An Iraqi tank in al-Alam near Tikrit. Yahoo/Reuters.
Iraqi troops have entered the ISIS stronghold of Tikrit from both the north and south. Yahoo/Reuters. After successfully taking the town of al-Alam, Iraq forces have moved into the city proper. The attack is on two fronts. In the north, Iraqi forces have captured at least half of the Qadisyia district. In the south Iraqi forces battled ISIS in the Hospital and in the presidential palaces left over from the Saddam Hussein era. 20,000 troops, including many Iranian backed Shia militias are fighting in the battle.
My Comment:
Just a short update about the battle for Tikrit. I am very surprised at how well it is going. I had fully expected the battle to have bogged down by now. I did not expect the Iraqi forces to have this much backbone. I'm guessing the Iranian support they are getting is really helping the effort to dislodge ISIS from Tikrit. They do outnumber their enemy by quite a few troops. Indeed, I'm not so sure about the 20,000 number Reuters gave. Other sources I have read have said that there were 30,000 fighters. ISIS doesn't have nearly that much so as long as Iraq can keep the morale of the troops up and don't run into any supply problems they should win.
Then the question becomes "what happens next?" There is great concern that the Shia militias could take revenge on the local Sunni population. I've been mentioning that for weeks now and if it happens then no good will come from it. Iraq desperately needs the support of the Sunni tribesmen to defeat ISIS. If they don't have it then they are done for and if they massacre civilians in Tikrit then they won't have it. Even if ISIS is utterly defeated in Tikrit, they still win if the Shia militias commit any atrocities. ISIS needs support from Sunni Arabs and they will have it if a bunch of Sunnis die by the hands of these Shia militias.
Looking past that though, if Iraq does win this battle, then the next stop is Mosul. The attack may very well come this fall since they most likely won't have the troops ready until then. Summer in Iraq is also a very bad time to mount an offensive so I am guessing that the next major military operation will wait until then. Given how involved Iran is in the battle for Tikrit and how uninvolved the United States is I am guessing that pattern will continue. That operation will be much bigger then this battle and ISIS has plenty of time to prepare for it.
As much as I have reservations for Iran's involvement in this battle it is good news that ISIS is getting pushed back somewhere. ISIS is still expanding in Syria and have expanded in Libya and Egypt as well. Sure the Kurds in Iraq have taken back some minor cities, such as Sinjar, and ISIS utterly failed to capture Kobani in Syria, but this will be the first major defeat. The effect on ISIS will not be huge but it will be a major morale booster to all those fighting against ISIS. And any remnants of the "invincibility" of ISIS, if indeed there are any left, will be utterly shattered. I think that this might be the turning point of the war. It's not the beginning of the end for the war, that's for sure. But it just might be the end of the beginning.
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