Iraqi PM vows defeat of IS after Ramadi recapture

Iraqi government forces have been fighting to retake the city – about 90km (55 miles) west of the capital, Baghdad – for weeks.

TV pictures on Monday showed troops raising the Iraqi flag over the government complex in the city centre.

Army spokesman Brig Gen Yahya Rasul said forces had “liberated” Ramadi in an “epic” victory.

Iraqi officials gave no immediate death toll from the battle.

Image copyright AP Image caption Iraqi forces fought their way into the city centre and seized the government compound

“2016 will be the year of the big and final victory, when Daesh’s presence in Iraq will be terminated,” Mr Abadi said on state television, using another name for Islamic State.

“We are coming to liberate Mosul and it will be the fatal and final blow to Daesh,” he added.

The BBC’s Thomas Fessy, who is in Ramadi, says the battle against IS has destroyed the urban landscape.

He says that booby traps are everywhere and that Iraqi troops are still hunting retreating militants in parts of the city.

Mr Kerry congratulated Iraqi forces for “displaying tremendous perseverance and courage”.

“While Ramadi is not yet fully secure and additional parts of the city still must be retaken, Iraq’s national flag now flies above the provincial government centre and enemy forces have suffered a major defeat,” he said.

The battle for Ramadi – capital of mainly Sunni Muslim Anbar province – was backed by air strikes from the US-led coalition.

US Defence Secretary Ash Carter said the expulsion of IS was “a significant step forward in the campaign to defeat this barbaric group”.

Image copyright AP Image caption Parts of the city have been destroyed in the fighting

He said it was now important for the Iraqi government to maintain the peace in Ramadi, prevent the return of IS, and to help Ramadi’s citizens to return to the city.

UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond also congratulated the Iraqi government, adding that air support from the RAF around Ramadi had played “a key role” in the battle.

“This remains a long fight, but the coalition’s strategy is succeeding. We will continue to stand with the Iraqi people until Daesh is defeated,” he said.

State TV on Monday showed pictures of soldiers in Ramadi firing their guns in the air and publicly slaughtering a sheep in celebration.

Troops finally captured the government compound on Sunday, flushing out or killing IS fighters and suicide bombers who had been holding out in its buildings.

Brig Gen Majid al-Fatlawi, of the army’s 8th division, told AFP that IS fighters had “planted more than 300 explosive devices on the roads and in the buildings of the government complex”.

In the fight for Ramadi, the government chose not to deploy the powerful Shia-dominated paramilitary force that helped it regain the mainly Sunni northern city of Tikrit, to avoid increasing sectarian tensions.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Haider al-Abadi made a televised speech after the recapture of Ramadi

Iraq conflict: Is Ramadi a strategic defeat for IS?

Islamic State

The Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) raised their national flag over the Anbar provincial government headquarters in Ramadi on 28 December, marking the return of government troops to the centre of the city after 32 weeks of intense fighting.

The self-styled Islamic State (IS) is now limited to hideouts in Sufia, the rural district to the north-east of the city, and in small “stay-behind” locations within the ruined urban centre.

There will be ongoing IS harassment in the city, including occasional suicide car bombings and spectacular raids to disrupt stabilisation, but the terrorist group is unlikely to fully control the city again in the manner it has since May 2015.

For IS the loss of Ramadi was inevitable almost from the start but permanent control was probably not their goal. Instead, IS has repeatedly used Ramadi to distract the ISF from attacking the Islamic State’s stronghold in Mosul, 450km (280 miles) to the north.

IS tried and failed to seize Ramadi at the same time as nearby Fallujah fell in late December 2013.

It fought a battle of attrition for 16 months from Ramadi’s rural suburbs, tying down ISF units. Then, when the Iraqi military took Tikrit in April 2015, the Islamic State was able to crack ISF resistance in Ramadi and again use the city to draw ISF effort away from Mosul for 226 days and counting.

Image copyright AP Image caption Iraqi troops are mopping up the last few pockets of IS resistance in Ramadi

With the Ramadi operation beginning to wind down, Islamic State knows that the main event – the battle for Mosul – will now begin. IS could try another diversionary attack but the Iraqi and Syrian forces are now better prepared and supported with air power from the US-led coalition.

More likely, the slow preparatory phases of the battle for Mosul will now unfold in the first half of 2016.

First, the Islamic State’s next defensive bulwarks will be ground down – the oil refining hub Qayyarah and other Tigris River Valley towns south of Mosul.

Then the city will be slowly encircled in the summer and air strikes will intensify on IS leadership and logistical targets. Then the assault will begin once the summer heat dies down in the autumn of 2016.

