Regaining Confidence...?

"Tikrit has become a ghost town because a lot of people left over the past 72 hours, fearing random aerial bombardment and possible clashes as the army advances toward the city."
"The few people who remain are afraid of possible revenge acts by Shiite militiamen who are accompanying the army. We are peaceful civilians and we do not want to be victims of this struggle."
Muhanad Saif al-Din, Tikrit resident

Iraqi security forces take part in an intensive security deployment on the outskirts of the city of Samarra, June 24, 2014. (REUTERS/Stringer)

In full anticipation of a government assault, many residents of Tikrit fled the city beforehand.  Muhanad Saif al-Din said the city had been without power or water since Friday night. The Iraqi military carried out three airstrikes as well on the ISIS-held city of Mosul early on Saturday. South of Baghdad, clashes between security forces and ISIS along with Iraqi Sunni insurgents in the town of Sunni-majority Jurf al-Aakhar located 50 kilometres outside the capital killed 21 troops and dozens of militants, according to police and hospital officials.

Iraqi security officials confirmed the arrival of five Russian Suohoi jets, purchased second-hand from Russia. The previously-ordered U.S.-manufactured planes the government of Iraq had ordered were delayed in their delivery until early fall; not much help in the current desperate situation. But the big news was that Iraqi soldiers backed by tanks and helicopter gunships started their offensive Saturday to retake Tikrit. Conflicting reports belying government claims it had retaken Tikrit have been going the rounds, with the Islamists claiming the city remained in their hands.

Residents of Tikrit reported that the militants still retained control of the city, even while Iraqi officials claimed troops had reached the outskirts, then pressed deep into Tikrit itself. The picture the regime is desperately trying to paint is the reverse of the reality that saw Iraq's large American-trained and -equipped military fading away when faced with the terrorist presence. Public confidence in the military is at a deep ebb. Should the Tikrit operation succeed, a degree of faith could be restored both in the security forces and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

"He gave a fatwa the Shiites never had for 90 years of more. He will not retreat. He wants to have a role. It would be seen as irresponsible for him to pull back after issuing such a fatwa", commented a Western diplomat of the country's clerical establishment leading the hugely revered 83-year-old Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to demand that politicians select a new government without delay; implicitly stating Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's disastrous administration come to an end.

The Grand Ayatollah called on Iraqis to take up arms against the Sunni insurgency, a call representing the first fatwa of its kind in a century; motivated, insisted other clerics, by his fear that the country faced collapse. Tens of thousands of Iraqi men have responded to the call, in support of the army that has seemed to be teetering on implosion. Ayatollah Sistani's appeal for an inclusive government is interpreted as a rebuke of Mr. al-Maliki, a situation difficult to ignore.

According to Iraqi military spokesman Lt.Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, helicopter gunships carried out airstrikes before dawn on Islamist militias who were attacking troops at a university campus on Tikrit's northern outskirts. A bridgehead had been established by government forces on the sprawling grounds of the university after being airlifted into the city the day before. Clashes continued sporadically throughout the day at the university. 

Simultaneously, several columns of troops pushed north from Samarra, a city along the Tigris River banks, home to an important Shiite shrine, heading toward Tikrit. By sundown, Lt.Gen Ahmed Abu Ragheef, commander in the Salahuddin Operational Command, said as well that a column of troops had reached the edge of Tikrit, and another had secured an airbase known as Camp Speicher, used as an American military facility previously.

This, while residents reached by telephone on Saturday evening described militants as being still in control of the city, a Sunni-predominant city of over 200,000. While confirming the clashes around the university and fighting between ISIS and Iraqi forces to the southeast of the city as well, they described black smoke rising from a presidential palace complex located at the edge of the Tigris River after army helicopters opened fire on the compound.

The next few days will demonstrate whether the government's plan to restore confidence by portraying itself responding finally to the forward momentum of the Islamists has a true basis in describing what is occurring. After two weeks of demoralizing defeats at the hands of a conquest-seeking horde of Islamists for whom no atrocities are too vicious to send the message that nothing will stop them, it was time for Iraq to begin defending itself.