Monday, May 18, 2015

ISIS victorious in Ramadi... Reuters.

Smoke from a bombing in Ramadi. Reuters. 

ISIS has fully taken the city of Ramadi from Iraqi government forces and has secured most of Anbar province. Reuters. ISIS released a statement claiming to have captured vehicles and killed "dozens" of Iraqi security forces. Iraqi troops also pulled out of a nearby army base. It was hoped that the deployment of Shiite militias would have turned the tide in Ramadi, despite the risks of using the militias, but in the end they had little impact on the battle. The ISIS victory is a stunning reversal of the gains the Iraqi military made after taking the city of Tikrit in the north, and the largest victory ISIS has had anywhere since the fall of Mosul last summer. The United States government is downplaying the victory and has stepped up airstrikes in the area.



Video reported to be of Iraqi troops fleeing Ramadi. 

My Comment:
Terrible news out of Iraq, but news I was expecting. Already people are comparing this to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam back in 1968. That battle changed the American public's view of the war and made it look like the communists would never be defeated. Though I don't think the impact of this battle will be anywhere near the impact of Tet, it's important to note that in a strictly military sense, the Americans and South Vietnamese won that battle. This battle can't be claimed to be anything else then an utter failure by the Iraqis. 

With Ramadi fully under the control of ISIS, Fallujah, already under attack, will be the next target. After that there isn't much between ISIS and Baghdad itself. If losing Ramadi isn't equivalent to the impact the Tet Offensive had, losing Baghdad would probably eclipse it. It would completely repudiate a decade of foreign policy in the Middle East and an utter catastrophe for the people of Iraq. 

Will it happen though? It's hard to tell. As the summer months come to Iraq, the war campaigns tend to slow down, for no other reason then the heat. ISIS has momentum now but if they can't keep up the offensive through the summer months, they will lose it. I don't see them capturing Fallujah that fast and even if they do they would be hard pressed to get Baghdad.

It's hard to overstate how important this victory is for ISIS. They were on the back foot in both Iraq and Syria. They lost Tikrit to the Iraqis, several villages and Mt. Sinjar to the Kurds and failed to capture Kobani in Syria. They had lost a lot of territory in both Iraq and Syria and were in danger of being pushed out of Anbar province. Not only did they blunt Iraq's offensive in Anbar, they got back the momentum that they haven't had since last summer. That is just a massive reversal of fortune.

The question now becomes, how do we push them back? It seems very clear to me that ISIS's recent victories, in both Iraq and Syria have more to do with the weakness of the governments there instead of the strength of ISIS. Iraq's army was devastated last summer and never even came close to recovering. What few Iraqi troops are left seem to have no backbone whatsoever. In Syria, the government is under siege, not only by ISIS but other rebel groups as well. The rival al-Nusra front has pushed them back to the point that it looks like Assad will fall. Though the Syrians pushed ISIS out of Palmyra, they are still hard pressed to fight ISIS. 

Both states are being held together by massive support from Iran. Iranian backed Shiite militias in Iraq and Hezbollah in Syria are doing much of the fighting against ISIS. Without Iranian support it is very possible that both countries would have fallen to ISIS or other Islamic groups a long time ago. Of course, Iran expanding its influence in Iraq and Syria is very bad news for the United States, but there is literally nobody else that is willing to fight. 

The Pentagon is overplaying the significance of airstrikes and commando raids on ISIS. Air power and special forces alone won't blunt ISIS's offensives. What is needed are troops on the ground and nobody outside of Iran is willing to make that happen. And even with Iranian support, ISIS is still on the march. In short, this war isn't anywhere near over and there is a real question about which side will win... 

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