The Battle for Mosul Army: Behind the New Frontlines

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

The British Army in 2017 finds itself in uncharted territory.

RADIO CHATTER

They've not been at war for three years.

RAPID GUNFIRE

Yeah, move!

After controversial campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan,

there's a political reluctance to put boots on the ground.

Afghanistan has taken an horrendous toll on our regiment,

absolutely horrendous.

You will struggle to find anyone who hasn't lost a friend.

PROTESTORS CHANT

There's also widespread opposition to military intervention.

The Army's budgets are under increasing pressure.

They could go and manoeuvre without firing ammunition,

it saves you 2 million of the 3.8 that you hope to save.

The British Army is smaller than it's been

probably since Cromwell's day,

and I would want to look myself very closely in the mirror

if I felt that there was a risk of the Army being sent to do something

that it wasn't properly prepared to do.

GUNFIRE

But now, with the rise of the so-called Islamic State...

..the threat of a new Cold War in Eastern Europe...

RAPID GUNFIRE

Wait!

..and famine and conflict in sub-Saharan Africa...

..the British Army have to play a new role

in a deeply unstable world.

How many patients do you usually see a day?

700 to 800.

Filmed over 18 months,

this series takes us into the heart of the British Army...

How many Russians are across the border? 100,000 odd?

Yeah, a lot.

..through the eyes of the rank and file...

No-one else has operated in Estonia before.

This is completely different from Afghanistan

and Iraq.

..and the leaders.

-General. How are you?

-Good to see you.

Very nice to see you, too.

We see the challenges of fighting wars when we are not at war.

The days of going out and fighting the enemy, such as Isis,

for reasons above our pay grade, that doesn't happen any more.

In this episode, the Army return to Iraq,

where they have a bloody history.

Can we just search you?

About three weeks ago we met a bloke that was fighting us in Basra.

Only cos his family got killed by the British

that he decided to fight us,

so I can see his side of the story as well.

Now, they are helping the Iraqis defeat so-called Islamic State.

Since the Mosul battle started, how many vehicles

have you managed to take, damaged from the front line,

fix them, and get them back up to the front line?

As the battle for Mosul begins...

..we are with the regiments operating behind the front line.

One of the Iraqis, his family was being held by Daesh, and they were

threatening to hurt his family if he didn't shoot one of us.

One of the ways we look at it

is to be charming to every single person that we meet and work with,

but to always have a plan to kill them.

Can the Army face off their enemies, find lasting peace,

and avoid being drawn into costly new wars?

THEY COUNT IN THEIR LANGUAGE

HE GIVES ORDERS

British soldiers from 1 Rifles regiment

are in northern Iraq.

They have just weeks to train a group of Kurdish recruits

to fight the so-called Islamic State,

known locally as Daesh.

1 Platoon, listen in, listen to me.

25-year-old Lieutenant Jamie Robertson

is on his first overseas operation.

Quite simply, the main aim is to train them

to be able to defeat Daesh.

It is definitely a very different tour for a lot of people.

Particularly a lot of the guys that have been to Afghanistan before,

it's taken a while to adjust.

Thanks very much, sir.

We train to fight,

that's our bread and butter, that's what we do.

So, to then take that and pass it on to someone else

and let them do the fighting definitely was strange,

I think initially, for a lot of people.

ROLL CALL

When the so-called Islamic State captured Mosul in 2014,

Ibrahim Diab was a student.

Now, he's in charge of a new regiment, called the Green Eagles.

Many are civilians,

with little or no combat experience.

Do you think the urban stuff in the buildings,

is that more useful than some of the countryside,

rural stuff we were doing?

This is probably the most likely formation you're going to use.

The Green Eagles are part of the Kurdish Peshmerga,

a mixture of Christians, Kurds and other Iraqi minorities.

So if you'll stand up...

All groups that have been brutally targeted

by the so-called Islamic State.

Obviously, there's a lot of openings in an urban environment.

If someone steps out with a machine gun, it can hurt a lot more people.

They're not always a regular force that have been trained before.

They're taxi drivers, they're local farmers

that on the weekends have volunteered to come out and fight.

