FRI 29 - 3 - 2024
 
Date: Nov 24, 2014
Source: The Daily Star
Iraqi forces take back Diyala towns
BAGHDAD: Iraqi forces said Sunday they had retaken two towns north of Baghdad from ISIS fighters, driving them from strongholds they had held for months and clearing a main road from the capital to Iran.

There was no independent confirmation that the army, Shiite militias and Kurdish peshmerga forces had completely retaken Jalawla and Saadiya, about 115 km northeast of Baghdad. Many residents fled the violence long ago.

At least 23 peshmerga and militia fighters were killed and dozens were wounded in Sunday’s fighting, medical and army sources said.

“We have liberated Jalawla and Saadiya,” said Mala Bakhtiar, a senior official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, speaking by phone from a nearby town. He estimated 50 ISIS fighters had been killed out of a force of 400.

Last week, the army broke a monthslong siege of the country’s largest refinery north of Baghdad, but ISIS fighters continue to take territory in the western province of Anbar, which shares borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The militants have been fighting in the last two days to take full control of the Anbar provincial capital Ramadi. Iraqi and foreign jets struck ISIS fighters Sunday near central Ramadi, provincial council member Mahmoud Ahmad Khalaf told Reuters. Clashes continued in the city, he said.

Jalawla and Saadiya are in Diyala province, which is mainly under the control of the Baghdad government forces and Kurdish peshmerga.

Recapturing the towns would help secure the Kurdish-controlled towns of Kalar and Khanaqin to the north, as well as nearby dams and oil fields, peshmerga Secretary-General Jabbar Yawar said. It would also allow the road to be reopened between Baghdad and Khanaqin, close to the Iranian border.

While ISIS forces have not advanced into Baghdad, they hold a ring of towns around the capital and have claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in Shiite districts of the city.

A car bomb in the Shiite town of Yousufiya, 30 km southeast of Baghdad, killed five people Sunday, police and medics said. Two other bombs in towns near the capital killed four other people.

On the Anbar front, Iraqi forces focused their offensive on the provincial capital of Ramadi, backed by Sunni tribal fighters that the U.S. plans to arm.

Authorities in the city implemented a 24-hour curfew as Iraqi armed forces and tribesmen fought to regain Ramadi’s eastern Sijariya neighborhood, which the extremist group said it captured Friday.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has ordered more aerial support and weapons for both soldiers and Sunni militiamen battling ISIS in Anbar.

The U.S. and Iraqi governments have been working hard to woo Sunni tribesmen to support the fight, proposing the establishment of a national guard program that will include arming and paying loyal tribesmen.

According to a Pentagon document prepared for Congress, the U.S. plans to buy arms for Sunni tribesmen in Iraq, including AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds to help bolster the battle against ISIS militants in Anbar province.

The plan to spend $24.1 million represents just a small fraction of the larger $1.6 billion spending request that has been submitted to Congress for the training and arming of Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

But the document underscored the importance the Pentagon places on the Sunni tribesmen to its overall strategy to diminish ISIS, and cautioned Congress about the consequences of failing to assist them.

“Not arming tribal fighters will continue to leave anti-ISIL tribes reluctant to actively counter ISIL,” the document said, using a different acronym for the group that has seized control of large parts of Syrian and Iraq.

A U.S. official said Saturday that the document was posted this week.

It said all U.S. support was being directed “with, by and through” Iraq’s government, suggesting that any weapons would be supplied through Baghdad, in line with existing policy.

It noted that Iraqi security forces were not “not particularly welcome in Anbar and other majority Sunni areas,” citing their poor combat performance and sectarian divisions.

Iraq’s army has been burdened by a legacy of sectarianism in Anbar, where the majority-Sunni population resented former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government and was incensed when he ordered troops to clear a protest camp in Ramadi in December 2013.

The ensuing Sunni tribal revolt prompted the entrance of ISIS into Fallujah and Ramadi, where U.S. troops had met fierce resistance from Sunni insurgents, including Al-Qaeda during their occupation of Iraq after the 2003 invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein.

The Pentagon document also detailed $1.24 billion to be spent on Iraqi forces and $354.8 million on Kurdish troops.

“While the trend on the battlefield has been promising in stemming ISIL gains, Iraq lacks the training expertise and equipment to field the forces needed to liberate territory,” the document said.




 
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