With recapture of Mosul, Canadian analysts shift focus to ISIL targets in Syria

Matthew Fisher: With recapture of Mosul, Canadian analysts shift focus to ISIL targets in Syria
One ongoing worry, however: despite their defeats, ISIL forces ‘are not surrendering in great numbers,’ Brig.-Gen. MacIsaac said. ‘That is not the way they operate’



As the focus of the war to defeat ISIL shifts away from Iraq, a Canadian military-intelligence cell is preparing threat assessments and targeting information for Islamic State targets in Syria.

The 50 soldiers of Canada’s All-Source Intelligence Centre have been tasked with gathering and analyzing information for the U.S.-led coalition “so we can develop legitimate military targets that need to be defeated,” Brig.-Gen. Daniel MacIsaac said in an interview from his headquarters in Kuwait.

Syria is becoming the focus of the war after the Iraqi government declared last week that Mosul, formerly Iraq’s second-largest city, had finally been recaptured from ISIL — or Daesh, as it is called in Arabic — after a bloody, 9-month-long house-to-house battle.


Brig.-Gen. Daniel MacIsaac DND/File
As ISIL “does not respect international borders, our assessments consider Daesh activity in Iraq and Syria,” MacIsaac’s office said in a statement about the intelligence cell’s work.

The All-Source Intelligence Centre is comprised of soldiers from many different branches of the military. Its members include trained intelligence, artillery and communications systems experts as well as geomatic engineers who capture and interpret the data from cameras, remote sensors and global navigation satellites to create maps. The coalition analyzes the information the Canadians assemble to identify potential threats, and to help battle planners choose targets for attack.


Targets the unit has identified included “Daesh command and control centres as well as combatants, installations or anything else that is essential to Daesh operations,” MacIsaac said

At the same time the Royal Canadian Air Force has continued to “fairly routinely” operate reconnaissance and refueling flights over Syria, he said.

Syrian airspace has been complicated by the presence of Russian and Syrian fighter jets, and a Russian threat that it might shoot down aircraft the U.S.-led coalition flies in the same crowded skies. While not explicitly connecting that statement to the Canadian air operations, MacIsaac said the RCAF flights took place only after “thorough threat assessments” had been made, and after coordinating “with coalition assets to assure appropriate air cover.”

According to MacIsaac, crews aboard the RCAF’s CP-140 Aurora reconnaissance aircraft had been “significantly involved” in identifying targets for allied warplanes to strike in Mosul “until a few months back, when we shifted to another area.” He declined to identify that new area of interest.

For several years Canada’s spy plane has flown over ISIL-controlled territory, its missions often lasting 10 hours or more. The propeller aircraft is equipped with cameras and sensor arrays. On-board analysts work at consoles behind the cockpit, searching for places where enemy fighters may exert influence over a home, a compound, a neighbourhood or an industrial area where ISIL is making bombs.

“It is not just as simple as picking targets,” said the general, who has gone on several of the flights over Iraq.

“We first do a threat systems assessment analysis. We look at various patterns, the economics, human or electromagnetic to figure out the network and from there figure out what facilities are key where they are making explosive devices.”


The RCAF’s CP-140 Aurora reconnaissance aircraft was “significantly involved” in identifying targets for allied warplanes to strike in Mosul. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz/File
The general also commands a small helicopter detachment and a military surgical hospital based in Erbil, Iraq that treats coalition troops and civilian workers. An RCAF C-130J Hercules aircraft was recently added to the 33-month-old mission — which the Liberal government recently extended until March, 2019 —to transport cargo and personnel between several coalition bases in the region.

As coalition commanders had long predicted, the ground battle for Mosul has been a violent slog, because ISIL have constantly used civilians as human shields and because, as MacIsaac saw for himself during a visit to the city, the group’s defences there “were very complex and deliberate. This was not a hasty defence that they had prepared.”

An engineer by military trade, MacIsaac said that ISIL was “not only brutal. It is intelligent and creative.” The enemy produced vast quantities of rockets, mortars and improvised explosive devices and put armour on cars that were then turned into vehicular IEDs.

Perhaps more ominously, ISIL has been among the first terrorist organizations to deploy unmanned aerial devices.

“They used small drones — ones that we would buy commercially — and know how to drop munitions from those drones,” MacIsaac said. “They would use drones for surveillance and monitor the Iraqis and our tactics and strategies.”

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While a few ISIL fighters are still hiding in tunnels under Mosul, and the Iraqi army must still conduct some clearance operations in the city, MacIsaac agreed with Baghdad’s assessment that the city has fallen to government forces. But with estimates of as many as 4,000 ISIL fighters still in Iraq and as many as 20,000 ISIL fighters in Syria, there are many battles still to be fought.

“Mosul was only one place in Iraq where Daesh can be found,” MacIsaac said, citing the Iraqi cities of Tal Afar, Hawija and Al-Qa’im and parts of the Euphrates River valley as among the areas still controlled by jihadists.

But ISIL has “lost more than 65 per cent of the land” it had until recently dominated in Iraq and Syria, and that had “resulted in the freeing of millions of people and significant reductions in their revenues.”

“The key part is that Daesh is on the defensive,” MacIsaac said, noting that the estimated flow of foreign recruits joining ISIL in Iraq and Syria had dropped from about 1,500 a month to “well below 100 a month in most assessments.”

One ongoing worry, however: despite their defeats, ISIL forces “are not surrendering in great numbers,” MacIsaac said. “That is not the way they operate.”

The jihadists either try to escape to fight another day, or fight to their deaths.