Counter-Attack in Tikrit

"I saw one of the helicopters land opposite the university with my own eyes and I saw clashes between dozens of militants and government forces."
Ahmed Al-Jubbour, professor, Tikrit University, College of Agriculture

The Human Rights Watch reported that hundreds of captured Iraqis have been executed by ISIS. (Photo: AP)

An Iraqi counterattack has finally taken place against the jihadist advance, with the intention of returning Tikrit to government rule. An airborne assault with three helicopters loaded with commandos landed in Tikrit stadium, resulting in clashes with members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham. Even taking into account the Sunni Iraqis fighting for the time being alongside ISIS terrorists against Shiite Iraqi rule, the numbers don't quite compute.

There are so many more Shiites in Iraq than there are Sunnis, logic would have it that the Iraqi military should have no problems in their conflict with the thousands of ISIS militias, even if the Kurdish Peshmerga has deigned not to fight alongside the Shiite military. Yet ISIS, aided by Iraqi Sunnis, has managed to take over a huge swathe of the country with little resistance, the regime's forces melting away in terror at their approach.

Witnesses in Tikrit now say that battles are raging in the city, the result of the lightning offensive by government forces. Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has confirmed that Syrian warplanes have targeted ISIS terrorists inside Iraq. The Iranian al-Quds force is well represented within Baghdad; there is little risk that the capital will fall to the Sunni Islamists. Saudi Arabia is provisioning the Iraqi Sunnis contesting their Shia Iraqi regime, and Iran is equipping the Shias.

"We believe the urgent priority must be to form an inclusive government ... that can command the support of all Iraqis and work to stop terrorists and their terrible crimes", stated Britain's foreign Minister William Hague, visiting Baghdad. A clear enough message calling for Prime Minister Al-Maliki to step down, in echo of the Obama administration; a message that Mr. Al-Maliki has characterized as an interfering, Western malicious "coup" attempt.

The country is in danger of disengaging into fiefdoms controlled by different sects and militant factions, according to Mr. Hague. More likely there will result three divisions, one each for the Kurds, Iraqi Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis. As the only feasible prospect to stem the murderous millennial hatred the latter two harbour for one another.

The U.S. administration is counting on Jordan and Saudi Arabia to use their cross-border tribal networks to aid the Sunni militias to eventually do battle with the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham, through financing or weapons-provision. Twelve people were killed in a bombing in a Shiite neighbourhood in Baghdad with another eight bullet-riddled bodies discovered south of the capital; an increasingly familiar sight in Baghdad.