Waving white flags, civilians, mostly women and children emerged from houses in Ramadi’s eastern district of Sufiya where Iraqi government forces were still battling militants of the Islamic State holed up on Saturday (January 16).
Iraq’s elite counter-terrorism forces recaptured the district on Saturday (January 16) , evacuating hundreds of residents who had been hiding for around 10 days, steering them to safety through streets mined with explosives and then providing food and drink.
“We have been hiding for 11 days under stairs without food and water. We drink filthy water, unfit for human consumption. We pour water through a handkerchief to purify and then drink,” said unidentified resident of Sufiya after being evacuated.
The provincial capital in the fertile Euphrates River valley west of Baghdad is the biggest city to have been recaptured from Islamic State, and the first retaken by Iraq’s army since it collapsed in the path of the militants’ advance 18 months ago.
The victory has been hailed as a turning point by the Iraqi government, which says its rebuilt army will soon march on Islamic State’s main Iraqi stronghold Mosul further north, and defeat the group in Iraq in 2016.
According to Iraqi military officers the presence of civilians was delaying the advance of the troops eastward from the central district they captured early this month.
“They (Iraqi forces) saved us. As if we have been buried under the ground and they took us out. We are very happy as if we were reborn. May God make them victories and protect them,” said an unidentified woman from Sufiya.
The victory in Ramadi, which was captured by Islamic State fighters in May, was by far the biggest success for Iraq’s army since it fled in the face of the fighters’ lightning advance across a third of Iraq in 2014, abandoning its American armour.
Islamic State, also known by the English acronyms ISIS or ISIL or the Arabic acronym Daesh, has declared a “caliphate” to rule over all Muslims from territory it controls in both Iraq and Syria.
The United States is leading a coalition with European countries and major Arab states that has been striking Islamic State targets from the air, but a central challenge has been rebuilding the Iraqi army into a force capable of capturing and holding territory on the ground.
Previous battles were fought with the army playing a supporting role behind Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia fighters, although this risked alienating Sunni Muslim residents in Islamic State-held areas.
A key part of the strategy for the government is to put Ramadi in the hands of local Sunni tribal figures, an echo of the 2006-2007 “surge” campaign by U.S. forces at the height of the 2003-2011 U.S. war in Iraq, in which Washington secured the help of Sunni tribes against a precursor of Islamic State. (Reuters)
