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
Iraqi soldiers at the Anbar police headquarters in Ramadi, Iraq, on Monday, after seizing a government complex from the Islamic State. Ahmad 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.
