Army: Behind the New Frontlines

Episode 1

The Battle for Mosul

59 mins

With political and public opposition to military intervention overseas, budget cuts and the smallest number of troops since the days of Oliver Cromwell the British Army are having to play a new role in a deeply unstable world. Through the eyes of the rank and file troops and their leaders we follow British forces helping the Iraqis to defeat Islamic State. As the battle for Mosul begins, the series is with British regiments operating behind the front-lines. Soldiers from 1 Rifles are in Northern Iraq where they are training a group of Kurdish recruits called the Green Eagles. Many of the Eagles are civilians with little or no combat experience and the British troops have just weeks to train them. General Jones is the most senior British officer in Iraq, he is the Deputy Commander of an International Coalition of 73 nations. His job is to provide the Iraqi army with tactical advice and to use coalition airstrikes to shape the battlefield. But in the first 51 days of the fight to liberate Mosul IS have launched over 200 suicide attacks in vehicles, killing 2,700 Iraqi soldiers and destroying 25 per cent of the Iraqi army vehicles. Jones must convince the Iraqis to improve their military planning or else the Battle for Mosul could be lost. 4 Rifles are stationed in Al Anbar province to protect the strategically important military airbase at Al Asad. The region is a stronghold for IS and before the British arrived the airbase was under daily attack but now there are hundreds of Iraqi troops stationed here tasked with cutting the flow of IS fighters crossing the Syrian border 100 miles away to join the fight for Mosul. 4 Rifles are also training local forces here but in an area of widespread support for IS this poses a much higher level of risk than working with the Kurdish Peshmurga in the North. The British have intelligence that IS are trying to turn Iraqi soldiers against them and are holding a soldier's family in a bid to get him to shoot a British soldier.