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Capture Of Ramadi Complex Could Mark Strategic Victory Over Islamic State, But Will It Hold?

Capture Of Ramadi Complex Could Mark Strategic Victory Over Islamic State, But Will It Hold?

By Alexandra Zavis and Amro Hassan, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

CAIRO — The Iraqi military said Monday that its forces have recaptured the main government complex in Ramadi from Islamic State fighters who have occupied the city since May, providing a strategic victory and a morale boost to the country’s struggling security forces.

Anti-terrorism troops hoisted the national flag atop the key complex in the long-contested Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, Iraqi joint operations spokesman, said in a televised statement.

Rasool claimed that Ramadi had been fully liberated. However, Maj. Gen. Ismail Mahalawi, head of operations in Iraq’s western Anbar province, later told reporters that the militants still controlled parts of the city. Fighting was reported in downtown Ramadi as well as in some communities on the city’s eastern and northern outskirts.

The recapture of Ramadi, the Anbar provincial capital and its most populous city, would be the most significant in a series of recent successes by the Iraqi forces, which collapsed in the face of rapid Islamic State advances in mid-2014. Since the spring, the militants have been driven from the northern cities of Tikrit and Beiji, as well as Sinjar, a northwestern town near the Syrian border.

But defense experts caution that it is too soon to speak of a turning point in the struggle against Islamic State. The group still controls large stretches of Iraq and neighboring Syria, including most of the rest of Anbar and the large, densely populated city of Mosul in the north of Iraq.

“It’s a good tactical victory,” said Ben Connable, a retired Marine Corps intelligence officer who served three tours in Iraq before joining the Rand Corp., a think tank. “But really, we are just back to where we were six months ago. So to paint this as a strategic victory against Islamic State I think is a gross exaggeration.”

The seizure of the government compound in Ramadi followed a week of intense fighting as Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s forces pressed into the center of the heavily defended city after seizing ground on the periphery.

All the bridges leading into Ramadi had been destroyed before the advance began, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Barriers had been erected in every street and the ground seeded with explosives. There were also sniper nests and mortar batteries to contend with, they said.

“The clearance of the government center is a significant accomplishment and is the result of many months of hard work,” Col. Steven Warren, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, said in a statement.

He said the U.S-led coalition, which includes major European and Middle Eastern powers, had carried out more than 630 airstrikes in the area, provided training and advice to Iraqi units, and contributed specialized equipment to clear explosives.

Iraqi state television broadcast footage of Iraqi troops celebrating inside the government compound Monday. Some could be seen slaughtering a sheep, while others raised their weapons and danced.

“Now will be a process of going block by block … clearing out booby traps and clearing out small pockets of resistance,” Warren told the Los Angeles Times. “That could take time. Ramadi is a fairly large, densely populated center. Every house is a potential bomb.”

The city could provide an important base of operations for Iraqi forces as they attempt to recapture other parts of the fertile Euphrates River valley, which stretches from the outskirts of Baghdad to the Syrian border, and press north toward Mosul.

However, U.S. defense officials said Monday’s victory was as important symbolically and politically as it was militarily.

“The fight for Ramadi demonstrates how capable, motivated local forces backed by coalition air support and training can defeat ISIL,” said U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, using a common acronym for Islamic State. “Now it’s important for the Iraqi government, working with provincial and local authorities, to seize this opportunity to maintain the peace in Ramadi, prevent the return of ISIL and other extremists, and facilitate the return of Ramadi’s citizens back to the city.”

The United States and the coalition have pledged over $50 million to a United Nations Development Program fund to support efforts to rebuild and stabilize areas seized from Islamic State, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said in a statement.

Part of Islamic State’s strength has been its ability to recruit foreign fighters who are eager to join the group’s self-declared caliphate. That may be harder to do when the caliphate is contracting rather than expanding, according to Stephen D. Biddle, a defense policy expert at George Washington University.

“This isn’t the first time they have lost real estate, but it’s the first time they have lost a major city,” Biddle said.

(Hassan, in Cairo, is a special correspondent. Times staff writer W.J. Hennigan in Washington contributed to this report.)

©2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: A member of the Iraqi security forces holds an Iraqi flag at a government complex in the city of Ramadi, December 28, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer

 

Iraqi Army Declares First Major Victory Over Islamic State In Ramadi

Iraqi Army Declares First Major Victory Over Islamic State In Ramadi

By Ahmed Rasheed and Maher Chmaytelli

BAGHDAD (Reuters) — Iraq’s army declared victory over Islamic State fighters in a provincial capital west of Baghdad on Sunday, the first major triumph for the U.S.-trained force since it collapsed in the face of an assault by the militants 18 months ago.