Rebuilding bridges

Though IS has benefitted from its use of Ramadi as a delaying operation, the ISF and coalition have also learned from the experience. Ramadi saw the ISF and coalition work closely together to build highly detailed intelligence on enemy locations and then use air power to precisely target those concentrations.

Ramadi also saw the Iraqi army show off the training and equipment it has acquired from the coalition.

“Combined arms breaching” is one new capability – the ability to clear scores of improvised explosive devices in a single manoeuvre with the aid of US-provided mine-clearing equipment. Combat engineers with US-provided bulldozers rapidly consolidated defences and allowed troops to beat away IS counter-attacks.

The ISF showed that it could rapidly build new bridges to replace the ones that IS demolished. All these skills will be useful in Mosul.

The battle is the latest in a series of operations that show professional military commanders, not militia leaders, in charge of major military operations. This was the case at Tikrit and Bayji, where militia leaders tried and failed to conquer the city for months. In the end, professional Iraqi special forces and army officers backed by coalition air power tipped the balance in both places within days.

Image copyright AFP Image caption The Iraqi government must now stabilise Ramadi and help its population to return

This dynamic is important because Shia militia commanders like Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a US-designated global terrorist, or Hadi al-Amiri will probably seek to play key roles in the liberation of Mosul.

But local political dynamics – particularly the predominately Sunni Arab character of Mosul city – suggest that the Shia militias will not be welcomed as liberators, rather as foreign occupiers. This makes it important that the assault on Mosul – like the decisive operations at Tikrit, Bayji and now Ramadi – should be an operation commanded by professional ISF leadership under national command.

A related challenge will be the Iraqi government’s stabilisation of Ramadi city as the battle slowly winds down. A newly-announced $50m (£33m) international effort to restore basic services in Ramadi plus plans to man the city’s security forces with local Sunnis will have an important effect on resettlement of local people and the long-term stability of the city. The previous example of Tikrit gives reasons for encouragement.

Tikrit was heavily damaged in the fighting to liberate the city and looted by predominately Shia militias thereafter. But the post-battle stabilisation has gone unexpectedly well. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) is running a successful resettlement programme that has seen Internally Displaced Persons returning to the city and the militias have acted with restraint.

Such a “day-after” resettlement and stabilisation plan will be doubly necessary in Mosul, a city 15 times as big as Tikrit and three times as large as Ramadi.

As a result, Ramadi may have given the Iraqi government and security forces a rare opportunity to better prepare for the main battle and post-conflict period in Mosul. If Ramadi had not fallen, the ISF might have rushed to failure in Mosul. Although the process will probably be slow, the Iraqi campaign to liberate Mosul may now be on firmer ground.

What is ‘Islamic State’?

The jihadist group Islamic State (IS) burst on to the international scene in 2014 when it seized large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. It has become notorious for its brutality, including mass killings, abductions and beheadings. The group though has attracted support elsewhere in the Muslim world – and a US-led coalition has vowed to destroy it.

What does IS want?

In June 2014, the group formally declared the establishment of a “caliphate” – a state governed in accordance with Islamic law, or Sharia, by God’s deputy on Earth, or caliph.

It has demanded that Muslims across the world swear allegiance to its leader – Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri al-Samarrai, better known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – and migrate to territory under its control.

IS has also told other jihadist groups worldwide that they must accept its supreme authority. Many already have, among them several offshoots of the rival al-Qaeda network.

IS seeks to eradicate obstacles to restoring God’s rule on Earth and to defend the Muslim community, or umma, against infidels and apostates.

The group has welcomed the prospect of direct confrontation with the US-led coalition, viewing it as a harbinger of an end-of-times showdown between Muslims and their enemies described in Islamic apocalyptic prophecies.

Why IS militants destroy ancient sites

Islamic State

As IS notes in the eighth issue of its own publication, the glossy Dabiq magazine, they see ancient cultural heritage as a challenge for the loyalties and legitimacy of Iraqi or Syrian people to IS itself.

Destroying such heritage is thus a part of their duty, as they see it, to reject such a “nationalist agenda” that the statues, temples, and indeed, cities represent.

In a wider sense, the IS brand of intolerant Islam motivates it to attack polytheism wherever it is found and to reject the worship, as they would put it, of idols that they see these sites as representing.

Elsewhere, it is also no surprise to see IS destroying Shia and Sufi sites, and even Sunni shrines.

If anything, IS ideology despises other variants of Islam even more than Christianity or Judaism. Liberally sprinkle such intolerance with a self-serving, simplistic, context-free reading of a few scriptures and a “religiously” justified policy – or commandment even – is put forth.

Shock value

But there are more political, expedient motives afoot not noted in Dabiq.

