Iraq, Bravely Going It Alone

"Whoever is talking about the Iranian advisers must give them respect and honor, for if not for them or the presence of the brother Qasem Soleimani (the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force), Iraq would have been entirely under the control of ISIS, and the Iraqi people must erect a statue to this hero out of gratitude and recognition."
"The presence of the Iranian experts who are accompanying the Hashed Al-Shaabi [popular committee] forces in the battles going on in Salahuddin province is a source of pride."
"Iranian advisers accompany us on the field of battle and offer the best expertise and advice, and we are proud of them, and they will join us in the effort to liberate Ninwah and Al-Anbar entirely, after we liberate Tikrit and Kirkuk."
"Our brothers the residents of Salahuddin province, and Al-Anbar and Mosul, do not trust the American forces, because they are incapable of liberating one Iraqi village…today your own people are the ones who are capable of liberating Iraq’s lands from the impurity of ISIS."
"The participation of our brothers in the Islamic Republic [of Iran], without anything in return, in contrast to what the Americans are doing, after they gave us weapons for a price from Iraq’s own money and place thousands of limitations on their use."
Hadi al-Ameri, member Iraqi Parliament, head, Badr Organization Shi'a militia

"[The operation to retake Tikrit is] essential to opening a corridor for security forces to move from the south to Mosul."
"[The offensive being engaged to retake Tikrit is]one hundred percent Iraqi, from the air and ground."
Khaled al-Obeidi, Iraqi Minister of Defence

Shi'ite fighters known as Hashid Shaabi look at smoke from an explosives-laden military vehicle driven by an Islamic State suicide bomber which exploded during an attack on the southern edge of Tikrit Credit: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

Iraqi troops, trained and armed by the United States, melted away at the first sign of entry into Mosul of the ill-equipped Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham jihadists in the summer of 2014. Once those Iraqi troops deserted their posts, their obligations, their geography to the marauders, the Islamic State fighters were no longer ill-equipped. That desertion of duty by the Iraqi troops enriched the Islamic State exponentially when it was enabled to loot Mosul's banks, take possession of nearby oilfields and march onward with their new military equipment.

The billions that the United States had lavished on building Iraq's military, on training its officers and foot soldiers, on providing them with state-of-the-art military vehicles ordnance and arms, entrusting to the Iraqi military the protective future of the country that the U.S. had rescued from its murderous Baathist Sunni tyrant, was very much appreciated by the new caliphate of the Islamic State and its Caliph Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi; generous to a fault.

Now, with the Iraqi military forging on in an offensive to dislodge the ISIS jihadis from Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, going it alone, and seeing to it that 20,000 Shia militias and the Iranian al-Quds Republican Guard tagged along to see how courageous Iraqis are more than capable of accounting for the security of their own country, they have confidence that three, four days at most will be all they need to retake Mosul.

Shi'ite fighters, known as Hashid Shaabi, clash with Islamic State militants, as one tries to put a Shi'ite flag in the ground, in northern Tikrit, March 12, 2015.
Credit: REUTERS/Stringer

As Khaled al-Obeidi said, visiting the front line, nothing to it. The CIA, not invited to the party of onlookers has estimated that the Sunni ISIS group can deploy 20,000 to 31,000 fighters in both Iraq and Syria covering their entire area, believe that 150 foreign fighters, mostly Chechens, have joined ISIS in Tikrit alone. The fighting force representing the combined strength of the Iraqi military, the Shia militias and Iraqi Sunni tribes that have agreed to help displace ISIS, are estimated at about 20,000 in Tikrit.

So sheer force of numbers mitigate that the offensive will be a success in eliminating ISIS from Tikrit, giving Iraq a leg up on planning a much larger offensive to retake Mosul in months to come, enabling them to be supplied in a corridor that runs through to Tikrit. Tankers and vehicles used by ISIS suicide bombers litter the battlefield in the route between the Iraqi command centre and the city. Caution is advised in the advance in respect of ISIS snipers and the ground littered with IEDs.

General Obeidi met with the senior military commanders as well as Iranian Maj.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani commander of the Quds Force who has been single-handedly credited with motivating the Iraqi military to go forth and reclaim that which is theirs. The United States has no presence alongside the three-pronged response to ISIS presence in Tikrit, where the city has been surrounded in a pincer movement designed to squeeze out ISIS fighters.

A task not easily accomplished which, in the final analysis will be reduced to street-by-street, hand-to-hand guerrilla-type inner-city combat. American forces are present in the country, some three thousand in number when the latest deployment will have been completed, in an advisory role. There's an unholy combination; the Islamic Republic of Iran supplying the instruction and manpower, martialling Shia militias to the fray, whose conduct once in Tikrit and Mosul is shudderingly feared by the Sunni residents.

And the United States, committed to rescuing Iraq from itself, but not incidentally from the talons of Iran. In effect, when the U.S. responds to Iraq's prime minister Haider al-Abadi's appeal for more aid, doublespeak for funding, the United States' efforts will result in facilitating Iran's complete and utter absorption of Iraq as a political and geographic satellite in its Shi'ite commanding firmament of power in the Middle East.