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 In late May, Iraqi security forces arrested seven members of
militant group Islamic State in Mosul and learned the group planned
an offensive on the city in early June. Gharawi, the operational
commander of Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, asked
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's most trusted commanders for
reinforcements.
With Iraq's military overstretched, the senior officers scoffed at
the request. Diplomats in Baghdad also passed along intelligence of
an attack, only to be told that Iraqi Special Forces were in Mosul
and could handle any scenario.
On June 4, federal police in Mosul under Gharawi's command cornered
Islamic State's military leader in Iraq, who blew himself up rather
than surrendering. Gharawi hoped the death might avert an attack. He
was wrong.
At 2:30 a.m. on June 6, Gharawi and his men returned to their
operations room after an inspection of checkpoints in the city of
two million. At that moment, convoys of pickup trucks were advancing
from the west, driving across the desert that straddles Iraq's
border with Syria. Each vehicle held up to four IS fighters. The
convoys shot their way through the two-man checkpoints into the
city.
By 3:30 a.m., the militants were fighting inside Mosul. Within three
days the Iraqi army would abandon the country's second-biggest city
to its attackers. The loss triggered a series of events that
continues to reshape Iraq months later.
It unleashed a two-day charge by IS to within 95 miles (153 km) of
Baghdad that caused the collapse of four Iraqi divisions and the
capture or deaths of thousands of soldiers. It helped drive Maliki
from office. And it pushed Western powers and Gulf Arab nations into
launching air strikes on the Islamist militants in both Iraq and
Syria.
But how Mosul was lost, and who gave the order to abandon the fight,
have, until now, been unclear. There has been no official version:
only soldiers' stories of mass desertions and claims by infantry
troops that they followed orders to flee.
In June, Maliki accused unnamed regional countries, commanders and
rival politicians of plotting the fall of Mosul, but has since
remained quiet.
Nevertheless, Baghdad has pinned the blame on Gharawi. In late
August, he was charged by the defense ministry with dereliction of
duty. He is now awaiting the findings of an investigative panel and
then a military trial. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to
death. (Four federal police officers who served under Gharawi are
also in custody awaiting trial, and could not be reached.)
Parliament also plans to hold hearings into the loss of Mosul.
An investigation by Reuters shows that higher-level military
officials and Maliki himself share at least some of the blame.
Several of Iraq's senior-most commanders and officials have detailed
for the first time how troop shortages and infighting among top
officers and Iraqi political leaders played into Islamic State's
hands and fueled panic that led to the city's abandonment. Maliki
and his defense minister made an early critical mistake, they say,
by turning down repeated offers of help from the Kurdish fighting
force known as the peshmerga.
Gharawi's role in the debacle is a matter of debate. A member of the
country's dominant Shi'ite sect, he alienated Mosul's Sunni majority
before the battle, according to the provincial governor and many
citizens. That helped give rise to IS sleeper cells inside Mosul.
One Iraqi officer under his command faulted Gharawi for not rallying
the troops for a final stand.
For his part, Gharawi says he stood firm, and did not give the final
order to abandon the city. Others involved in the battle endorse
that claim and say Gharawi fought until the city was overrun. It was
only then that he fled.
Gharawi says three people could have given the final order: Aboud
Qanbar, at the time the defense ministry's deputy chief of staff;
Ali Ghaidan, then commander of the ground forces; or Maliki himself,
who personally directed his most senior officers from Baghdad. The
secret of who decided to abandon Mosul, Gharawi says, lies with
these three men. Gharawi says a decision by Ghaidan and Qanbar to
leave Mosul's western bank sparked mass desertions as soldiers
assumed their commanders had fled. A senior Iraqi military official
backs that assertion.
None of the three men have commented publicly on their decisions in
Mosul. Maliki has declined Reuters requests for an interview for
this article. Qanbar has not responded, while Ghaidan could not be
reached.
Lieutenant General Qassim Atta, a military spokesman with close ties
to Maliki, told Reuters last week that Gharawi "above all others ...
failed in his role as commander." The rest, he said, "will be
revealed before the judiciary."
In many ways, Gharawi's story is a window into Iraq. The Shi'ite
general has been a key figure since 2003, when the Shi'ites began
gaining power after the United States toppled Saddam Hussein and his
Sunni-dominated Baath Party. Shi'ite leaders once saluted Gharawi as
a hero, while Sunnis see him as a murderer who used Iraq's war on
extremism as a cover for extorting money from businesses and
menacing innocent people with arrests and killings.
Gharawi rose through a military riven by sectarian splits,
corruption and politics. He is now trapped by those same forces. The
decision to punish him and ignore the role of higher-level figures
shows not just that rebuilding the military will be difficult, but
also why the country risks breakup. As Mosul proved, the Iraqi army
is a failed institution at the heart of a failing state.
