against the Islamic State. U.S. intelligence estimates that up to 4,500 ISIS fighters are in the city. Other estimates run to 8,000.
LT. GEN. STEPHEN TOWNSEND, U.S. Army: This may prove to be a long and tough battle, but the Iraqis have prepared for it, and we will stand by them.
MARGARET WARNER: Complicating matters, balancing the various factions taking part in the fight. Kurdish forces began today by seizing several towns on the eastern fringes of Mosul. They will be part of a five-pronged assault, including Iraqi army brigades, plus Sunni tribal fighters and police. The ultimate drive into Mosul will likely be made by Iraqi special forces.
Providing air cover and assisting on the ground is the American military, including special operations troops. Shiite militias backed by Iran are also taking part, but they have been accused of atrocities against Sunnis in other cities and may be kept out of Mosul proper.
Meanwhile, Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, complained of being left out of the Mosul offensive.
PRESIDENT RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN, Turkey (through translator): Look now. The operation in Mosul has started. The operation continues. And what do they say? Turkey shouldn't enter Mosul. How can I do that? I share 350 kilometers of border with Iraq, and I am under threat on that border.
MARGARET WARNER: Erdogan said again he will keep some 3,000 Turkish-trained fighters in northernmost Iraq, despite objections from Baghdad. As the fighting starts in earnest, concerns are also rising over the more than one million civilians still in the city. The U.N. and other organizations say they're preparing for up to 200,000 refugees.
For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Margaret Warner.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): And now perspectives of James Jeffrey, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq from 2010 to 2012, and currently fellow at the Washington Institute, a think tank and policy analysis group.
SUMMARY: As Iraq fights to reclaim Mosul from ISIS, the chance of a humanitarian crisis is a growing concern. John Irvine of Independent Television News reports and Jeffrey Brown talks to David Miliband, CEO of the International Rescue Committee, about the struggles for civilians caught in the crossfire, what the UN has done to prepare for the aftermath and the upcoming task of rebuilding the city.
SUMMARY: The battle for Mosul is the most important of the two-year campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq. Judy Woodruff speaks with retired Gen. David Petraeus, former commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq, about the current combat mission, as well as what he says is the greater challenge of governance of the region after ISIS has been dislodged.
