Ramadi liberation a key victory against ISIS

“2016 will be the year of the big and final victory, when Daesh’s presence in Iraq will be terminated”, Abadi said in a speech broadcast on state television, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State that the hardline group rejects.

Mr Abadi arrived by helicopter in the battle-scarred city, which lies around 100 km west of Baghdad and is the capital of the province of Anbar.

Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Belawi told The Associated Press that IS militants stopped firing from inside the government complex at around 8 a.m. Monday and said troops were encircling it as engineering teams cleared booby traps.

The Hashd al-Shaabi, a conglomerate of primarily Shia militias that has played a key role in ousting Isis from cities such as Tikrit, appeared to take a backseat in the liberation of Ramadi, ceding the task primarily to the Iraqi elite counter-terrorism force, local police, the Iraqi army and a small group of Sunni tribesmen, backed by US-led airstrikes.

Iraqi forces, though backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes, had been slowed in Ramadi by explosives planted in streets and booby-trapped buildings by Islamic State fighters.

BAGHDAD, Dec 29 (Reuters) – The Iraqi army will need the Kurds’ help to retake Mosul, the largest city under the control of Islamic State with the planned offensive expected to be very challenging in a region home to rival religious and ethnic groups, an Iraqi minister said.

Suham Sabah, 55, whose family of eight survived the occupation of Ramadi, said in a phone interview that her nephew had been killed by Islamic State militants. They won thanks to better equipment, and more than 600 airstrikes by coalition planes against ISIS targets. The government says most civilians were able to evacuate before it launched its assault.

The capture of Ramadi marked the first time that Iraqi armed forces have seized a city from the Islamic State without the aid of the country’s powerful Shiite militias, which did not participate in the operation because of concerns about sectarian tensions with the city’s mostly Sunni inhabitants.

Abadi later announced the visit to the Anbar provincial capital himself on Twitter and said he was inspecting troops at the main government complex there. Soldiers could be seen slaughtering sheep in celebration near heavily damaged buildings.

And Islamic State militants are far more entrenched in Fallujah and Mosul — where they have been for much longer — than they were in Ramadi, and that will make it more hard to root them out, defense officials acknowledged.

Kimberly Dozier, a CNN contributor and journalist who has reported extensively from Iraq, pointed out that the Iraqi military has previously overstated military successes and that’s a reason for pause.

Such a strategy would echo the USA military’s “surge” campaign of 2006-2007, which relied on recruiting and arming Sunni tribal fighters against al Qaeda, Islamic State’s precursor.

Displaced Ramadi residents celebrate Tuesday after their city was liberated from ISIS.

It is imperative to state that the ISIS group still controls much of northern and Western Iraq.

Reports indicate that the Sunni tribal force will be handed control of Ramadi once it is fully cleared of ISIS fighters and that the Iraqi Army will withdraw.