Gharawi, in his own telling, has become a scapegoat, a victim of the
deal-making and alliances that keep Iraq's political and military
elite in place. Ghaidan and Qanbar, longtime confidantes of Maliki,
have been dispatched to a pensioned retirement. Gharawi, who is
living in his home town in the south of Iraq, says his bosses are
pinning the faults of a broken system on him.
"They want just to save themselves from these accusations," he told
Reuters during a visit to Baghdad two weeks ago. "The investigation
should include the highest commanders and leadership ... Everyone
should say what they have, so the people know."
ROAD TO MOSUL
Gharawi expected Mosul to be hell. In the years after the U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq, the city had become an epicenter for the al Qaeda
and Sunni insurgency. Former Baathists and military commanders lived
in the province of Nineveh. The Kurds also had a foothold in the
city; after Saddam's fall they came to dominate the security forces
and local government.
In 2008, two years after he became prime minister, Maliki began to
assert his power there. Seeing the Kurds as potentially disloyal, he
began to purge Kurdish officers from Mosul's two army divisions and
insert his own men to protect Baghdad's interests. He appointed a
string of commanders who antagonised local Kurds and Sunnis. In
2011, he tapped Gharawi.
The general was already a survivor of Iraq's political system.
Despite the fact he was a Shi'ite, he had been a member of Saddam's
Republican Guard. In 2004, after Saddam's fall, Washington had
backed Gharawi to lead one of Iraq's new National Police Divisions.
It was a brutal period. The Shi'ite-dominated security forces –
including the police – were connected to a spate of extrajudicial
killings. The Americans accused Gharawi of running his police
brigades as a front for Shi'ite militias blamed for the murder of
hundreds of people, mostly Sunnis. U.S. and Iraqi officials
investigated Gharawi for his command of Site Four, a notorious
Baghdad jail where prisoners were allegedly tortured or sold to one
of the biggest and most brutal Shi'ite militias.
In late 2006, U.S. officials moved to stop the killings, pressuring
Maliki to dismiss Gharawi and try him for torture. Maliki reassigned
Gharawi but would not try him. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker recalled
a near shouting match with Maliki over the general. "One of my many
disappointments was not getting that sorry-assed failure," Crocker
said in 2010.
Gharawi says he did nothing wrong during that period and has nothing
to apologize for. It was civil war, he said. The Sunni insurgency
was bent on demolishing the Shi'ite-led government. Gharawi's
brother was killed by Sunni militants. "We worked under special
circumstances. We prevented civil war. We actually stopped it. Where
are our mistakes?"
LEOPARD SKIN AND A WARNING
After his demotion, Gharawi bided his time, a gloomy figure in his
dim-lit Green Zone villa, decorated with old photos, including a few
of him with U.S. senators and Donald Rumsfeld. He was given a series
of minor jobs. Maliki's office regularly proposed him for higher
positions only to be blocked by U.S. officials. As the U.S. military
prepared to leave Iraq, Maliki appointed Gharawi the top federal
police commander in Mosul.
There, Gharawi recaptured his glory. State television showed him
standing on Nineveh's sweeping plains in blue camouflage as he
announced a successful operation against a terror plot. Maliki
rewarded him with property in an affluent Baghdad neighborhood.
In his house in the capital on a short leave from Mosul last
December, Gharawi sat proudly on a leafy green couch, surrounded by
cream-coloured walls, a faux leopard skin rug, and shiny tiled
floors. An oil portrait of himself hung on the wall. He bragged
about arrests and flipped through pictures of jihadists his men had
captured.
Despite his triumphs, he was frank about the insurgency that
re-emerged last year as Sunnis grew frustrated with Maliki's
sectarian rule. The war was at best a stalemate, Gharawi said. Al
Qaeda – the Islamic State's parent organization at the time, before
it split this year – was gaining ground. "I have to confess, al
Qaeda is stronger than they have ever been. Qaeda needs Mosul. They
think of Mosul as their emirate," he said.
Gharawi said he lacked the troops to secure the province. He also
faced growing opposition from Sunnis in Mosul, who accused him and
his men of extra-judicial killings, allegations Gharawi rejected.
In March, Maliki appointed him Nineveh's operational commander.
Security in Iraq was deteriorating. In Anbar province, to Nineveh's
southwest, violence had drawn in three military divisions against IS
militants and angry Sunni tribes. The government had lost control of
the highways from Baghdad to the north. IS militants regularly set
up fake checkpoints and ambushed vehicles.
