Shi’ite Militias Head to Ramadi

This article originally appeared on The Media Line.

Shi’ite militias, many of them backed by Iran, are streaming into the provincial capital of Ramadi, to try to help wrest the city back from Islamic State which captured it over the weekend. The loss of Ramadi, just 60 miles from Baghdad, threatens to weaken the Iraqi government further and has led to fears of growing sectarian violence which has already killed tens of thousands of Iraqis.

Islamic State forces continued east toward Baghdad, heading for an army base where Shi’ite fighters were massing to try to take back Ramadi. Islamic State’s takeover of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, presents new challenges to the Iraqi government, as well as to US policy. The victory came as a surprise to many, and has led to fears of new sectarian violence between the Sunni inhabitants of Anbar province and the incoming Shi’ite fighters. Some analysts described it as the worst setback for the Iraqi government in the past year.

“For the last few months the narrative has been that Islamic State is on the defensive,” Renad Mansour, a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Center for Middle East Peace told The Media Line. “This shows that the battle isn’t as easy as it seems and will take much longer.”

He said that there had been speculation that Iraqi attempts to retake Mosul could begin as early as this summer. Now that timetable will be pushed back. Since last month at least 120,000 residents are the area are reported to have fled.

Reports from Ramadi say that at least 500 fighters and civilians have been killed, and thousands have fled the area. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was convinced that US-backed forces would succeed in retaking the area.

“I am convinced that as the forces are redeployed and as the days flow in the weeks ahead that’s going to change, as overall [Isis] have been driven back … I am absolutely confident in the days ahead that will be reversed,” Kerry said.

The fight over Ramadi can also be seen as the fight between two different approaches – the Iranian one which favors deploying Shi’ite militias to fight the Sunni Islamic State, and the US-backed one of trying to restructure the Iraqi military.

“The US believes that in the long run the popular Shi’ite militias will have a negative effect on Iraq because they will use any military achievements as springboards for political ambitions like Hizbullah did in Lebanon,” Michael Eisenstadt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told The Media Line. “Our model is the patient retraining of the Iraqi security forces to create a professional army to reclaim areas taken by Islamic State and return them to government control.”

While the loss of Ramadi is an important victory for Islamic State, the Iraqi government has succeeded in reestablishing control over several important areas including Takrit. Eisenstadt said the Defense Department recently issued a map showing that 25 percent of the territory taken over by IS in Iraq has been recaptured. But the fall of Ramadi could have an important psychological effect.

“As long as IS had no major victories we could claim that the tide has turned against them and they are a spent force,” Eisenstadt said. “This could undermine these claims and challenge the validity of the US approach.

The fighting in Iraq seems to get worse each year. In 2014, at least 17,000 civilians were killed, roughly double the number recorded in 2013. Going back to 2003, and the beginning of the US and British invasion of Iraq, estimates for the number of civilian deaths range from 138,000 to 157,000 civilians killed.