They might have owned an AK for the last 30 years,

but never been taught how to use it properly.

Taking someone that's got absolutely no experience and knowing

in five or ten weeks' time they're going to be going to the front line

and they're going to be fighting,

and it's our responsibility to put them in the best stead for it,

yeah, that is challenging.

Keep the spacing like that.

The Green Eagles need training but no motivation to fight.

All the IEDs are marked, so stop walking on glass

and patrol like you normally would, OK?

In 2014, the so-called Islamic State,

IS, swept across Iraq,

seizing a third of the country.

An international coalition, including Britain,

targeted their strongholds with air strikes, weakening their grip.

But IS still controlled the city of Mosul,

home to 1.5 million people.

To defeat IS, Mosul must be liberated.

Would he mind telling us how he lost his family members?

Was that in the fighting?

HE TRANSLATES

-REPORTER:

-The headlines this morning.

Iraqi forces have launched an offensive against fighters

from the Islamic State group to recapture the city of Mosul.

At first light, they advance on so-called Islamic State.

Zero hour had finally come...

..bringing an offensive that could decide the fate

of the extremists and ultimately of Iraq itself.

With the battle for Mosul underway, General Jones,

the deputy commander of an international coalition

of 69 countries,

and the most senior British Army officer in Iraq,

is travelling to ensure the Kurdish Green Eagles will be ready to fight.

All right, guys, great to see you. Thanks very much.

Nice to see you.

Everything with Daesh is done in a calculated manner.

As the Iraqi Security Forces advance towards Mosul,

Daesh caused that damage and destruction,

and the oil wells have been burning ever since.

They know that smoke reduces the effectiveness of our surveillance

and our strikes and makes our lives harder.

In Mosul, we can absolutely guarantee

that today there will be beheadings going on.

There will be people being thrown into burning oil pits.

You know, this is a brutal, brutal regime.

Liberating Mosul is a vital stage in the defeat of Daesh in Iraq.

The hard yards in retaking Mosul

is being done by the Iraqi Security Forces.

We're not doing the fighting.

We're here to support them with advice, and then on the ground

provide them with air support and surveillance.

Shape the battlefield.

Set the conditions for the Iraqis when they attack,

identifying enemy positions in advance and striking them.

It might take a little longer than it might if we were doing it,

but it lays the ground for a far more lasting solution

cos they are the ones who have liberated their country,

and I think that is very powerful for the future.

-Hello, Jamie, how are you?

-I ain't bad.

-All OK?

-Yeah, good to see you.

And you. What's happening?

So, what we've got, this is one of the platoons here which is going

-through defence lessons.

-Yeah.

-They kind of go for a more medieval style of...

-Defend the fort.

-Yeah.

-Absolutely.

-Hold the walls and hunker in.

What they initially did was just line everyone on this berm.

So we are trying to teach them that if you can stop them further ahead

and have this as the last line, it's that buffer, it creates time,

-creates space.

-Absolutely.

And what level of experience have these guys got?

It's a big mixture.

The role of the British Army is very different

to the last time they were here.

When allied forces overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003,

they were initially welcomed as liberators.

But liberators quickly became occupiers,

and the Iraqi population turned against them.

179 British soldiers were killed in action.

Iraq has been torn apart by sectarian violence since,

a situation IS has exploited.

The British military, I think it's fair to say,

would feel they've got some unfinished business.

I think there was probably a degree of frustration as to the outcome.

Was it nested to the very best political strategy?

That is for others to comment upon.

I guess what I would say is that

because of the way this campaign has been fought,

I would hope that the government of Iraq and Iraqi security forces will

have a kind of credibility, an authority,

that wasn't there previously.

Jamie, thank you very much. I will... I shall see you later on.

Thank you.

This new role for the British Army leaves them in an uncertain position

against an enemy who has a hatred of the West.

A week into the battle for Mosul,

IS launched numerous attacks

in towns across Iraq.

THEY SHOUT

One attack is in Al Anbar province, western Iraq.

The region was once a base for Al-Qaeda.

