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After a seven-month occupation by ISIS forces, the key western Iraqi city of Ramadi has been liberated, Iraqi military officials announced Monday, and a weeklong battle to retake the stronghold. “The security forces have entered the governmental buildings and raised the Iraqi flags over them after killing many ISIS militants, and the rest have escaped,” said Iraqi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool. Officials said sporadic fighting continued in pockets of the city, though the victory had been secured. Ramadi is the third success for Iraqi forces and their allies in three months, including the oil center of Beiji in October and Sinjar in November

Ramadi

Iraqi soldiers at the Anbar police headquarters in Ramadi, Iraq, on Monday, after seizing a government complex from the Islamic State. CreditAhmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

New York Times Mon Dec 28

BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces said on Monday they had seized a strategic government complex in the western city of Ramadi from the Islamic State after a fierce weeklong battle, putting them on the verge of a crucial victory following a brutal seven-month occupation of the city by the extremist group.

 

The loss of Ramadi, the capital and most populous city of the western Iraqi province of Anbar, would be the most significant in a string of recent defeats for the Islamic State, which has occupied a large stretch of Iraq and Syria since the middle of last year.

“The security forces have entered the governmental buildings and raised the Iraqi flags over them after killing many ISIS militants, and the rest have escaped,” said Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, a spokesman for the Iraqi military.

 

Although he declared the city “fully liberated,” another military commander, Maj. Gen. Ismail al-Mahlawi, later said that pockets of resistance remained in about 30 percent of the city. On Twitter, supporters of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, were dismissive of the reports that Ramadi was about to fall.

 

Heavy fighting was reported in the downtown neighborhood of Huz, as well as in the communities of Sajariya and Sufiya, on the eastern outskirts of the city, and Albu Ghanim, to the north. Islamic State fighters captured those villages in April before moving on to the center of Ramadi.

 

Nonetheless, the retaking of the government complex — the last major redoubt of Islamic State fighters in Ramadi — was a strategic and symbolic victory after days of fighting.

 

The last Islamic State fighters fled the compound around midday, having been encircled by Iraqi counterterrorism forces and police officers, backed by Sunni tribesmen who oppose the militant group and by American airstrikes.

Eid Ammash, a spokesman for the Anbar provincial council, said in a telephone interview that troops had been careful about entering the government complex, to minimize losses.

 

“We are trying to remove all the I.E.D.s and explosives before entering the governmental compound,” he said, referring to improvised explosive devices.

 

Mazin al-Dulaimi, a police commander involved with the Anbar offensive, acknowledged by telephone that “there is difficulty in breaking into the governmental compound because a number of suicide bombers and snipers are still inside the compound.”

 

He said that intercepted wireless communications suggested the snipers in the government complex had been trying to obstruct the Iraqi forces’ advance, to facilitate the escape of fellow militants.

“The clearance of the government center is a significant accomplishment and is the result of many months of hard work by the Iraqi Army, the Counterterrorism Service, the Iraqi Air Force, local and federal police, and tribal fighters,” Col. Steven H. Warren, the United States military spokesman in Baghdad, said in a statement. “Today’s success is a proud moment for Iraq.”

Ramadi has been one of the most significant cities under the extremist group’s control, along with its self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa, Syria; the northern Iraqi city of Mosul; and the Iraqi city of Falluja, which sits between Ramadi and the capital, Baghdad, nearly 60 miles to the east.

 

It would also give a much-needed lift to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who leads Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government but has tried to reach out to the country’s large Sunni minority. Mr. Abadi’s predecessor, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, thoroughly alienated the Sunni population.

 

On Monday, Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Belawi, the leader of a battalion of tribal fighters, told The Associated Press that the militants stopped returning fire from inside the Ramadi government compound around 8 a.m. “We believe that they were either killed or fled,” he said.

 

Colonel Warren, the United States military spokesman in Baghdad, said the Iraqi forces had been “supported by over 600 coalition airstrikes since July.” On Sunday alone, he said, coalition planes launched three airstrikes over Ramadi, hitting 18 targets.

