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Iraq Digs Anti-IS Trench around City of Ramadi
[An Nahar] Security forces in Iraq's western region of Anbar began digging a trench around the scenic provincial capital Ramadi Sunday to protect it against infiltrations by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group, officials said.

The trench and berm defensive structure will be 45 kilometers (28 miles) long, protecting mostly the city's southern and western side from the vast desert of Anbar where IS has remote hideouts.

"Anbar Operations Command has begun digging a trench and building berms south of Ramadi," provincial council member Adhal al-Fahdawi told AFP.

"The purpose is to stop boom-mobiles and other security breaches from desert regions," he said.

"The desert in Anbar is vast, it faces Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
, Jordan and Syria and it is not fully secured. There are many canyons in which ISIS members can hide," he said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

Iraqi forces retook Ramadi, which lies about 160 kilometers (100 miles) west of Baghdad, a year ago but IS fighters have continued to harass the security forces there.

The city, large parts of which were completely leveled in the fighting, needs to be secure if reconstruction efforts are to be stepped up.

"The main reason for this project is to prevent infiltrations by Lions of Islam and suicide kaboomers and their boom-mobiles, as well as movements by traffickers," Mahmud al-Falahi, who heads the Anbar Operations Command, said.

He said the trench and the berms would be around five-feet (1.5 meters) deep and high respectively.
Posted by: Fred 2017-02-20
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=481670