Now it's a stronghold for IS.

250 British soldiers

from 4 Rifles regiment

have been sent here

to protect a strategically important

Iraqi airbase at Al Asad.

The route we're going to take is we are just going to dismount,

we're going to walk through the abandoned tubes,

all the way along, through the running track,

down by the cinema,

and drop down into the IF Sec-4 HQ.

That's clear, mate, that's us clear of you.

Yeah, so you can move forward if you want.

During the last Iraq war,

thousands of American troops were stationed at Al Asad.

They had a nickname, Camp Cupcake,

cos it had all the sort of...all the luxuries that you get back home.

So, for the Americans, it was actually a really good posting.

But it's obviously not like that any more.

As you can see, there's an outdoor pool.

Up further down there, there's like a stadium with an athletics track.

There's all sorts of stuff here, really.

It would have been nice to have that now,

especially in the summer, with the swimming pool.

The base covers 25 square miles.

Its size makes it difficult to defend.

The main thing for us is to keep vigilant, not let yourself get lax,

not let your guard down.

DISTANT EXPLOSIONS

Lance Corporal Steve Smith fought against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But the British Army's role here is very different.

They can't leave the base or actively seek out the enemy.

Once Mosul is done, the question

we've really got to ask ourselves is,

what are Daesh going to look at doing next?

Are they going to look at coming...

infiltrating more into this area?

Are they going to become more of a small insurgency in different towns?

As-Salaam-Alaikum.

It's easy to identify a uniformed enemy,

but the minute they stop becoming uniformed

and start fitting in with the local population,

that's when it is a trickier task.

Before 4 Rifles arrived, Al Asad was under constant attack from IS.

DISTANT VOICES

GUNFIRE

Hello!

Hello!

SHOUTING

GUNFIRE

They infiltrated them, and I believe they sort of...

..sort of moved around the buildings,

and that's why we are doing patrols like this, is to monitor what...

..to get used what buildings are in use,

and then when buildings start getting used again,

we can start asking why.

Hundreds of Iraqi National Army soldiers are stationed at Al Asad.

THEY CHANT

Their job is to cut the flow of IS fighters

crossing the Syrian border 100 miles away

and joining the fight in Mosul.

The coalition has brought in heavy artillery

and state-of-the-art surveillance equipment

to protect the Iraqi army.

Belt-fed weapon, four-round bursts, supposedly high calibre,

so the only ones that it could be are a PK or a DshK,

and 5,900 mils from 73.

There is now no freedom of movement

through that corridor from the south, from the north,

anywhere down towards Baghdad

or up towards Mosul without us

being able to get eyes on it.

The idea being that we now constrict them

and then push them into a single location,

push them back towards the Syrian border,

clearing Iraq of all Daesh activity and fighters.

Uh, centre, so...

Any kind of movement.

We are still in a hostile environment

where anything can happen,

so things can change, you know, at a snap of a finger.

All the guys just need to be ready.

General Jones oversees the coalition's strategy

to liberate Mosul.

OK, team.

Hello, sir.

Hi, team. Who's briefing?

Seven weeks into the battle,

Iraqi forces are now fighting inside the east of the city.

-The biggest progress of the day is on the core axis.

-Yep.

You had forces that were right here,

had a foothold secured in the southeastern portion of Mosul.

Any other developments that I need?

There's been a number of VBIEDs.

We've seen about eight today.

One was up on CTS forces, the others were focused on the advancing forces

-in the south.

-So that advance on the hospital had seven VBIEDs

-against it?

-Yes, sir.

Vehicles they use for these assaults, brutal weapon.

The Iraqi Security Forces are pretty terrified of them.

Daesh's industry of war is on a very significant scale,

and it requires explosives on a very large scale.

A very well fabricated platform,

perfectly designed for the job they're there for,

which is to get an explosive device at speed down in amongst

the Iraqi Security Forces.

IS have launched over 200 VBIED attacks in the first

51 days of the battle for Mosul...

..killing thousands of Iraqi soldiers.

Unlike past campaigns,

General Jones can't put coalition troops on the ground

to solve their problem.