 

The Islamic State, which relies heavily on social media for recruitment and publicity, has played down its setbacks in recent months. Its fighters have been expelled from the town of Sinjar, in northwest Iraq, near the Syrian border, and the cities of Tikrit and Baiji, in the “Sunni triangle” north of Baghdad. On Thursday, the Islamic State released a flurry of statements saying it had killed at least 30 members of the Iraqi government forces, perhaps in an attempt to bolster morale.

 

Pierre-Jean Luizard, director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, and the author of a recent book about the Islamic State, cautioned against seeing Ramadi as a turning point. He said the Islamic State’s power derives not from military strength but from “the weakness of its enemies, first and foremost the Iraqi state with its Shiite-dominated government.”

 

Dr. Luizard added that the Islamic State could not be defeated until the Sunni Arab minority — which dominated Iraq until the United States invasion toppled Saddam Husseini in 2003 — is ensured a place in the government, particularly after a decade in which sectarian violence has ebbed and flowed. Since the summer, the United States has been training Sunni tribal members who oppose the Islamic State to help lead the effort to retake Ramadi, while the Iraqi government has kept some of its most effective fighting forces — Iranian-backed Shiite militias — out of the fight for fear of alienating the local population.

 

But Dr. Luizard predicted that if Sunni leaders in Anbar Province and other Sunni-majority areas of Iraq were not granted legitimate autonomy, the Islamic State would make a comeback. “The Islamic State continues to make a better offer to the people it controls than the Baghdad government — whose return is the greatest fear of most inhabitants,” he said of the Sunnis of Anbar Province.

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I hope the will is there to send in the bulldozers and the cranes and the builders to rapidly remove the debris and begin to build a modern city with sewers, reliable water delivery system, street lights and all the basic amenities to begin to transform the society. People defend what they have grown to love. Every person in the city should be disarmed and there should be checkpoints to monitor entry points. Treat security as a basic need until the society stabilize.

FM

In the coming year, after the lone-wolf attacks and DIY terrorists who wish to raise the ISIS Black flag would have lost their enthusiasm and ISIS driven out and decimated, like Al Qaeda, then the Trumps of the world would have lost their appeal for bigotry.

 

The whack-a-mole scenario is not applicable here as ISIS was born out of the Iraq invasion not out of Al Qaeda dying slowly and another group took its place. Boko Haram is a localized outfit as is Al Shabbab and the Islamists in North Africa. You will recall in the 1970s when Carlos the Jackal roamed freely and the PLO gained notoriety with the Munich Olympics massacre, there were the Baader-Meinhoff gang, the Japanes Red Army, the IRA and the FARQ. Nobody talked about a whack-a-mole scenario then.

 

The so-called "Islamic" are not Islamic at all; and their groups all have localized roots and not clash-of-civilization appeal. Weak people panic and in the process become bigots. We have em here on GNI too - all those Trump admirers and wail-at-Muslims perpetrators like caribny.

Kari

Well,the PLO is still around and strong today.  The difference is they are fighting for a legitimate purpose [though not always legit means], i.e. for their little piece of homeland.  they are not sectarian though most are Muslims.  They never aspire beyond that.

On the other hand, Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc are fighting to impose their will/doctrine on others well outside of their territory.  They are sectarian, intolerant and hate any civilization outside of their own narrow interpretation. The hatred and intolerance of these Wahabs are beyond belief.  They are devoid of any basic human decency, below animal.  The will be vanquished and their supporters will lick their wounds and remain silent until the next Islamist nutcase raised it's head.  I hope the terrorist House of Saud do get some blow back.

One thing, the real Iraq Sunni nationalist/loyalist within the ranks of ISIS need to separate themselves and bring back front and center their rights as Iraqis.  The US and Russia need to ensure these secular Sunnis are part of the Iraqi nation and not be marginalized.  They have taught the Iranians [and the world] a lesson, that defeated Iraqi army still carries painful punch.  Sinjar and Ramadi were left with only foreign fighters.  The Iranians, with all their power, could not hold back these guys.  If not for Russia, Syria would have fallen, if not for the stepped-up US involvement, the recent reversals in Iraq would not have occurred.

The Iraqi Govt needs to rule in the interest of the Iraqi people, not for Iran.  They must have seen the limits of Iranian power.  The Iranians for themselves must have realized, by now, the balance of power is not Iran, but the US or Russia.  If they don't, this is a disaster waiting to repeat itself.

FM

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