ISIL overruns last Iraqi holdout in Ramadi

Islamic State militants say in statement they have taken full control over Iraq's Ramadi
- @reuters

Scott Atran, an anthropologist who specializes in jihadi organizations, sees what even Iraqi officials acknowledge as the loss of Ramadi as more than just a propaganda boost. He accuses U.S. officials of spinning a dream world. “U.S. government and Iraqi government forces up until Saturday were saying Ramadi would never fall,” he notes.

He fumes: “Here is a group, attacked on all sides by a wide array of forces and countries, massively outnumbered, with no airpower, and unable to use their artillery because of that, having established a fully functioning state in less than a year, with functioning courts, police, customs, etc., defending a border 3,000 km long.” He continued: “While the Islamic militants’ reach has been limited in Iraq, it appears that these highly mobile Islamic State fighters who are able to switch the direction of their attacks from one side of the Syrian-Iraq border to the other, will now be targeting Syrian Kurdish forces to attract youth from 90 countries. And our government says these are weak, failed, and nihilistic gangs who are burning themselves out.”

Some may disagree with Altran’s description of the “caliphate” as a “fully functioning state.” But the Islamic extremists’ ability to counterpunch is becoming clearer. Time and again since September, when President Obama launched an air war against ISIS, the terror army has switched focus, exploiting their mobility and the lack of coordination and agreement among the various groups and countries aligned against them both to score gains and to erode the morale and confidence of their foes.

In January, taking advantage of a breakdown of a non-aggression pact between militia forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Syrian Kurds, Islamic militants started to probe territory southeast of the mainly Kurdish Syrian border town of Kobani and launched an offensive on Hasakah, a strategic town in Syria’s Kurdistan that straddles roads linking ISIS-controlled Mosul in Iraq to the Syrian town of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State.

Hasakah, Ramadi, Palmyra—they all illustrate how ISIS strikes back whenever the group takes a hit both to boost the morale of its own fighters and to give the sense it remains undefeated even when it does suffer defeats. “Carry the battle to them. Don’t let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive,” was Harry Truman’s take on how to conduct warfare. And that is exactly how ISIS fights.

With the Ramadi assault, the ISIS planners have also set up the circumstances for more trouble for the Iraqi government in Iraq’s western Anbar province. Iraq’s prime minister is now saying he will deploy Shia militias to the city to mount a fightback—but that is likely to roil more Sunnis in a province that they dominate and undermine efforts get the tribes that are aligned with ISIS to defect.

Meanwhile, with the expansion of affiliates in Libya, Afghanistan, and Libya, and stepped up efforts to inspire terrorist activities, whether by lone wolves or more directed agents of terror, in the United States and Europe ISIS has even more options. Analyst Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank, suspects ISIS will answer Friday’s Delta Force raid with a terror attack in the West to try to blunt the psychological warfare edge the U.S. secured with the nighttime commando assault. “Such strikes could invite more attacks here, against the homeland,” he says.