He is flying to the Iraqi army Forward Operating Base,

south of Mosul

and must find another way to help stop the heavy death toll

of Iraqi soldiers.

I guess I understand better than most people the true cost of war.

My father was killed in the Falklands War

commanding a parachute battalion

at the Battle of Goose Green and was awarded the Victoria Cross

for his troubles.

I undoubtedly feel motivated by the values he stood for.

The world has changed enormously since 1982, but I quite regularly,

in my professional career,

refer to him and, in my mind, what he might have done

in a set of circumstances.

The Iraqi security forces, as they press into Mosul,

are taking pretty heavy attrition in terms of their vehicles,

and as Daesh throws

suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices at them,

a lot of the vehicles are getting damaged and destroyed.

And if we're going to keep the Iraqis in the fight,

we need to repair their vehicles, we need to get them fresh vehicles.

They'll just download here and move...migrate the equipment over.

And the track vehicles will all get worked on

just right out in the open, sir.

-Very temporary.

-Yeah.

A quarter of the Iraqi army's vehicles

have now been destroyed by IS.

General Jones fears the offensive to take back Mosul could be

in serious trouble.

Aha!

General, how are you?

-Good to see you.

-Very nice to see you, too. How are you?

General Hassan al-Maliki is in charge of logistic support

for the Iraqi army in Mosul.

How does a broken vehicle get from the front line back to here?

If a Humvee needs a new tyre, do you send the tyre forward,

does the vehicle come back here, how does it work?

Since the Mosul battle started,

how many vehicles have you managed to take damaged from the front line,

back to Taji, fix them, and get them back out to the front line?

That is the bit that we've got to work on,

is see how we can get some of these battle-damaged vehicles

back forward faster.

The coalition has spent over 550 million arming

and training the Iraqi army.

But even General Jones cannot control how they choose to deploy

their resources.

You know, it had that air of

almost being there for demonstration purposes.

You know, so people were lined up...

..to kind of almost show us what great work they were doing,

but there was kind of no real evidence of work going on.

Is that fair?

There's less investment going on here than I thought there was.

The next day, General Jones calls a crisis meeting with Iraqi and

coalition generals.

He must convince the Iraqis to improve their military planning...

Very nice to see you. As-Salaam-Alaikum.

..else the battle for Mosul could fail.

I think the vehicles that we really want to focus on today are probably

Humvees, those are the key vehicle for the fight for Mosul.

We are now using vehicles that we were keeping

for after the Battle of Mosul.

So, at the beginning of a battle, we move at the speed of the fighter,

but very soon we start moving at the speed of logistics,

and we are at that point right now.

So we are very interested in what the plan is to recover the damaged

vehicles, then repair them, and then return them.

I think what we need to try to help you with is,

as the vehicles come back down,

the ones that are really badly damaged,

leave them at the back of the queue.

We take the ones that are battle-damaged that can be fixed

and can be got back into the fight in a matter of days,

those are the ones where I would

advise we should be putting our effort.

The speed of logistics has to catch up to the speed of the fighter right

now, and really the momentum in Mosul will depend on

how quickly we can turn out particularly Humvees

from the third and the fourth line.

We always knew that Mosul would be a tough fight, it is a tough fight.

I would say that Daesh are fighting harder than they ever have before.

And they are not giving up easily.

What we've then got to try and do is help coach them,

help them refine their tactics,

and then also look at how we keep

the Iraqi security forces in the fight.

Any military only succeeds because of its logistics,

and we need to make sure the logistics of sustainment is there,

so the Iraqis can keep up the fight all the way through Mosul.

Thank you very much. Shukran.

Thank you very much. I think reasonably positive, small steps.

You've had the intelligence that a suspect or someone,

a vehicle that needs to be searched, somewhat suspicious,

is going to be passing through this location.

All these stones, all these represent is a road.

Need to make sure that all your section, however many blokes it is,

they are not fixated on that vehicle,

because that could just be just a "come on",

and you could have enemy around this area here.

On the ground in northern Iraq,

IS's VBIEDs are striking fear into the Green Eagles.

