BAGHDAD, (Reuters) – Iraqi forces were massing north of Baghdad yesterday, aiming to strike back at Sunni Islamists whose drive toward the capital prompted the United States to send military advisers to stiffen government resistance.
Iraq’s senior Shi’ite religious cleric issued a call for unity, saying Shi’ites and Sunnis should rally behind the authorities to prevent the Sunni militant Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant from destroying the country.
Already, ISIL has started to enact its puritanical vision of Islam in Mosul, which it captured 10 days ago as it swept across northern Iraq. Mosul residents said ISIL members had destroyed symbols of Iraq’s rich heritage, razing statues of cultural icons and the tomb of a Mediaeval philosopher.
President Barack Obama offered on Thursday up to 300 American special forces advisers to help the Iraqi government recapture territory across northern and western Iraq that ISIL and other Sunni armed groups have seized.
But he held off granting a request for air strikes to protect the government and renewed a call for Iraq’s long-serving Shi’ite prime minister Nuri al-Maliki to do more to overcome sectarian divisions that have fuelled resentment among the Sunni minority. In office since 2006, Maliki has disappointed Washington by alienating Sunnis. Obama has called for a more inclusive government in Baghdad, although he has stopped short of saying Maliki should be replaced. There has been speculation Maliki may also have lost the confidence of allies in Iran.
Tehran and Washington have both spoken of cooperating with each other after decades of mutual hostility to prevent anti-Western, anti-Shi’ite zealots controlling swathes of Iraq.
In the area around Samarra, on the main highway 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, which has become a frontline of the battle with the ISIL, the provincial governor, a rare Sunni supporter of Maliki, told cheering troops they would now force ISIL and its allies back.
A source close to Maliki told Reuters that the government planned to hit back now that it had halted the advance which saw ISIL seize the main northern city of Mosul, capital of Nineveh province, 10 days ago and sweep down along the Sunni-populated Tigris valley toward Baghdad as the U.S.-trained army crumbled.
Governor Abdullah al-Jibouri, whose provincial capital Tikrit was overrun last week, was shown on television yesterday telling soldiers in Ishaqi, just south of Samarra: “Today we are coming in the direction of Tikrit, Sharqat and Nineveh.
“These troops will not stop,” he added, saying government forces around Samarra numbered more than 50,000. This week, the militants’ lightning pace has slowed in the area north of the capital, home to Sunnis but also to Shi’ites fearful of ISIL, which views them as heretics to be wiped out. Samarra has a major Shi’ite shrine. The participation of Shi’ite militias and tens of thousands of new Shi’ite army volunteers has allowed the Iraqi military to rebound after mass desertions by soldiers last week allowed ISIL to carve out territory where it aims to found an Islamic caliphate straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border. “The strategy has been for the last few days to have a new defence line to stop the advance of ISIL,” a close ally of Maliki told Reuters. “We succeeded in blunting the advance and now are trying to get back areas unnecessarily lost.”
Fighting continues in pockets. Government forces appeared to be still holding out in the sprawling Baiji oil refinery, the country’s largest, 100 km north of Samarra, residents said.
At Duluiya, between Samarra and Baghdad, residents said a helicopter strafed and rocketed a number of houses in the early morning, killing a woman. Police said they had been told by the military that the pilot had been given the wrong coordinates.
Fighting flared in Muqdadiya in northeastern Diyala province, where security forces attacked a swathe of orchards dominated by Sunni militants, and 1,000 civilians fled north for safety, according to a security source. State television accused the extremists of displacing the Sunnis as a propaganda tool to embarrass the state.
