The head of military efforts to detect and destroy improvised explosives is winding up a trip to Baghdad where he took measure of how the U.S. can help Iraqi security forces deal with the lethal threat of bombs left behind by retreating Islamic State militants.
Army Lt. Gen. Michael Shields, chief of the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency, is scheduled to return to JIDA headquarters next week and deliver a report to his staff of uniformed personnel and civilian engineers on what the Iraqi Security Forces are facing.
Increasingly, the focus of military aid to the Iraqis by the U.S. military and counter-ISIL coalition partners is on what comes after cities like Mosul are retaken from the militant group. Economic and political aid must follow any successful military campaign, defense ministers from 30 or so of the coalition partner states agreed during meetings outside Washington, D.C., this week.
U.S. and coalition military officials expect ISIL to have rigged much of the terrain and urban structures it holds with improvised explosives. They must be cleared before civilians can safely return to rebuild their cities and lives.
“As these towns are liberated, the IED threat is enormous,” British Defense Minister Michael Fallon told reporters during an counter-ISIL coalition ministerial at Joint Base Andrews this week. “Everything is booby-trapped. The houses are booby-trapped. The rubble is booby-trapped in some of these towns. The population won’t have the confidence to return unless we can ensure that IED is cleared as quickly as possible.”
At least 250 U.K. troops will deploy forward to train Iraqi army units in IED clearance.
Shields will then make a recommendation on what the U.S. military can and should offer in the way of advice, troops and technology to help them clear homemade bombs from territory recaptured from ISIL, Army Col. Christopher Garver, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, told reporters by Skype from Baghdad on Friday.
“His team will have to do some thinking about what JIDA and the U.S. military can do to help,” Garver said. “Ultimately JIDA’s job is to keep people from being blown up.”
Garver said JIDA and the U.S. military writ large have extensive, hard-earned experience in IED detection and with technologies that help find and destroy them. All options could be available to the Iraqi army, though its officials will have to approve the aid in men and/or materiel, he said.
“There are a wide range of options,” Garver said. “We don’t talk too often about what we are doing in the counter-IED fight because we don’t want our enemies to know our tactics.”
After Shields briefs his chain of command, the negotiations on what counter-IED assistance is necessary and welcome will revert to the Iraqi government, Garver said.
“We can’t inflict support on someone,” he said. “The Iraqis will have to agree to that support.”