This is the most dangerous threat that the Peshmerga face.

They are invariably very difficult to destroy and incredibly effective,

and quite simple to make. This one is a Ford F-150 truck.

They just stick a load of armoured plating on the front

and then fill the back with explosives,

and then just drive head on into the Peshmerga,

with a guy in the front that's ready to give his life.

This is quite a small one.

We get asked a lot by the Pesh, how do we try to take these on?

The main thing that we try and do, cos, as you can see,

the armour on the front, this is where the whole focus is,

so it is about making the vehicle turn to expose the softer rears.

Always try and make chicanes that they have to manoeuvre around

to expose the vulnerable points.

But this really is what strikes fear into the Peshmerga the most,

and quite rightly so.

It is a very crude, very effective tool against them, and hard to stop.

British military tactics only go so far.

IS has an army of volunteers ready to drive the VBIEDs.

As part of their propaganda, they post the selection process online.

That was genuine happiness.

That he gets to be the next suicide bomber.

It's a hard mind-set to try and understand. The best way to try and

work out how someone fights,

to counter it, is try and put yourself in their shoes.

But obviously, it is very difficult, from our point of view,

to try and get into that mind-set.

Daesh have absolutely no regard for the preservation of life,

and to us, the British Army and the Peshmerga here,

that is fundamental to everything we do -

we are fighting to protect life.

Ibrahim and the Green Eagles

will be sent to the front line in a matter of weeks.

Can you raise your hand if you have a weapon with you

that you can bring in to training tomorrow?

SHE TRANSLATES

The coalition has supplied the Peshmerga with guns and ammunition,

but all resources are now being used inside Mosul.

When we first started the training this week,

about 80% of them had an AK-47 with them,

but that number has dropped off now and what we've found is that

whichever member of the family needs it the most that day,

because they go to the front line, they'll take that weapon with them,

so we've gone from 80% weapons to about 20-30 now,

which makes obviously training quite difficult.

GUNSHOT

The British Army is walking a political tightrope

in helping both the Kurdish Peshmerga

and the Iraqi National Army.

The Kurds want Mosul to be part of an independent Kurdish state.

Their plan is vehemently opposed by the Iraqi government.

Do you ever fear, you've trained all these different

parts of Iraqi society,

that what could happen in the future could be detrimental?

Yeah, so, I mean, there's an argument that says

liberating town or city is the easy part.

Easy being relative, you know, it's a tough fight,

but you know what you've got to do.

You've got to fight your way through the town and the city.

The greater challenge that the government of Iraq has

is what follows.

What the international community has got to help Baghdad with

is after Daesh is defeated.

How you draw society together.

Reconciling communities will be a great challenge.

At Al Asad, there have been fresh suicide attacks near the base.

OK, so an update to the enemy picture.

Significant events, so they've received two incidents of incoming,

one coming from Haditha, which is approximately here,

and another coming from Sagra.

Again, what that's showing is Daesh's will to continue fighting.

They're willing to hold that ground and fight for that ground.

Of note is two suicide bombers

that struck Isil positions along Highway 19.

Essentially, one of them was killed before he could detonate his vest

and the other successfully detonated.

Two friendly KIAs and two friendly wounded.

B Dock, India 1-0 Alpha.

Permission to enter friendly lines, 2 by 11. Over.

25-year-old Lieutenant Pete Enriques

is observing a US Marine mortar team on the outer perimeter.

India 1-0 Alpha.

In the last attack on Al Asad, IS infiltrated the base,

sneaking through the riverbeds.

The Americans are taking offensive action to prevent another attack.

Fire!

Fire!

It goes to show how determined these people are.

Crawling in five days on your belt buckle, on your chest is...

I mean, that's pretty grim.

We do a fair old bit of crawling but I can't have possibly imagined

doing it for five days.

By firing the mortars, it sends that clear warning that, yeah,

we know what you're up to and we know what routes you take in.

It's a pretty aggressive deterrent to Daesh,

that if they want to try it again, look, we're here,

we're not afraid to shoot.

Come and get it if you really want, sort of thing.

Give them some room behind us.

Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.

We signed up to the infantry, we signed up to the Army,

because we wanted to pick up a rifle and get directly involved.

Having to answer the hard questions that the riflemen are asking,

because they're intelligent guys,

having to put a positive spin on why they can't necessarily go out

into the area outside of Al Asad airbase when they'd like to.

So, it is frustrating.

It's an entirely different type of war fighting.

-Good morning. Salaam-Alaikum.

-Salaam-Alaikum.

Lance Corporal Smith and Rifleman Cockayne

man checkpoints to search Iraqi civilians who work on the base.

IS could recruit one of them to launch a suicide attack.

We're just looking for any signs

that would indicate someone is not normal.

It's cold, innit?

If someone isn't welcoming, there's got to be a reason why.

The best way to look at it is

someone that's about to have a fight,

someone that wants to cause trouble,

they don't tend to be part of the group.

They tend to be just on that outside,

being a bit itchy, being a bit twitchy and basically

getting ready to strike.

Someone that's going to cause an insider threat is usually the same.

Yes, so it's the AND workers.

So, literally, 5 through to 11. Over.

They're just like people back home.

They're friendly enough.

I don't have a problem with them.

I like 'em. They've got good banter.

4 Rifles' role is a delicate balancing act.

As long as we're here helping them, they're going to be on our side.

The minute we stop helping them, or the minute we do something wrong

is when they'll switch and turn against us.

At the end of the day, this is their country.

We're coming here. While we're trying to help them,

you've got to show them respect

and not treat them like second-class human beings.

Which is maybe the mistake

that other coalitions have made in the past.

So, that's a big emphasis, is treating them

with the proper respect that they deserve.

And if all else fails, just say Manchester United.

-They love it.

-Love it!

THEY CHANT

4 Rifles are also training hundreds of soldiers

from the Iraqi National Army at Al Asad.

In an area of widespread support for IS,

this poses a higher level of threat

than working with the Kurdish Peshmerga.

4 Rifles have intelligence that IS are trying to blackmail

and turn some of the Iraqi soldiers against them.

-OK, Salaam-Alaikum.

-Salaam.

-Ismee Woody.

-Woody.

And today, I'm going to teach you how to search routes.

As a Guardian Angel, my particular job is to observe the Iraqis

who are under training,

just to make sure that they're not going to pose any threat

to the British or coalition chaps who are delivering that training.

-We have three types of IEDs.

-HE TRANSLATES

Can anyone name them?

Captain Tom Legg is the first line of defence

against an insider threat.

Probably the main threat that we face from the Iraqis

is actually one of them being coerced, so for example,

we've already had a situation where one of the Iraqis,

his family was being held by Daesh

and they were threatening to hurt his family

if he didn't shoot one of us.

At this point, the rear man will work his way, searching up the road.

He'll reach the marks and he'll make his own mark.

I don't think anyone likes the idea that somebody that you could have

built up a relationship with could then harm you but unfortunately

you've got to be aware of it.

One of the ways we look at it is to be charming to every single person

that we meet and work with but to always have a plan to kill them.

A further threat to 4 Rifles

is some of the Iraqi soldiers they are now training

were their sworn enemies just a decade ago in the last Iraq War.

Rifleman Adam Barham still bears the scars of that conflict.

I took a bit of a grenade coming in the back of our wagon.

And it exploded and it hit me in the side of the head, up the side,

I've got bits. I've got a bit come out of my nose the other day.

I don't know if you can see it there.

When I was in the gym the other day,

it popped out of my eye and got stuck in my nose.

About three weeks ago, we met a bloke that was fighting us in Basra,

so we started speaking to him and he said that he was part of the army

we were fighting down there. It's a bit weird,

knowing that he could have been the one shooting at us.

He said he was sorry for what he did,

but he was just trying to defend his country.

It's only because his family got killed by the British

that he decided to fight us.

So, I can see his side of the story as well.

As neighbourhoods are liberated in east Mosul,

tens of thousands of civilians flee to refugee camps.

Humanitarian planning for Mosul was based on a worst-case scenario,

where the entire population of Mosul leaves their homes.