THE FALL
As IS fighters raced towards Mosul before dawn on June 6, the
jihadists hoped only to take a neighborhood for several hours, one
of them later told a friend in Baghdad. They did not expect state
control to crumble. They hurtled into five districts in their
hundreds, and would, over the next few days, reach over 2,000
fighters, welcomed by the city's angry Sunni residents.
The first line of Mosul's defense was the sixth brigade of the Third
Iraqi army division. On paper, the brigade had 2,500 men. The
reality was closer to 500. The brigade was also short of weapons and
ammunition, according to one non-commissioned officer. Infantry,
armor and tanks had been shifted to Anbar, where more than 6,000
soldiers had been killed and another 12,000 had deserted. It left
Mosul with virtually no tanks and a shortage of artillery, according
to Gharawi.
There was also a problem with ghost soldiers – men on the books who
paid their officers half their salaries and in return did not show
up for duty. Investigators from the defense ministry had sent a
report on the phenomenon to superiors in 2013. Nothing was heard
back, a sergeant who was based in Mosul told Reuters.
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In all, there were supposed to be close to 25,000 soldiers and
police in the city; the reality, several local officials and
security officers say, was at best 10,000. In the district of
Musherfa, one of the city's main entry points, there were just 40
soldiers on duty the night of June 6.
As the militants infiltrated the city, they seized military vehicles
and weapons. The sergeant based there said they also hanged soldiers
and lit them ablaze, crucified them, and torched them on the hoods
of Humvees.
On the western edge of Tamoz 17 neighborhood, police from the fourth
battalion saw two Humvees and 15 pickup trucks approach, spraying
machine gun fire.
"In my entire battalion we have one machine gun. In each pickup they
had one," said head of the battalion, Colonel Dhiyab Ahmed al-Assi
al-Obeidi.
Gharawi ordered his forces to form a defensive line to cordon off
the besieged western Mosul neighbourhoods from the Tigris River.
Gharawi said he received a call from Maliki to hold things until the
arrival of Qanbar, the deputy chief of staff at the defense
ministry, and Ghaidan, who commanded Iraqi ground forces. Qanbar
is a member of Maliki's tribe, while Ghaidan had long assisted
Maliki in security operations, according to senior officers and
Iraqi officials. The two men outranked Gharawi and automatically
took formal charge of the Mosul command on June 7.
On the morning of June 8, Gharawi met Nineveh governor Atheel
Nujaifi. The governor was no friend – he had previously accused
Gharawi of corruption, an allegation the general rejected.
Now the city's fate hinged on Gharawi. One of Nujaifi's advisers
asked the general why he had not counter-attacked.
"There are not enough forces," Gharawi told them.
General Babakir Zebari was Gharawi's superior and chief of staff for
Iraq's armed forces back in Baghdad. He agrees there were not enough
men to defeat the jihadists. And Maliki had already rejected a
chance to change that.
On June 7, Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani had offered to send
Kurdish peshmerga fighters to help. The offer went all the way up to
Maliki, who rejected it twice through his defense minister,
according to Zebari.
United Nations and U.S. diplomats also attempted to broker an
arrangement acceptable to Maliki, who remained suspicious of the
Kurds' intent. Maliki insisted there were more than enough Iraqi
forces. Barzani's office confirmed Kurdish offers of help were
rejected.
On the afternoon of June 8, the Islamic State surged. More than 100
vehicles, carrying at least 400 men, had crossed to Mosul from Syria
since the start of the battle. Sleeper cells hiding in the city had
been activated and neighbourhoods rallied to them, according to
police and military.
The insurgents bombed a police station in the al-Uraybi neighborhood
and charged into the area around the Mosul Hotel, an abandoned
building on the western bank of the Tigris transformed into a battle
post for 30 men from SWAT, an emergency police unit.
Gharawi and his federal police pounded Islamic State-controlled
areas with artillery.
For a moment, "the morale of Mosul got higher," Gharawi said.
Within hours, though, Gharawi's command was thrown into disarray.
Multiple military sources say Ghaidan and Qanbar sacked a divisional
commander after he refused to send men to defend the Mosul Hotel.
The sacked general, who reported to Gharawi, theoretically commanded
6,000 men, though many were AWOL.
General Zebari calls the order another huge mistake: "In crisis, you
can't replace the commander."
TURNING POINT
By June 9, the fourth battalion's Colonel Obeidi and 40 of his men
were among the very last local police fighting to hold back the
jihadists in western Mosul. The rest had either joined the jihadists
or run away.
Just before 4:30 p.m., a military water tanker raced towards the
Mosul Hotel where Obeidi and his men were stationed. The police
fired at the tanker, which detonated, setting off a massive fireball
and hurtling shrapnel. "I didn't feel anything," said Obeidi, whose
leg was ripped open by the blast. "The sound shook the whole of
Mosul but I didn't hear a thing."