Chipping off parts of statues and otherwise selling stolen antiquities in markets around the world is a good way to earn hard cash. The UN believes that this is being done on an industrial scale, adding tens of millions of dollars to IS’ wider war economy.

Image caption IS regards statues as idolatrous

Launching and especially prolonging a bloodthirsty campaign of butchery, terrorism, mass murder, torture, enslavement and ethnic cleansing is hard work.

After the initial horror, the kuffar (infidel) media and their kuffar audience eventually become inured to the repetitiveness, the sheer numbers killed, and pressing news stories elsewhere relegate the focus on IS.

Capturing and retaining attention thus becomes more difficult. This is problematic when a group needs to encourage new recruits and new sources of income.

Equally, those already recruited who are bogged down in warfare, sporadically getting picked off by drones and jets, who are (to their surprise) losing territory, or who begin to miss the comforts of home need to be reassured that the group they joined is as influential, as proactive, and as in vogue as ever.

Provocative acts

Lastly, videos of iconoclastic destruction spark outrage, mark out IS as unique, and increase the drum beat for further intervention from Western (or other) states.

Thus the logic of former al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden – his desire to entangle the US in a bloody, unwinnable land war “against Islam” – is once again employed.

Image caption Part of IS’ strategy is to outrage world opinion

This is not to say that there should be no reaction, but any considerations need to be mindful that a part of the whole IS strategy is to elicit a reaction in the first place.

To some degree, describing such desecrations as a “war crime”, as the UN has, nicely plays into IS’ hands – as do articles on the subject.

But the internet cannot be un-invented, and unless we are to surrender some of our closest held beliefs on freedom of speech, we cannot stop dissemination of such depressing stories.

We must, therefore, respond however we can.

Calm reasoning exposing the hypocrisies, the practicalities, and the banalities of IS’ policies is a step towards demystifying and debunking the likes of IS as just yet another political organisation.

What are its origins?

IS can trace its roots back to the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian. In 2004, a year after the US-led invasion of Iraq, Zarqawi pledged allegiance to Osama Bin Laden and formed al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which became a major force in the insurgency.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The tactics of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were considered too extreme by al-Qaeda leaders

After Zarqawi’s death in 2006, AQI created an umbrella organisation, Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). ISI was steadily weakened by the US troop surge and the creation of Sahwa (Awakening) councils by Sunni Arab tribesmen who rejected its brutality.

Baghdadi, a former US detainee, became leader in 2010 and began rebuilding ISI’s capabilities. By 2013, it was once again carrying out dozens of attacks a month in Iraq.

It had also joined the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, setting up the al-Nusra Front.

In April 2013, Baghdadi announced the merger of his forces in Iraq and Syria and the creation of “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” (Isis). The leaders of al-Nusra and al-Qaeda rejected the move, but fighters loyal to Baghdadi split from al-Nusra and helped Isis remain in Syria.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Religious minorities, particularly Iraq’s Yazidis, have been targeted by Islamic State

At the end of December 2013, Isis shifted its focus back to Iraq and exploited a political stand-off between the Shia-led government and the minority Sunni Arab community. Aided by tribesmen and former Saddam Hussein loyalists, Isis took control of the central city of Falluja.

In June 2014, Isis overran the northern city of Mosul, and then advanced southwards towards Baghdad, massacring its adversaries and threatening to eradicate the country’s many ethnic and religious minorities. At the end of the month, after consolidating its hold over dozens of cities and towns, Isis declared the creation of a caliphate and changed its name to “Islamic State”.

The rise of ‘Islamic State’

How much territory does IS control?

In September 2014, the then director of the US National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Matthew Olsen, said IS controlled much of the Tigris-Euphrates river basin – an area similar in size to the United Kingdom, or about 210,000 sq km (81,000 sq miles).

A year later, the US defence department declared that IS frontlines in much of northern and central Iraq and northern Syria had been pushed back significantly by US-led coalition air strikes and ground operations. IS could no longer operate freely in roughly 20-25% of populated areas in Iraq and Syria where it once could, it said.

The defence department estimated that IS had lost approximately 15,000-20,000 sq km (5,790-7,720 sq miles) of territory in Iraq, or about 30-37% of what it controlled in August 2014, and 2,000-4,000 sq km (770-1,540 sq miles) in Syria, or about 5-10%.

Despite this, IS has been able to capture new territory of strategic value over the same period, including the city of Ramadi in Iraq’s Anbar province and Palmyra in Syria’s Homs province.

Analysts also note that the US figures do not necessarily reflect the situation on the ground. In reality, IS militants exercise complete control over only a small part of that territory, which includes cities and towns, main roads, oil fields and military facilities.