The government of Iraq advice is to stay at home

so long as it's safe to do so.

Prime Minister Abadi, he's walking a kind of tightrope

between the risks to the populations -

do they stay in the city, compared with the risks

of a humanitarian catastrophe if they come out of the city?

Many are ignoring the government's advice.

This way? OK.

General Jones worries the huge numbers

could overwhelm the Iraqi army

and divert resources away from the battle.

I'd very much welcome your thoughts on the situation

and where we might be going next.

If we start getting very large numbers of people

coming out of the city,

that will very quickly overwhelm the ministry organisations

but also the international community.

The eyes of the world is on Mosul and the last thing we want

is the fantastic liberation of the city by the Iraqi security forces

to be compromised by the humanitarian situation.

-Thank you very much.

-Shukran.

The Iraqi strategy of keeping residents in Mosul

is an uneasy compromise for General Jones.

It means the civilians are at risk from collateral damage.

Shukran. Very nice to see you.

Yeah, no, it'd be really good to have a quick look.

-The colonel seems a good guy.

-He is.

What you can't do is just look for quick wins, you know,

think that the retaking a town, a city, is the end of the story.

It's absolutely not. You've got to follow through on it.

You know, if you look at Mosul, the last thing anybody wants,

least of all Prime Minster Abadi,

is for the story of the liberation of Mosul to be overshadowed

by some kind of humanitarian disaster.

So, there's a direct correlation between victory on the battlefield

and managing the civilian population.

One million civilians are still trapped inside Mosul.

They are not just at risk of collateral damage.

IS are holding thousands of them hostage

and using them as human shields.

They have executed nearly 3,000 who tried to escape.

50 miles away, 1 Rifles are training the Green Eagles on how to counter

IS's use of human shields.

Right, clear!

Particularly in the urban environment,

it's really important that wherever you look, your rifle looks as well.

So, when you come through a doorway,

instead of just looking left and right,

if you look, your weapon goes.

At no point do you want to expose the doorway,

otherwise someone inside will see you.

This is the most dangerous environment that you can operate in.

Going through buildings. There's so many blind corners.

It gives massive advantages to the people in there, defending,

so you've got to be confident, you've got to be sure of yourself.

The second you hesitate in a doorway,

or you go round a corner without somebody following you,

that's when mistakes will happen.

Not bad. So, now, you're covering this door now, yeah?

Ibrahim and the Green Eagles have now finished their training.

They will be sent to liberate Bashiqa, on the edge of Mosul.

We have become quite good friends.

Let's go, you'll lose it!

Every day, when we're training, he's always the first one there,

immaculately turned out, working the hardest.

Go!

He's clearly very proud and wants to do very well.

So, it's going to be slightly strange,

him going off into the battle and us staying here

and not necessarily knowing exactly what's going on.

-Yeah!

-Yeah!

Look, your officer's doing it! Mine's doing it.

As areas surrounding east Mosul are liberated,

the coalition and Iraqi army face a new set of problems.

Each town and a city being liberated out of the east of Mosul,

absolutely riddled with improvised explosive devices.

Thousands upon thousands of them.

Everywhere. You open your fridge, it detonates.

You get in bed, you put your head on the pillow, the pillow detonates.

I mean, there are just IEDs riddled everywhere.

So, it's going to be a very, very major job to clear those devices.

Are they essentially their engineers?

Not always, they can be...

-Some of the courses that we run, they could be search-aware.

-Yes.

To help clear IEDs from liberated areas,

British engineers are giving another group of Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers

specialist training.

HE SHOUTS IN KURDISH

So, you can see there, he's checking with his Vallon

and he's also keeping his head up, looking for anything else in depth.

Corporal Scott Holloway spent months clearing IEDs in Afghanistan.

We're using all the experience that we've gained

within Afghanistan and Iraq before.

We're bringing all of that knowledge across to the Kurds.

We are seen as the best in the world,

so if people want to use our knowledge,

I would be more than happy to impart what I know onto them.

We teach them the gold standard, the best way to do everything.

However, we know it's not always

going to work like that on the ground.

