Al Qaeda battles Iraqi army for Falluja
Al Qaeda’s most significant victory in the Syrian war was achieved this week in the Iraqi arena. Its Iraq and Syrian branch (ISIS), under the command of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, resoundingly defeated the Iraqi army which two weeks ago launched a major offensive to relieve the country of the jihadist grip. Baghdadi’s troops were able to throw back the Iraqi army’s crack 7th and 1st divisions and keep going to capture large sections of Ramadi and Falluja, the key Sunni cities of western and central Iraq.
This victory enabled ISIS to forge a territorial chain of control stretching from Ramadi in central in Iraq, 110 km west of Baghdad, all the way to the northern Syrian town of Al-Raqqah, 160 km from Aleppo.
It also brought the Iraqi military offensive to a standstill. Soldiers downed arms and fled and units still intact started falling back toward Baghdad, dumping their heavy weapons to hasten their retreat.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Al Qaeda owes much of its victory to the decision of the Sunni tribes of western Iraq to join and spearhead its counter-attack on Iraqi forces. After smashing whole Iraqi units in the two cities, these tribal militias opened the door for the ISIS jihadists to march in.
Ironically, the tribal militias backing al Qaeda are the same “Awakening” groups which the US army sustained and armed for the battle to root out Al Qaeda from western Iraq during the 2005-2007 landmark “surge” campaign devised by Gen. David Petraeus.