They enjoy freedom of movement in the largely uninhabited areas outside what the Institute for the Study of War calls “control zones”, but they would struggle to defend them.

Similarly, it is not entirely clear how many people are living under full or partial IS control across Syria and Iraq. In March 2015, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross put the figure at more than 10 million.

Inside areas where IS has implemented its strict interpretation of Sharia, women are forced to wear full veils, public beheadings are common and non-Muslims are forced to choose between paying a special tax, converting or death.

How many fighters does it have?

Image copyright Youtube Image caption Thousands of foreigners have fought for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq

In February 2015, US Director for National Intelligence James Clapper said IS could muster “somewhere in the range between 20,000 and 32,000 fighters” in Iraq and Syria.

But he noted that there had been “substantial attrition” in its ranks since US-led coalition air strikes began in August 2014. In June 2015, US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said more than 10,000 IS fighters had been killed.

To help mitigate the manpower losses, IS has turned to conscription in some areas. Iraqi expert Hisham al-Hashimi believes only 30% of the group’s fighters are “ideologues”, with the remainder joining out of fear or coercion.

A significant number of IS fighters are neither Iraqi nor Syrian. In October 2015, National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen told Congress that the group had attracted more than 28,000 foreign fighters. They included at least 5,000 Westerners, approximately 250 of them Americans, he said.

Studies by the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) and the New York-based Soufan Group suggest that while about a quarter of the foreign fighters are from the West, the majority are from nearby Arab countries, such as Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Morocco.

What about its targets outside Iraq and Syria?

In late 2015, IS began to lay claim to attacks outside its territory. An Egyptian affiliate, Sinai Province, said it downed a Russian passenger plane in the Sinai peninsula, killing all 228 on board. It gave no details, but the UK and US later said it was likely that a bomb caused the crash – whether or not a bomber was linked to IS.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption France’s president described the attacks in Paris – claimed by IS – as “an act of war”

IS also claimed twin blasts in the Lebanese capital Beirut which killed at least 41 people. Militants from the Lebanese movement Hezbollah have been fighting in neighbouring Syria on the side of IS’ enemy, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

And then on 13 November, at least 128 people were killed in a wave of attacks around Paris. IS said it was behind the violence – French President Francois Hollande described it as “an act of war”.

What weapons does IS have?

IS fighters have access to, and are capable of using, a wide variety of small arms and heavy weapons, including truck-mounted machine-guns, rocket launchers, anti-aircraft guns and portable surface-to-air missile systems.

They have also captured tanks and armoured vehicles from the Syrian and Iraqi armies. Their haul of vehicles from the Iraqi army includes armoured Humvees and bomb-proof trucks originally manufactured for the US military.

Some have been packed with explosives and used to devastating effect in suicide bomb attacks.

The group is believed to have a flexible supply chain that ensures a constant supply of ammunition and small arms for its fighters. Their considerable firepower helped them overrun Kurdish Peshmerga positions in northern Iraq in August 2014 and the Iraqi army in Ramadi in May 2015.

Where does IS get its money from?

The militant group is believed to be the world’s wealthiest. It initially relied on wealthy private donors and Islamic charities in the Middle East keen to oust Syria’s President Assad. Although such funding is still being used to finance the travel of foreign fighters to Syria and Iraq, the group is now largely self-funding.

The US Treasury estimates that in 2014 IS may have earned as much as several million dollars per week, or $100m in total, from the sale of crude oil and refined products to local middlemen, who in turn smuggled them in Turkey and Iran, or sold them to the Syrian government.

But air strikes on oil-related infrastructure are now believed to have diminished such revenue.

Kidnapping also generated at least $20m in ransom payments in 2014, while IS raises several million dollars per month through extorting the millions of people living in areas under its full or partial control, according to the US Treasury.

IS is believed to raise at least several million dollars per month by robbing, looting, and extortion. Payments are extracted from those who pass through, conduct business in, or simply live in IS territory under the auspices or providing services or “protection”.

Religious minorities are forced to pay a special tax. IS profits from raiding banks, selling antiquities, and stealing or controlling sales of livestock and crops. Abducted girls and women have meanwhile been sold as sex slaves.

Why are their tactics so brutal?

IS members are jihadists who adhere to an extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam and consider themselves the only true believers. They hold that the rest of the world is made up of unbelievers who seek to destroy Islam, justifying attacks against other Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Beheadings, crucifixions and mass shootings have been used to terrorise their enemies. IS members have justified such atrocities by citing the Koran and Hadith, but Muslims have denounced them.

Even al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who disavowed IS in February 2014 over its actions in Syria, warned Zarqawi in 2005 that such brutality loses “Muslim hearts and minds”.

Source :BBC