GPHC Blog--Realism/Liberlism--Charlie


Charlie McGill
Mr. Roddy
Global Politics
10/01/2019
ISIL, Realism, and the Fall of Mosul
On June 6th, 2014, after ongoing clashes for the past six or seven months, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) forces invaded the city of Mosul and succeeded in taking control of it. There was a lot of buildup to this battle, starting in December 2013. Around that time, Iraqui security forces started fighting with both ISIL and other tribal militias. In January of 2014, ISIL invaded and captured the cities of Fallujah and Hīt, which brought most of the Anbar Province under their control. The Iraqi army quickly retaliated, and began to move into Anbar in an attempt to recapture the area. Although they reclaimed the city of Samarra, they heavily shelled Fallujah which resulted in civilian casualties. The shelling didn’t make any progress on capturing the city however, and right around this time ISIL forces were capturing land in Syria which gave them access to better weapons. These weapons proved vital, because only a few days later ISIL began their attack on Mosul. 
The official beginning of this conflict was June 4th, when Iraqi police in Mosul cornered the leader (at the time) of ISIL, Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi. He blew himself up, and the government thought that it could possibly stop an attack. However, on June 6th, ISIL launched the attack that truly put the world at attention: what would eventually be the Fall of Mosul. ISIL forces totaled 1500 soldiers, outnumbering the Iraqi military and police 15-1. Two suicide bombers blew up cars, killing a total of 6 Iraqi soldiers. The fighters left at the end of the day, but came back two days later and launched a double bomb attack that killed 18 people. The following day ISIL would execute 15 Iraqi soldiers they had captured. On June 10th, the city of Mosul finally fell to ISIL, after 4 days of fighting.
This is a great example of realism, because it shows a group using military power to achieve what they want in terms of power. ISIL wouldn’t have had any power if they weren’t a violent, military group. In order to try and establish their way of thinking and their political system, ISIL used realist power. In response, Iraqi forces also used realist power, since in this situation liberal power wouldn’t have worked. This is not to say that realism is always the better option, it’s just to say that in this situation, ISIL had to use realist power to achieve what they wanted, and Iraq had to use realist power to defend their beliefs. For ISIL, it worked. After the Fall of Mosul, ISIL had a respectable and recognizable amount of sovereignty over the Anbar Province, which is part of what made and still makes ISIL so hard to deal with. Although they're almost defeated as of now, in 2015 they had a huge amount of territory and sovereignty, and they were a very serious threat to the safety of Middle Eastern countries.

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