South Asia Center Senior Fellow Barbara Slavin writes for Al-Monitor on US policy toward ISIS:
US officials have begun discussions with local leaders in Iraq’s Ninevah province about how to recapture the city of Mosul in the wake of the successful operation to recover control of Mosul Dam from the Islamic State (IS), a US official said.
In an interview Aug. 20 with Al-Monitor, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, predicted that recovering Iraq’s second largest city — which was seized by IS on June 10 — would “require local forces” and be a long-term project.