article_snippet: It's part of a wide-scale offensive ordered by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Sunday.
article_snippet: ISIS, the radical Sunni militant group, has been on a murderous campaign to establish a caliphate across swaths of Iraq and Syria.
article_snippet: What awaits the Iraqi army is most likely a long, hard slog and not a quick rout.
article_snippet: The offensive involves around 30,000 fighters in all.
article_snippet: ISIS militants captured more than a thousand Iraqi soldiers, who laid down ISIS militants arms and donned civilian clothing in an attempt to flee a base once used by U.S. forces.
article_snippet: There is concern that Iraqi forces, eager for revenge, may kill combatants and civilians alike.
article_snippet: U.S. and other coalition troops have been conducting a crash course to retrain and upgrade the Iraqi army, and several thousand Iraqi troops have passed through a crash course.
article_snippet: This offensive will tell whether that training has made a difference.
article_snippet: If This offensive succeeds, the offensive succeeds means that retaking Mosul, a city 10 times bigger, is possible.
article_snippet: After that, retaking Mosul is an option.
article_snippet: If, however, This offensive fails, This offensive could spell disaster for Baghdad.
article_snippet: There will be political recriminations, the already fragile morale of the Iraqi army could collapse, the Kurdish autonomous region could decide to break from Iraq, and the Kurdish autonomous region would provide ISIS in Tikrit with a victory the Kurdish autonomous region hasn't seen since last summer.