These 5 maps explain the battle for Mosul

Thomson Reuters

The Islamic State captured Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, from the Iraqi government after a seven-day battle in June 2014. The US-backed Iraqi assault to recapture Mosul began with great fanfare on October 18, 2016.

Already, the battle to take Mosul back has lasted longer than the battle IS fought to conquer it. IS is outmanned and outgunned in this fight, but it has dug in. It occupies a highly defensible position, and it is not going to retreat. This battle is not going to be a rout. It will be a bloody example of urban warfare.

The advance on Mosul

This map reveals three points about the coalition to retake Mosul. First, it shows how far Iraqi Security Forces and Kurdish peshmerga fighters have advanced. In the first few days, these fighters advanced quickly. But they met stiffer Islamic State resistance roughly 10 to 25 miles outside the city. The coalition forces are still advancing, but their progress—especially approaching from the south—has been slowed a great deal.

Second, the map shows how far these forces still have to go to reach the city. The battle will not begin in earnest until they do.

Third, the map gives a sense of the anti-IS coalition’s strategy. Although there have been reports of Shiite militias heading west to cut off potential IS retreating points, those are unconfirmed at present, and the militias certainly don’t include the bulk of Iraq’s best fighters. The coalition hopes that IS fighters will retreat from their positions and melt back into the desert, fleeing to their strongholds in Syria or becoming easy targets for airstrikes. IS is not likely to retreat—if it was going to, it would have done so already.

A look at urban warfare

The second map in this series is a close-up satellite map of Mosul. Two key points should be taken from this map.

First, you get a sense of just how messy this battle is going to be. Mosul is surrounded by the desert on most sides, and the fighting in the deserts and villages is going to pale in comparison to the fighting in the city once Iraqi troops enter. Mosul’s population is between 700,000 and 1.5 million. Every house and structure on this satellite map is a potential booby-trap, sniper’s den, or obstacle to an enemy’s advance.

Second, you can see how the battle is going to progress if it goes well for the coalition. Mosul is divided by the Tigris River. As Iraqi forces make progress coming from the south and east, IS will eventually retreat across the five bridges that link the two sides of the city.

Those bridges will be major chokepoints. IS could opt to destroy them to slow the regime’s advance. If so, Iraqi forces will have to alter their approach to a siege and send troops around the other side or else take casualties in getting across those bridges.

The importance of supply lines

This third map gives a better picture of how far Iraqi and Kurdish forces have advanced. It shows that while IS is in an advantageous position to fight an incoming attack, it has a much shakier position defending its supply lines.

Though IS controls some of the major highways and roads, none of them lead to areas controlled by IS. Its only hope of resupply is through the vast swaths of desert to the southwest of the city. These supply lines are hard to interdict, but they also limit the amount of reinforcements IS can expect. This is one of the major reasons IS has thus far resorted to suicide bombs and booby-traps. We know IS has some major weaponry in Mosul, but it must conserve its ammunition.

This map also reveals that Mosul is the intersection of a number of major highways and roads. The major highways passing through the city link Mosul to Syria, Baghdad, Turkey, and even Iran. Mosul is a strategically important city, unlike many of the other small villages and areas IS has retreated from in the last year.