ISIS Fighters Seize Government Headquarters in Ramadi, Iraq
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Version 0 of 1. BAGHDAD — In a major setback for the Iraqi government’s efforts to defend its hold on Ramadi, a crucial regional capital, Islamic State militants conquered the city’s government sector on Friday, raising their black flag over the main compound before setting fire to the building, local officials said. The new jihadist assault began under the cover of darkness late Thursday, starting with a wave of suicide attacks by clean-shaven fighters driving armored Humvees and dressed in Iraqi Army uniforms. As fighters for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, advanced on Friday, there were reports of massacres. Sheikh Omar Shihan al-Alwani, a tribal leader whose men have been fighting the Islamic State there, said more than a dozen families had been killed in his area of Ramadi, along with about 50 policemen and tribal fighters. “We asked our fighters to leave their weapons and withdraw,” he said. “Otherwise, we would lose them all.” Some pro-government forces were still reported to be fighting in Ramadi late Friday, and it was too early to declare that the entire city had fallen. But the jihadist advance put a major new twist in the long and roiling fight for control of Ramadi, the capital of the sprawling western desert province of Anbar. The jihadists’ gains also pose a critical test for the now-stalemated government effort to beat back the Islamic State in a broader Anbar offensive. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced that effort last month in a moment of triumph, as a hybrid force of Shiite militias and government troops recaptured the city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, from Islamic State fighters. Mr. Abadi and other government officials vowed that they would retake Anbar from the militants before continuing a march north to liberate Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq. But the Anbar campaign has so far been ineffective, partly because of indecisiveness on the composition of the pro-government forces that would fight for the huge province. In Tikrit, Shiite militias, some aligned with Iran, were an essential force, along with American air power. In Anbar, those militias are on the sidelines, partly because of fears that their involvement would inflame sectarian tensions. Some Anbar leaders have called for the militias to join anyway. But the most influential leaders in the province, along with American officials, have urged that Shiite militiamen not take part. Instead, the Americans have pushed the Iraqi government to arm and train local Sunni tribesmen to do the fighting themselves, in an effort similar to the American-backed Awakening program of 2007, which paid tribesmen to switch sides and fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq, a predecessor to the Islamic State. Mr. Abadi has committed to doing so, but very few Sunnis have actually been trained or armed — partly because of resistance from influential Shiite leaders who fear that doing so would, in effect, build a Sunni militia that could potentially sell its weapons to the Islamic State or end up fighting against the government. Sabah Karhut, the chairman of the Anbar Provincial Council, reached Friday by phone in Amman, Jordan, said that while some pro-government fighters were still resisting in Ramadi, “the city has fallen, militarily.” He continued, “What happened in Ramadi today was because of a very well planned operation launched by ISIS, and the lack of a clear strategy by the government, which led to the security collapse.” Mr. Karhut accused the government in Baghdad of ignoring the warnings of Anbar tribal leaders, and of being slow to arm local fighters. Even so, Mr. Karhut said that on Friday afternoon he was told by officials in Baghdad that a brigade of elite counterterrorism forces had been sent to Ramadi. By Friday evening, battles were raging between pro-government forces and militants in several pockets of Ramadi. But one senior security official in the city said that 90 percent of the city was in the Islamic State’s hands, and unless the government in Baghdad sent more reinforcements to the city it was likely to fall completely. The official said that he had warned officials in Baghdad on Thursday night about the offensive as it began. “There was no reaction,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was criticizing superiors. “I said, ‘Please save Anbar!’ ” He said the Islamic State offensive was partly being carried out by a fresh batch of fighters who had been sent from Raqqa, the Syrian city that is the terrorist group’s de facto capital. Speaking by telephone Friday afternoon from his besieged compound in Ramadi, the official asked a reporter to pray for him. Mr. Abadi met with his military commanders on Friday evening to discuss the situation, according to a short statement published by his website. Later, around 10 p.m., Mr. Abadi appeared on television and promised a tough response, saying “the next hours will unfold with victory in Anbar.” He continued, “I ask the politicians of Anbar to be unified and with one voice to protect Iraq and Iraqis. They must be with their fighters in the battle, to urge them to resist and to motivate the security forces.” Through the evening, a news crawl on the state television channel belied the urgency of the accounts emerging from Ramadi, reading: “A counterattack by government forces in Ramadi is crushing ISIS.” More than 100,000 civilians fled the Ramadi area after an earlier Islamic State assault last month, and the fighting on Friday sent a new wave of people fleeing their homes. One of them, Mohammed Jasim al-Alwani, 40, said he had just returned to his home in recent days, only to leave again on Friday. “What happened in Ramadi is unbelievable,” he said. “We left in the early hours of the morning with our families, and children, and ran away from ISIS and started moving from one area to another.” Amar Hassan, 37, said he had walked with his family for five hours on Friday, “with the sound of bullets over heads.” They were able to reach the relative safety of a schoolhouse, but he could hear mortar shells exploding nearby. “The story of displacement has become something familiar to us,” he said. “This is the fourth time we have left our home to look for a safe place.” He said that given the situation in Ramadi and the continual violence in the region, “This might be the last time we are displaced.” Anbar Province, which is predominantly Sunni Arab, has been mostly controlled by the Islamic State since the beginning of 2014, nearly six months before the group seized Mosul in the north. The region holds special resonance for the United States. Nearly 1,300 American soldiers and Marines died there trying to pacify the unruly desert region in the years after the 2003 invasion. Now, American warplanes are back bombing targets in Anbar, and a few hundred American military trainers are stationed at an air base in the province training tribal fighters to battle the Islamic State. In Washington, American officials sought to play down the significance of the fall of the government headquarters in Ramadi. “We’ve said before that there will be good days and bad days in Iraq. ISIL is trying to make today a bad day in Ramadi,” a State Department spokesman, Jeff Rathke, told reporters. “Ramadi is important,” Mr. Rathke added. “It’s been contested for some time.” |