After days of mounting expectation, the Iraqi government finally announced a serious offensive to retake the city of Ramadi, the capital of western Iraq’s Anbar Province, from the Islamic State (ISIS).
This is far from the first announcement of the imminent recapture of Ramadi, occupied by ISIS since May 2015 after months of attacks. However, the Iraqi military and allied militias have been foiled before by ISIS' tactics of improvised explosive devices, bomb-laden trucks, and booby traps, as well as the destruction of all major bridges into the city.
This has only raised the stakes for the reclaiming of Ramadi. Strategically, it is the “vein of Baghdad,” which is just over 100 kilometers to the east, and is close to the holy city of Karbala to the south and to the borders of Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Jordan. ISIS could use this position both to claim its ascendancy in Iraq—Ramadi is the capital of Anbar, the country’s largest province—and to maintain a route to Raqqa, its central position in Syria.
The loss of Ramadi further challenged the Iraqi government’s already shaky authority. Thousands of Iraqi families were displaced, and many of them are still trapped on Bzeibiz Bridge. Amid fears that ISIS-linked men are among the homeless, officials have restricted access to the capital.
So the Iraqi joint military operations command declared its plans to retake the city—but only now has it begun to act on them.
Going In
The plan was that artillery bombardment by the Iraqi army and airstrikes by U.S.-led forces would support a ground assault including Shia paramilitary units, some of them led by Iranian officers, and Sunni tribal fighters. In preparation, Anbar Province’s military command headquarters and the western Ramadi district of Tamim were retaken and occupied.
The final campaign was held up for weeks, ostensibly to give civilians the opportunity to evacuate the city. Then, on Dec. 20, leaflets declared the final chance to leave in the next 72 hours, suggesting two routes for exit. Eyewitnesses and local sources said that ISIS was preventing departure in hopes of using residents as human shields.
The next day, after military engineers installed a floating bridge over the Warar River, Iraqi forces, including anti-terrorism units, advanced to the center of Ramadi. Backed by the U.S.-led airstrikes, the anti-terrorism forces announced the capture of the al-Bakr neighborhood to the south of the city, with fierce fighting in nearby areas such as al-Thubat and al-Aramil.
