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Iraqi army declares first major victory over Islamic State in Ramadi

Dec 27, 2015 4:12 pm By Robert Spencer

This is indeed a major victory, as Ramadi is a key city.

Iraqi security forces gather to advance towards the centre of Ramadi city, December 25, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer
Iraqi security forces gather to advance towards the centre of Ramadi city, December 25, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer

“Iraqi army declares first major victory over Islamic State in Ramadi,” by Ahmed Rasheed and Maher Chmaytelli, Reuters, December 27, 2015:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s army declared victory over Islamic State fighters in a provincial capital west of Baghdad on Sunday, the first major triumph for the U.S.-trained force since it collapsed in the face of an assault by the militants 18 months ago.

The capture of Ramadi, capital of mainly Sunni-Muslim Anbar province in the Euphrates River valley west of the capital, deprives Islamic State militants of their biggest prize of 2015. The fighters seized it in May after government troops fled in a defeat which prompted Washington to take a hard look at strategy in its ongoing air war against the militants.

After encircling the city for weeks, the Iraqi military launched a campaign to retake it last week, and made a final push to seize the central administration complex on Sunday.

“By controlling the complex this means that we have defeated them in Ramadi,” said Sabah al-Numani, a spokesman for the force leading the fight on the government side. “The next step is to clear pockets that could exist here or there in the city.”

State television broadcast footage of troops, Humvee vehicles and tanks advancing through Ramadi streets amid piles of rubble and collapsed houses. Some districts appeared to have been completely destroyed by the advance.

A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State was unable to confirm at this point whether the militants had been cleared out of the government complex.

Television also showed nighttime celebrations in mainly Shi’ite cities south of Baghdad for the victory in Anbar, with people dancing in the streets and waving Iraqi flags from cars….

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Filed Under: Featured, Iraq, Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) Tagged With: Ramadi


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Comments

  1. Pig Jizya says

    Dec 27, 2015 at 4:20 pm

    I wonde if they got back the 2,300 armour-plated Humvees they gave to ISIS. I didn’t think so.

  2. GuntherL says

    Dec 27, 2015 at 4:52 pm

    Thank you, Russia and China.

    • Don McKellar says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 7:15 pm

      Without Russia, there would be no such victories in Iraq. Certainly Obama had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this. He is complete RESPONSIBLE for propping it up! It is Putin’s cutting off of their oil pipeline through corrupt Turkey which has quickly sucked their money and confidence. Russia is the one hitting them hard and making an impact and it is being felt and giving Iraqi forces the backup which they need to get somewhere. This has been going on for a month and a half, completely OBLITERATING the Islamic State/Turkey back door oil connection, THOUSANDS of oil tankers destroyed before and since this:

      Is it any wonder Erdogan ordered a shoot down of a Russian plane???

      And think of how great this is! After the Islamic State is destroyed, then Iraq can go back to being a staunch Shia client state of Iran. SAY HELLO TO THE NEW BOSS, SAME AS THE OLD BOSS. But at least they won’t be sending over / inspiring jihad murderers elsewhere.

      • Don McKellar says

        Dec 27, 2015 at 7:25 pm

        https://youtu.be/RFAY7LXFhxM

      • mortimer says

        Dec 27, 2015 at 11:37 pm

        Putin is no hero. He leads the biggest kleptocracy in the world.

        • GuntherL says

          Dec 28, 2015 at 4:03 am

          He isn’t a hero, but he is fighting the destructive foreign policy by the US. There’s an interview on Youtube where he addresses questions by a journalist and asks him “Do you understand what you’ve done?” He’s right. The US and its Nato members have destabilized the entire region. It’s about time someone else got a chance to create order over there. There’s a lot to criticize about countries like Russia and Iran, but it’s unlikely that they could screw it up as badly as the US has done the past 15 years.
          I prefer the Russia-China-Iran-Iraq-Syria-Jordan coalition over US-Turkey-Saudi Arabia.

        • salim says

          Dec 29, 2015 at 4:01 am

          Putin has to be judged from his country’s perspective, not his opponents perspective. Putin rescued Russia from a certain collapse after the break up of the USSR. A leader who sides so passionately with his people is a hero. He was the only leader who stood up to the US evil plan to remove Asaad and leave Syria in the hands of the various Islamic organisations.

