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The Iraqi campaign to retake Ramadi from ISIS is a looming disaster
[Bus Insider] The Iraqi Army and its Shia militia allies are gearing up for one of the defining campaigns in the war against ISIS.Troops are gathering outside of Ramadi, the city located 80 miles from Baghdad that ISIS took on May 17th. Ramadi is majority Sunni and could serve as an ISIS foothold for an assault on the greater Baghdad area. A successful campaign to retake the city could send ISIS into retreat. But failure would only solidify the jihadists' hold over a sizable population center at the doorstop of the Iraqi capital. And the attempt to retake Ramadi looks like yet another disaster in waiting. As former US Army intelligence officer Michael Pregent explained to Business Insider, taking back Ramadi is beyond the capabilities of a diminished Iraqi army and its partners, which include Iranian-backed Shia militia groups like Kataib Hezbollah and the Badr Group. Nevertheless, The Washington Post reports that Iran-backed militias, under the umbrella of popular mobilization units, have already taken the lead. Meanwhile, Iranian commanders are fighting on the front lines and the Pentagon may give them air support. "We wish the army could be at the same level as the [popular mobilization units]," a Kataib Hezbollah fighter told the Post near Ramadi. "In reality, they are much weaker." The main problem is that an enormous deployment of soldiers and Shia militants -- and then US air strikes -- were required to retake Tikrit, a much smaller majority-Sunni town that had been nearly depopulated during the fighting, back in March. And "Ramadi's different," says Pregent. "It has a civilian population and it's far harder to bomb there. The targets are harder to find and ISIS is embedded in the Sunni population ... It took 30,000 fighters to take Tikrit, and they couldn't take the city from 1,000 ISIS fighters in an area with no civilian population until the US started bombing everything." Posted by: Besoeker 2015-05-31 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=419294 |