Ramadi // Iraqi prime minister Haider Al Abadi visited Ramadi on Tuesday as hundreds of fighters from local Sunni tribes were deployed in areas of the city retaken from ISIL.
Mr Al Abadi arrived by helicopter a day after counter-terrorism forces raised the Iraqi flag above the government complex in Ramadi, the main centre of ISIL resistance against an offensive to recapture the city that was launched last week.
The prime minister began his visit with a meeting of security and provincial officials for the latest updates, said Brig Gen Ahmed Al Belawi, an Iraqi military commander.
Mr Al Abadi vowed on Monday to rid Iraq of ISIL by the end of 2016, and had said last week that retaking Mosul city, Iraq’s second city that was overrun in June 2014, would be the next objective after the liberation of Ramadi.
Brig Gen Al Belawi said military engineering teams still were clearing bombs from the streets and buildings across the city and there were sporadic clashes in outlying districts.
The deployment of Sunni tribal fighters in Ramadi is a step towards providing the capital of Anbar with a force both capable of preventing ISIL’s return and palatable to the local population in the Sunni-majority province.
“Five hundred members of the tribes from the Hashed arrived in northern Ramadi to participate in operations there and hold the liberated areas,” said Maj Gen Ismail Mahalawi, head of the Anbar operations command.
The Hashed Al Shaabi or Popular Mobilisation is an umbrella group of mostly Tehran-backed Shiite militias that have played a key role in retaking land from ISIL. However, Sunni fighters from Anbar tribes opposed to ISIL also officially belong to the group, which is nominally under the prime minister’s command.
“Five units of tribal forces arrived today and hold the areas of Jaraishi, Zawiyah and Albu Faraj north of Ramadi,” said their leader, Tareq Yusef Al Asal.
He said they had been trained at the Habbaniyah base in Anbar and armed by the defence ministry.
The Shiite groups in the Hashed played only a peripheral role in the Ramadi battle, as Mr Al Abadi and the US-led coalition against ISIL wanted federal forces to regain confidence by spearheading the operation.
The loss of Ramadi to ISIL in May was a huge blow to Baghdad’s war on the extremists, and exposed the continued weakness of security forces that had nearly collapsed when they swept through the country in 2014.
The recapture of Ramadi “is a real accomplishment but the keeping and governing of Ramadi will be a much bigger one for Iraq”, said Patrick Skinner, an analyst with the Soufan Group risk intelligence consultancy.
“And it remains to be seen if the conditions that gave rise to [ISIL] – violent sectarianism, horrible governance, corruption – have changed enough to keep [ISIL] from simply sitting in the countryside and returning later,” he said.
Mr Al Abadi has promoted a big role for local security forces in a liberated Ramadi in a bid to avoid any sectarian tensions and encourage Sunnis to work with the Iraq’s Shiite-majority government and not with ISIL.
A credible local force is needed to take over as elite federal forces gradually move out of the city to prepare for battles elsewhere in Anbar, or in northern Salaheddin and Nineveh provinces.
“The bigger the role of the Sunnis in governing and policing Ramadi, the more lasting this victory will be,” said Firas Abi Ali, Middle East analyst with the IHS group.
“Conversely, a return to the sectarian politics that led to the Iraqi government attacking Ramadi protesters in 2013 would pave the way for the return of [ISIL],” he said.
* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press