The capture of Ramadi, capital of mainly Sunni-Muslim Anbar province in the Euphrates River valley west of the capital, deprives Islamic State militants of their biggest prize of 2015. The fighters seized it in May after government troops fled in a defeat which prompted Washington to take a hard look at strategy in its ongoing air war against the militants.

After encircling the city for weeks, the Iraqi military launched a campaign to retake it last week, and made a final push to seize the central administration complex on Sunday.

“By controlling the complex this means that we have defeated them in Ramadi,” said Sabah al-Numani, a spokesman for the force leading the fight on the government side. “The next step is to clear pockets that could exist here or there in the city.”

State television broadcast footage of troops, Humvee vehicles and tanks advancing through Ramadi streets amid piles of rubble and collapsed houses. Some districts appeared to have been completely destroyed by the advance.

A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State was unable to confirm at this point whether the militants had been cleared out of the government complex.

Television also showed nighttime celebrations in mainly Shi’ite cities south of Baghdad for the victory in Anbar, with people dancing in the streets and waving Iraqi flags from cars.

Officials did not give any immediate death tolls for the battle. The government says most civilians were able to evacuate before it launched its assault.

Anbar provincial council member Falih al-Essawi called on the government to restore services to Ramadi quickly and start rebuilding the city to allow the return of the displaced.

“It will not be easy to convince families to return to a city that lacks basic human needs,” he told Reuters.

Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, swept through a third of Iraq in June 2014 and declared a “caliphate” to rule over all Muslims from territory in both Iraq and Syria, carrying out mass killings and imposing a draconian form of Islam.

Its rise was aided by the swift collapse of the Iraqi army, which abandoned city after city, leaving fleets of armored vehicles and other American weapons in the fighters’ hands.

Since then, the battle against the group in both countries has drawn in most global and regional powers, often with competing allies on the ground in complex multi-sided civil wars.

A U.S.-led coalition is waging an air campaign against Islamic State, but rebuilding the Iraqi army to the point that it could recapture and hold territory has been one of the biggest challenges.

In previous battles, including the recapture of former dictator Saddam Hussein’s home city Tirkit in April, the Iraqi government relied on Iran-backed Shi’ite militias for ground fighting, with its own army mainly in a supporting role.

COMPLETE CONTROL

Ramadi was the first major city recaptured by the army itself, without relying on the militias, who were kept off the battlefield to avoid sectarian tension with the mainly Sunni population.

The government, led by a Shi’ite Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, said Ramadi would be handed over to local police and a Sunni tribal force once it was secured, a measure meant to win over the community to the fight against Islamic State.

“We have trained hundreds of tribal fighters, their role will be holding the ground,” said Brigadier-General Yahya Rasool, spokesman for the joint operations command.

“Seeing their own tribes responsible for security will be a relief for the civilians” and will help convince those who have been displaced to return to the city, he added.

The strategy echoes the “surge” campaign fought by U.S. forces in 2006-2007 against a precursor of Islamic State, when Washington also relied on winning over local Sunni tribes and arming them to fight militants. Anbar province, including Ramadi, was one of the main battlefields during that campaign at the height of the 2003-2011 U.S. Iraq war.

The government said the next target after Ramadi will be the northern city of Mosul, by far the largest population center controlled by Islamic State in either Iraq or Syria.

“The smooth victory in Ramadi should be happy news for the residents of Mosul,” spokesman Numani said. U.S. officials had hoped Baghdad would launch an assault on Mosul during 2015, but this was put off after the fighters swept into Ramadi in May.

Dislodging the militants from Mosul, which had a pre-war population close to 2 million, would effectively abolish their state structure in Iraq and deprive them of a major source of funding, which comes partly from oil and partly from fees and taxes on residents.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Peter Graff)

Photo: A member from the Iraqi security forces holds an Iraqi flag in the city of Ramadi, December 27, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer

Iraqi Forces Consolidate Position In Ramadi Ahead Of Final Push Against Islamic State

Iraqi Forces Consolidate Position In Ramadi Ahead Of Final Push Against Islamic State

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi troops who have fought their way deep into the Islamic State stronghold of Ramadi were consolidating their positions on Friday ahead of a planned final assault to capture the city. Soldiers were clearing bombs from roads and homes in districts of Ramadi they had already taken since launching their assault on the city on Tuesday, state TV said.

