![]() ![]() Instead, they’ve unleashed a classic terror campaign marked by a sharp increase in suicide bombings. (They’ve already flooded some rural areas.)īy contrast, ISIL forces have less control over Ramadi. That means there’s a danger the insurgents could unleash enough water to swamp parts of Baghdad. The insurgents have also taken control of a series of dams near Fallujah in the Euphrates delta region. They’ve intimidated or killed local officials and police. In Fallujah, militants booby-trapped houses and roads. These cities have since become dangerous places-even for Iraq. In both Fallujah and Ramadi, the subsequent vacuum of law and order allowed ISIL to exploit the situation to their advantage. In Fallujah, Iraqi troops skirmished with armed locals on the outskirts before digging in for a siege. In Ramadi, armed locals-not ISIL-repelled troops belonging to the Iraqi army 1st Division, including local police, as the authorities attempted to clear the square of protesters. The former is outside the control of the central government, while Ramadi is the focus of considerable insurgent forces based in the city’s southern suburbs.ĬTC Sentinel traces the latest round of fighting to the Iraqi’s government’s crackdown on Arab Spring-style protest camps in Ramadi and Fallujah in December 2013. The insurgents are operating across borders and applying lessons learned in the Syrian civil war.įor months, the centerpieces of Iraq’s revived Sunni insurgency have been the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. But if ultimately successful, “the development of a defensible ISIL caliphate just outside Baghdad would be a historic achievement on par with anything the movement has achieved in Syria,” the report warns. The good news is that ISIL is also be overextending itself, and the terror group still has only mixed success at taking and holding territory. According to the report, ISIL has made major territorial gains in recent months-amounting to the most significant since the early years of the U.S. That’s also the conclusion of a recent report from CTC Sentinel, West Point’s monthly counter-terror newsletter. Aside from the use of anti-tank missiles-which have destroyed huge numbers of Syrian tanks-in Iraq, the attacks are a sign of the growing strength of Iraq’s Sunni insurgents. ![]()
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