          Putin is currently the only leader who is on the right side of history. Russia is against Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who all fund and support Islamic terrorism. A few weeks of Russian airstrikes crippled isis and its oil trade with Turkey while a year of US airstrikes strengthened isis.

          By the way, I am sick of people referring to Iran as equal evil to Saudi Arabia, it is like equally blaming Christianity and Islam for terrorism because both are religions. The evil Iran is far more civilised than Saudi Arabia. Also the Iranians and their shia teachings proved to be far more peaceful than the Arabs and the sunni teachings.

        • Angemon says

          Dec 30, 2015 at 9:35 pm

          salim posted:

          “Putin has to be judged from his country’s perspective, not his opponents perspective”

          Huh, you realize that you’re basically absolving every maniac mass-murder in History with that logic, right?

          “Putin rescued Russia from a certain collapse after the break up of the USSR. A leader who sides so passionately with his people is a hero.”

          Case in point: Hitler after WWI.

          “By the way, I am sick of people referring to Iran as equal evil to Saudi Arabia, it is like equally blaming Christianity and Islam for terrorism because both are religions. The evil Iran is far more civilised than Saudi Arabia. Also the Iranians and their shia teachings proved to be far more peaceful than the Arabs and the sunni teachings.”

          Huh, are you taking about terrorism-sponsoring Iran, where gays are hung from construction cranes, women are treated as sub-human, and whose leaders are trying to get their hands on a nuclear weapon so they can wipe Israel off the map and kill all the Jews, and justifying all that with islamic scripture, the same islam that was forced on them by their arab conquerors and masters?

      • TH says

        Dec 28, 2015 at 5:26 am

        If Edrogan thought he was going to stop Putin by shooting down the plane, he was way of base as Putin is not about to be upstaged by this kind of dictator. He and his family have lost millions of income thanks to Russia bombing the ISIS stolen oil revenue filling Edrogan’s pockets.

  3. billybob says

    Dec 27, 2015 at 9:28 pm

    It is hard to fathom what strategy the US is employing over there in Iraq and Syria. For example, we (the general public) have been well aware for more than two years that ISIS was reaping billions of dollars in oil sales. Even back a couple of years ago I wondered where all this oil was going. When you think of it, clearly it was being transported out by tankers, because you don’t smuggle billions of dollars worth of crude oil out in jerrycans hidden in backpacks.

    We know that the US has constant surveillance over these countries, and it should have been trivial to track the flow of oil. Yet never did we hear exactly where it was all going. Certainly there was lots of talk of low level smugglers crossing various borders with jerrycans, but that was just misdirection. Never was it discussed as far as I am aware where the oil tankers themselves were going.

    Then a few weeks ago in a PR piece, the US showed some photos of long trains of tankers they were going to attack. They had made a big deal of the fact that they dropped leaflets first to allow the drivers to run away from their trucks before firing on the tankers with A10 tank killers. Clearly then they were capable of tracking the flow of oil, which had to have been going into Turkey for the most part.

    Beyond that, there was the flow of thousands of volunteers going to join the Jihad. Any intelligence officer should have been able to track this flow. Don’t tell me they didn’t plant tracking devices in the backpacks of new recruits! All these recruits were mostly flowing through our staunch ally, Turkey.

    So what kind of ally is Turkey? Why do we tolerate this county? We should have been denouncing Turkey, kicking them out of NATO, and helping the opposition to topple Erdogan. My conclusion is that there wasn’t any concerted effort to destroy ISIS at all, only a strategy of containment. The US and their ally Turkey had made a deal that the US would look the other way while ISIS was allowed to continue.

    Then why would they do that? I suggest it was because the hope was that ISIS would take down Assad, and then the US thought they could deal with ISIS once they had served their purpose. Finally, allowing ISIS to continue in Iraq was a way of maintaining Iraqi dependence on the US so that Iran wouldn’t have total control of that country.

    I may shock you now by saying I accept this strategy. If we were to go rushing in to eliminate ISIS, who benefits the most? Assad, Iran, and their client Iraq. Think about it: Iran practically controls Iraq, and Iran is the most powerful indigent force in the ME besides Israel. With their allies Iraq and Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, they would dominate the region if it wasn’t for the current instability caused by the civil war in Syria and the ISIS wildcard. This unholy alliance was considered a greater threat than ISIS until recently. Remember when Obama called ISIS a JV team? It appears now with hindsight that he may have underestimated the threat. Especially after the attacks in Paris, and political attacks by the Republicans on Obama for have a “weak” policy in the ME, it seems Obama’s hand is being forced. Russia’s entry into the equation has created entirely new dimensions to consider. I’ll leave further analyses to the reader.

