Iraq launches new offensive to drive Isis from Anbar province

Iraq declared the launch of a new military operation on Monday aimed at liberating the predominantly Sunni Anbar province, the country’s largest, from Islamic State control.

The campaign will include fighters from the Hashd al-Shaabi, a volunteer army dominated by Shia militias, Iraqi military units and Sunni tribesmen opposed to Isis. They are likely to strike first at the city of Falluja, which is under siege by pro-government forces.

The operation comes nearly two months after Isis seized Ramadi, the province’s capital, in one of the terror group’s greatest victories since its conquest of Nineveh and much of northern Iraq in a lightning advance last year.
 The latest battle for Anbar will test the militants’ resilience and the effectiveness of the Hashd, which defeated Isis in a long and drawn-out battle for Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit earlier this year.

“Today at dawn the operations to liberate Anbar were launched,” a spokesman for Iraq’s join operations command said in a statement on state television. “The Hashd al-Shaabi, the armed forces, the special forces, the national police and the sons of the Anbar tribes are now carrying out the liberation battles and advancing on their goals.”

“We promise to exact revenge from the criminals of Daesh [Isis] in the field of battle,” Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, said in a statement. “Their cowardly crimes against unarmed civilians will only increase our resolve in pursuing them and evicting them from the last inch of Iraq’s territory.”

Ten thousand fighters are expected to take part in the battle, which will begin with an assault on Falluja, which has been besieged for weeks by pro-government forces seeking to oust the militants.

Hisham al-Hashimi, an expert on Islamic State and adviser to the Iraqi government, estimated the number of Isis militants in Falluja at around 1,800, including a number of suicide bombers.
The presence of civilians in both Falluja and Ramadi raises the prospect of fierce street fighting and the possibility of Isis using human shields to protect themselves against the assault. The militant group has often exhorted Anbar’s residents to remain in the province and seek protection with Islamic State.

The operation’s launch comes days after Isis released a provocative video appearing to offer an extended take of its largest single massacre in Iraq – the killing last summer of up to 1,700 Shia army cadets at Camp Speicher in Tikrit. The video shows brutal executions of the cadets and their abuse by their Isis handlers.
 The participation of Shia militias in the campaign raises the prospect of enflaming sectarian tensions in the predominantly Sunni Anbar province. Several of the militias have been accused of collective punishment and war crimes in the battles to retake territory from Isis, and many took part in sectarian bloodletting during the American occupation of the country.

But the Hashd, which was formed in response to a call by the highest Shia religious authority in Iraq, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to defend the country from Isis, has emerged with Iranian backing as one of the few effective fighting forces against Isis in Iraq.

Anbar province was one of the short-lived success stories of the US campaign in Iraq. The Americans backed local tribesmen who revolted against the precursor to Isis, providing them with cash and weapons in the “Anbar awakening” campaign.
But many were disenfranchised after the US withdrawal, cut off from their lifeline of support by increasingly sectarian policies by Nuri al-Maliki’s government.