Clutching his handgun, Obeidi vowed to fight on. Police carried him
to a boat to cross the Tigris to safety. Military officers, local
officials, and even U.S. officials later testifying to Congress said
the hotel attack was what broke the army and police in Mosul. After
that, the defensive line in the west of the city melted away.
Barely three hours later, as reports spread of federal police
burning their camps and discarding their uniforms, the Nineveh
governor and his adviser met with Qanbar and Ghaidan in the
Operation Command near the airport.
The adviser, Khaled al-Obeidi, was himself a retired general and a
newly elected lawmaker. (He is unrelated to police Colonel Obeidi).
He urged the commanders to go on the offensive with the Second
Division, which sat relatively untouched across the river in eastern
Mosul.
Qanbar said that they had a plan. Nujaifi's adviser then urged
Gharawi to attack. Gharawi said he could not risk moving the
soldiers and federal police he had left.
"We can get you the force," the adviser said.
Qanbar interrupted. The governor and adviser should do their work,
he said. "We will do ours."
The governor and his adviser left the base at 8:25 p.m., unsure of
what the military's plan was.
Shortly before 9:30 p.m., Qanbar and Ghaidan told Gharawi they were
withdrawing across the river.
"They said goodbye and that's it. They didn't give me any
information or any reason," Gharawi said.
They stripped Gharawi of 46 men and 14 pickup trucks and Humvees –
the bulk of his security detail – say Gharawi and other officers.
The two senior generals moved the city's command to a base on the
city's eastern edge, according to multiple accounts.
Ghaidan and Qanbar's retreating convoy created the impression that
Iraq's security forces were deserting, Gharawi said. "This is the
straw that broke the camel's back. This was the biggest mistake."
Soldiers assumed their leaders had fled and within a couple of hours
most of the Second Division had deserted the city's east, Nujaifi,
the governor, told Reuters.
Gharawi and 26 of his men stayed hidden in their operations base in
the west, which swarmed with insurgents. That night, Gharawi said,
Ghaidan phoned him and assured him the army was holding eastern
Mosul.
Ghaidan and Qanbar both left Mosul overnight, arriving in Kurdistan
on June 10, according to Zebari, the chief of staff back in Baghdad.
"Of course once the commander leaves the soldier behind, why would
you want to fight?" asked Zebari. "The senior commander is the
brains of operation. Once he runs, the whole body is paralysed."
Zebari says he doesn't know who gave the order to leave. Qanbar and
Ghaidan were bypassing the defense ministry and reporting directly
to Maliki, Zebari told Reuters.
Early the next morning, Zebari rang Gharawi and urged him to leave
the operation command center. "You are going to get killed. Please
withdraw," both men remember Zebari saying.
Gharawi refused and insisted he needed approval from Maliki's
military office to leave.
Soon after, Gharawi decided to fight his way across a bridge to
eastern Mosul. He rang Ghaidan to tell him. "I am going to be
killed. I am surrounded by all directions. Send the prime minister
my greetings. Tell the prime minister I have done everything
possible that I can do."
He and his men crammed into five vehicles and headed across the
river. On the east bank, their five vehicles were set ablaze. They
dodged bullets and stones. Three of the men were shot dead. It was
every man for himself, Gharawi said.
In the east, Gharawi and three of his men commandeered an armoured
vehicle with flat tires and headed north to safety.
AFTERMATH
By August, Gharawi was back in his ancestral home in southern Iraq,
looking after his children, unsure what to do next. One day he
received a call from a friend in the defense ministry: He was under
investigation for dereliction of duty in Mosul.
At the same time, Maliki promoted Qanbar and moved to protect
Ghaidan. After the prime minister resigned on Aug. 15, though, the
two men were also forced into retirement.
It marked an effort by Haider al-Abadi, the new prime minister, to
start to clean and rebuild the Iraqi forces. Abadi has closed the
office Maliki used to direct commanders and has quietly retired
officers seen as loyal to his predecessor. Purging the security
institutions of their sectarianism, money-making schemes and
political manoeuvrings will take years.
And for now, Gharawi must take the blame for Mosul. Zebari believes
that's unfair. "Gharawi was an officer doing a job, but his luck ran
out just like many other officers," he said. "All of us have to
shoulder some of the responsibility. Every one of us."
Two weeks ago in Baghdad, face unshaven, voice hoarse, Gharawi
indicated a begrudging acceptance of his fate, whatever it might be.
"Maybe I'll be pardoned, maybe I'll be imprisoned, maybe I'll be
hanged," he said.
(Parker reported from Baghdad and Arbil, Salman from Baghdad, and
Coles from Arbil; With additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and
Saif Hameed in Baghdad; Edited by Simon Robinson)
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