    • Vakkal says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 9:45 pm

      Somebody answer this fool (billyboob) above me supporting ISIS and Turkey.

    • TH says

      Dec 28, 2015 at 5:31 am

      Get an education on the perfidy of Obama and you will understand everything. I assume you know that the U.S. has a far bigger Air Force than Russia and would easily have been able to cherry pick those ISIS oil tankers going from ISIS to the family of Turkish PM Edrogan. There is only one reason: BARAK HUSSEIN was protecting his ISIS friends. After all he is one of the principle creators of ISIS.

      • GuntherL says

        Dec 28, 2015 at 5:45 am

        It’s not a new policy. Obama is no different than his predecessors. He’s the same kind of war criminal as Reagan or George W. Bush. The US has applied the same strategy in Nicaragua (1980s), Iran, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria.
        By focusing on the top puppet, you’re missing the point.

  4. mortimer says

    Dec 28, 2015 at 12:09 am

    Apparently, ISIS only fears Israeli troops according to a German journalist.

    http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/ISIS-Threat/The-only-country-ISIS-fears-in-the-Middle-East-is-Israel-438576

    They should fear the Russian special forces and the SAS. The Navy SEALS have shown themselves extremely competent. Several Western countries have special forces. By using them, they can attack key ISIS headquarters and take prisoners who will reveal where to find and kill the others.

    • TH says

      Dec 28, 2015 at 5:35 am

      They are oly used to killing women and children. If they have to face any real army, much more folks like the Israelis, the Navy Seals, SAS, Speznak etc. they will simply pi in thier pants and run for their lives.

  5. dajjal says

    Dec 28, 2015 at 3:44 am

    This springs from the likes of Henry the Ass Kisser playing chess with nations as pieces and the Levant as their board. Balance of power statecraft is Machiavellian, short sighted, blunder prone and amoral.

    Turkey is jerkey. Who knew the Kemalists would lose control. I was sure of it more than a decade ago, and I am no expert.

    As a NATO member, the Orcs probably know too much about our strategy, tactics and seapons systems. Who might they transfer that knowledge to? Letting them into the alliance was never a good idea.

    Assad is an AssWhole; who but another AssWhole can supplant him? When a pack of lions fights a pack of hyenas, our herds lose no matter which side wins.

    Hell awaits the Ummah. Obamination is one of them, he will not punch their tickets. Cruz & Trump could carpet bomb ISIS without solving the real problem: Islam.

    They need to go back and read the report of the commissioners from London. Then they need to read page 60 of “The Quranic Concept Of War”. Jefferson learned the enemy’s motifation. Malik revealed their strength, which is also their weakness. Who will figure out how to exploit it??

  6. duh_swami says

    Dec 28, 2015 at 7:21 am

    Any victory over ISIS is a good victory, but running them out is not as good as wiping them out…Eliminating ISIS won’t end jihad,/ but it will put a dent in Allah’s causes……

  7. Singh the Sikh says

    Dec 28, 2015 at 8:47 am

    Guns and bombs not enough to annihilate Isis. In fact Isis May have been more forwarded-looking than credited for. It has outsmarted US and Europe and nullified effect of bombing effect with migration jihad. Isis is now on European and US soil.

    • GuntherL says

      Dec 28, 2015 at 10:05 am

      Do you seriously think that Isis would still exist if the strongest army in the world wanted them gone? This is a relatively small group of people without an airforce, depending on foreigners to finance them. If the US wants to eliminate them, they would be gone tomorrow.

      • Singh the Sikh says

        Dec 28, 2015 at 6:27 pm

        US army cannot eliminate the Isis brand of jihad ideology lifted straight from the Koran. Many of the ideologues are now on US, European soil in even greater numbers as refugees, coiled to strike a blow against the west and do their bit for Allah. These sleeping cells hiding among greater Muslim community are targeting the civilian population. They will be harder to detect and the airforce can’t bomb them anyway.

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