Shiite paramilitaries fire a rocket at the city of Fallujah. Reuters.
The siege of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, long controlled by ISIS, is starting to take a very heavy toll on civilians trapped their due to dwindling supplies. Reuters. After Iraqi forces, backed up by US airstrikes cut off the main supply routes into the city, civilians there have started to run out of both food and medical supplies. Several people have died due to starvation and lack of medicine. Local officials have called for air drops of supplies to be sent but since those supplies would most likely fall into ISIS hands, it is unlikely that anything will be dropped. There are no other options to supply the city because ISIS has mined all the entrances to the city. Fallujah fell to ISIS in January 2014, 6 months before the fall of Mosul, and has been in their hands since. After the capture of Ramadi, it is unclear if the Iraqi's will take the city back or keep it contained in order to send forces to try and capture back Mosul. There are still 400 to 1000 ISIS fighters remaining in Fallujah and they are preventing the remaining civilians from leaving the city.
My Comment:
Siege warfare is never pretty. It has always involved starvation and deaths due to lack of supplies. That's kind of the point of siege warfare. You have to starve people out to get them to lay down their arms peacefully. I don't think that happens here in Fallujah though. ISIS fighters are extremely dedicated to their cause and are willing to die in Fallujah. The probably don't want to starve to death but I can't see them just giving up the fight. They will fight to the end until they run completely out of ammo.
The hope is that ISIS will soon try and break out of the city. Such an offensive would be extremely difficult to pull off and would have little chance of success. But it would make it a lot easier for the Iraqis to defeat the forces in Fallujah. It would probably be the wrong move for ISIS but they don't seem to have any other chance. If the Iraqis are willing to starve them out then they have no other chance. I'd give them a small chance of succeeding, after all, the Iraqis have proven that they often quit the battle when pushed. But doing so would open up their fighters to the heavy weapons and airstrikes that the United States and Iraqis could unleash.
Their only other hope is that the Iraqis are foolish or sentimental enough to airdrop supplies to the civilians in Fallujah. If that happens, ISIS will simply steal the supplies. They have little reason not too. The Iraqi civilians are no threat to them and are only useful at this point as human shields. Letting a bunch of them starve doesn't really hurt their goals. It's not like the Iraqi civilians can do much to stop them either. And ISIS has proven time and time again that they don't care about the lives of people that aren't them. I don't see the Iraqi government doing this because the only people it helps is ISIS. Starving ISIS out might not be the politically correct option, but giving them supplies should be out of the question, even if it means that the civilians starve.
I think the best option for the civilians would be a full offensive by the Iraqi government to liberate Fallujah once and for all. Such a battle would be hugely destructive and would kill many civilians. But the ones that survive wouldn't starve to death or die because they don't have any medication. Can that happen though? I really don't know. It depends how strong the Iraqi military is right now. My guess is that they are depleted from the battle in Ramadi. Though that was a victory for them, it was a hard fought one, and it was fought mostly by Iraqi special forces, who have already been bleed dry in this war. Any such battle would be a slow slog with heavy airstrikes and close range fighting. It would be horrific for anyone trapped in the city, but perhaps a better option then letting everyone, ISIS and civilian, starve.
Of course, even if the retaking Fallujah is an option, I don't know if it is one that the Iraqis will take. Mosul is a much more tempting target. If Mosul were to fall then ISIS's power base in Iraq would completely collapse. They still control a few other cities in central Iraq, including Fallujah, but Mosul is the de-facto capital of ISIS in Iraq. Take it and you pretty much win the war, and I think the Iraqis might want to ignore the Fallujah problem if it means taking Mosul sooner.
Still, I don't think Iraq is anywhere near taking Mosul. They have a long way to go before they even get close to the city, and their regular forces aren't up to snuff yet. The method they used in Ramadi to take back the city probably won't work in Mosul. Special forces and airstrikes alone won't be enough to take back the city. It is just too large of a city and the humanitarian stakes would be huge. They would have to rely on their regular army forces, not on their special forces directing airstrikes in to devastate the city. Keep in mind that those regular Iraqi troops are the same ones that broke in both Mosul and Ramadi, allowing ISIS to capture those cities in in the first place. And if they use their Shiite militia units then all hell could break loose due to those units often taking out their frustrations on Sunni civilians...
I'm no expert but I think that just trying to take back Fallujah through a conventional battle is the best option for Iraq. It's certainly the best option on humanitarian grounds, even if casualties would be high. And they should try and use regular troops to do so, just to give them more fighting experience. Mosul is too far away and their forces are too weak to contest it at this point. And laying siege to Fallujah will be a humanitarian disaster and will likely kill everyone there, civilian and ISIS alike...
Of course the elephant in the room is the fact that ISIS has their own plans. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they went on the offensive in a different part of Iraq. That is how they took Ramadi shortly after their first major defeat in Tikrit. They took advantage of all the troops tied up in the north to strike in central Iraq. That could happen again, and if it does it would throw a wrench into all of Iraq's plan. I doubt that ISIS could do much for their fighters isolated in Fallujah though. The city is totally surrounded and they would have to re-capture Ramadi, which is still a battlefield, just to have a chance at relieving them. No matter what, ISIS is doomed in Ramadi, unless everything goes completely wrong. Given how the war against ISIS has been fought so far, I wouldn't be totally surprised if that happens.
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