President Barack Obama’s military strategy to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, under fire from almost every quarter in Washington and on the campaign trail, is finally poised for a key victory. The U.S. military believes as few as 5,000 civilians remain.
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Iraqi forces evacuated dozens of families from Ramadi on Wednesday, but progress to retake the city from Islamic State was complicated by the presence of civilians and booby traps. “There’s a lot of dense terrain here that needs to be negotiated”.
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According to Iraqi officials, Iran-backed Shi’ite militias often make things complicated for government troops.
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Ramadi, like the rest of Anbar province, is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, the minority community in Iraq that complains of discrimination by the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.
“The fall of Ramadi is inevitable”, Army Col. Steve Warren told reporters from Baghdad.
Fierce fighting erupted Wednesday in Ramadi as Iraqi troops sought to dislodge Islamic State fighters who have held the city since May.
ISIL fighters have had plenty of time to dig in since they took full control of the city on May 17 after blitzing government forces with wave after wave of vehicle and truck bomb attacks. “The city has been isolated for a while”, said David Witty, a retired United States army special forces colonel and former advisor to CTS.
The visit is part of the Iraqi leader’s attempt to seek global support as Iraq’s economy struggles to absorb the costs of fighting Islamic State and sheltering hundreds of thousands of refugees while oil revenues plummet.
Close observers of the conflict were nevertheless buoyed by the developments.
Backed by US air power, the offensive also marks the Iraqi armed forces’ first major battle from which Shiite militias have been largely excluded, testing whether the military can go it alone.
Army commanders said Wednesday the battle would take several days.
The Obama team “will not be spiking the football”, the official added, citing the long road ahead in removing the terrorist group from its strongholds.
Still, U.S. officials acknowledge it will be hard for civilians to leave Ramadi, given the tight grip ISIS is exerting on the city.
Iraqi security forces enter the southern neighborhoods of Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad.
“The federal police and local police are also very, very important”.
Eid Ammash, a spokesman for the Anbar provincial council, said the council was getting information about the military operations from journalists rather than from the military.
Even if Iraqi forces were to reoccupy all of the areas now controlled by IS and the Syrian city of Raqqa – now its unofficial capital – was liberated, without serious reform a group like the IS and all the chaos it causes will just re-emerge from the ashes, warns says Zaid al-Ali, an Iraqi lawyer and author of the book The Struggle for Iraq’s Future.
“What we want to do is de-couple the two states in the conflict”.
The Arab League, which convened in Cairo for an emergency meeting at the request of the Iraqi government to discuss Turkish troops in northern Iraq, condemned Ankara, deeming its acts as unsettling while viewing Iraqi concerns as rightful and grounded. ISIS captured Ramadi last May.
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Iraq’s military on Tuesday launched an offensive for the center of the city, about 80 miles west of Baghdad, after besieging the militants downtown.