Successfully recapturing Ramadi, a provincial capital in the fertile Euphrates River valley just two hours drive from Baghdad, would be one of the most important victories achieved by Iraq’s armed forces since Islamic State militants swept across a third of the country in 2014.

The Iraqi government forces are backed by air support from an international coalition led by the United States. Shi’ite militia units backed by Iran, which have played a major part in other government offensives, have been kept away from the battlefield in Ramadi to avoid angering Sunni Muslim residents.

Ramadi, capital of mainly Sunni Muslim Anbar province, was Islamic State’s biggest prize of 2015, abandoned by government forces in May in a major setback for Baghdad that forced Washington to look hard at its strategy against the militants.

The Baghdad government has long said it intended to recapture Ramadi before launching an offensive against Mosul, the largest city in Iraq’s north and Islamic State’s main stronghold in the country.

Three days into the government assault, the militants are still entrenched in the center of Ramadi, around the provincial government complex. Army commanders said on Wednesday the battle for Ramadi would take several days.Concern that civilians are still living in the areas held by the militants is slowing the troops’ advance, the authorities say.Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said the militants are using civilians as human shields.

“It makes things more complicated but it won’t change the result; the advance will continue, it will just take more time,” he told Reuters in Cairo.State TV on Friday showed piles of ammunition crates, mortar rounds and plastic gasoline containers filled with explosives it said were found in Ramadi homes. Citing a military statement, it said the armed forces had finished securing the Hay al-Dhubbat neighborhood that it seized on Tuesday.The ultimate target of the government is to retake Mosul, a city with a pre-war population of close to 2 million.

After capturing Mosul in 2014, the group also known by the acronyms ISIL, ISIS or Daesh declared a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from Sunni-populated territory it controls in Iraq and Syria.

“The liberation of dear Mosul will be achieved with the cooperation and unity of all Iraqis after the victory in Ramadi,” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a statement on the state media website on Friday.In a Friday sermon to rally the nation, read by an aide, Iraq’s top Shi’ite Muslim cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called on the government to make the fight against Islamic State its top priority.

“To recover all the land from Daesh, to rebuild the residential areas, to return the displaced person are top priorities for everybody, foremost for the government’s decision makers,” said Sistani’s representative Ahmed al-Safi, in a sermon in the holy Shi’ite city of Kerbala, south of Baghdad, broadcast on state TV.

(Reporting by Saif Hameed and Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad, and Sameh Elbardissi in Cairo; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Peter Graff)

Vehicles of Iraqi security forces are seen as they advance towards the center of Ramadi city, Iraq  December 24, 2015.  REUTERS/Stringer       

White House Expected To Announce U.S. Will Send 500 More Troops To Iraq

White House Expected To Announce U.S. Will Send 500 More Troops To Iraq

By W.J. Hennigan and Christi Parsons, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — The White House is expected to announce a Pentagon plan Wednesday to set up a new training base and send hundreds of troops to advise Iraqi security forces in their fight against Islamic State militants.

President Barack Obama is likely to send fewer than 500 troops, officials said, asking for anonymity to discuss the plan in advance of the announcement.

The plan marks a deepening U.S. commitment to its nearly yearlong fight against the Sunni extremist group, which has gained new ground through military victories in recent weeks.

Obama weighed the escalation of U.S. involvement while traveling over the weekend to Germany for a meeting with world leaders, including Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

Under the plan, American military personnel could set up at a new base in the embattled, sprawling Anbar province or deploy to four bases across Iraq where trainees are taught about tactical organization, logistics and intelligence to boost their ability to counter Islamic State fighters.

The total U.S. force in Iraq is now about 3,100 troops, who are advising, training and providing base security.

Officials said the additional advisors would not accompany Iraqi troops on combat operations, in keeping with Obama’s vow not to send ground troops back to Iraq.

The new troops will be expected to help the Iraqis break Islamic State’s grip on Anbar, home to much of the country’s Sunni population.

The fall of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, was a reminder of the larger disintegration of the military last June when Islamic State forces seized the northern city of Mosul and other parts of Iraq that they still hold.

Other governments and coalition forces have sent hundreds of additional personnel to train Iraqi brigades, but little progress has been made to dislodge the militants.

(c)2015 Tribune Co. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Screenshot: Vice News/YouTube