So, whether they need to adapt that when they're out there

is down to them on the ground.

The man here's doing it spot on.

So, any tripwire feels, he's doing it correct.

The other thing he's doing is looking inside the window,

looking if there's any potential devices.

HE TRANSLATES

So, if there's anyone else doing this,

I want to see you do it just like this man.

Lieutenant Rashid and his unit have just returned from the front line.

Was this all found in the same place?

Their mentality is they've always had a warrior sort of background.

They're always thinking they want to be the guy

to plant the flag after it's all done.

Be the hero and the warrior of the day.

So, they're now actually quite eager to get back out there

and show what they're made of, really.

Actually, when they leave here,

they are going to go away and do some pretty scary stuff.

It's like sending your children off to school.

Happy, but also, at the same time you're thinking,

"Oh, what could happen in that playground, you know?"

Anything could happen.

HE SHOUTS IN ARABIC

Weeks after Ibrahim left the British Army,

his Green Eagles regiment helped to liberate Bashiqa

on the outskirts of Mosul.

Now, Ibrahim must ensure all IS fighters and sympathisers

have left the town, so residents can return home.

The battle for Bashiqa was fierce.

90 Peshmerga soldiers were killed.

IS hid in a vast network of tunnels to avoid coalition air strikes

and launch counterattacks behind enemy lines.

The Green Eagles have begun to clear the tunnels of IEDs.

The Iraqi army says its troops have seized

nearly all of the eastern half of Mosul

from the self-styled Islamic State.

This morning, Iraqi General Talib Al-Shaghati

made the announcement

that the army had accomplished its goals in eastern Mosul.

It's taken 94 days to liberate half of Mosul.

The coalition's new role in the war has been controversial.

Independent monitors claim 1,400 civilians

have been killed in coalition air strikes.

We will do everything in our power to defeat Daesh,

kill Daesh in the field of battle

without causing any civilian casualties,

but regrettably, in some instances, there will be civilian casualties.

If we did nothing, there'd be a great deal more civilian casualties

because Daesh are killing the civilian population

on a daily basis.

So, there's no sort of really easy way around this.

The cost of fighting IS in Iraq has been enormous.

As the battle for west Mosul continues,

4 Rifles are coming to the end of their tour.

-Salaam-Alaikum.

-Salaam.

-How you doing?

-CAMERA CLICKS

-See you later!

Doesn't matter where you go in the world, Instagram always counts.

I'm proud to say that I'm out here representing my country.

While it is frustrating and we want to go out there and find Isis

and do the job ourselves, if we did that,

chances are some of the boys might not come home.

So, it is really good knowing

we are going to be going home together.

Boss, can you take a photo?

I'll get one from a bit further back...

..so I get the whole plane in there.

That's better.

Ready?

Got ya.

Al Asad airbase,

front line of defence against Daesh and a good photo opportunity!

Armed Forces has changed though, hasn't it?

The days of going out and finding the enemy and destroying the enemy,

such as Isis, for reasons above our pay grade,

that doesn't happen any more.

I know if you speak to our family, they'd much rather we do this

than going through building to building in Mosul.

I don't think the public back home,

I don't think they'd want us

to have another Afghan campaign, either, would they?

Nine times out of ten, when you wake up at 3am,

you don't feel like you're helping anyone back home.

But when you really think about it, yeah, you probably are.

The most annoying thing is having a 50-cal

and not being able to use it.

It's just sitting there, toying with ya!

I think the difficulty from a soldier's perspective

with the sort of campaigns we get involved in today

is that there's no clean-cut victories.

It's not like in the Falklands War

where the flag flies over Stanley and the war is won.

There's no kind of winning or losing per se.

And, yeah, that makes our lives harder.

-GUNFIRE

-Move!

Next week, British soldiers are on the front line of a new Cold War...

How many Russians are across the border?

-100,000 odd?

-Yeah, a lot.

The Russians were pushing an agenda

that said the Nato troops were arriving and were raping people.

..defending a country under serious threat of Russian invasion.

The Estonians genuinely think that an attack is imminent.