Taking Tikrit

"This is one of the areas where ISIS militants massed the most because Saddam's grave is here."
"[They] set an ambush for us by planting bombs around [the tomb]."
Captain Yasser Nu'ma, official Shiite militias

Shiite fighters fire a rocket during clashes with Islamic State militants in Salahuddin province, Iraq, on Tuesday. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers and Shiite militiamen sought to seal off Islamic State fighters in Tikrit and nearby towns. (REUTERS/Ahmed Al-Hussaini)

That imminent Iraqi offensive to rid Tikrit of Islamic State fighters is on temporary hold. Ostensibly allowing Sunni civilians to flee before the Popular Mobilization Forces of the Shiite militias along with the Shia-led Iraqi military and the al-Quds Republican Guard Forces of Iran enter the city to cleanse it of its Sunni terrorist brigades. And cleanse it they will.

Iraq's interior minister, Mohammed Salem al-Ghabban explained the interregnum in fighting. Soldiers, police officers and Shiite militias remain on the city's periphery. They must exercise caution lest the improved explosive devices so beloved of insurgents battling their type of warfare, deplete their manpower's advance. Fleeing civilians may in their desperation to escape the revenge of the Shiite invaders of their Sunni city, reveal the whereabouts of some of those IEDs.

Fewer of the bombs to dismantle, fewer Sunni civilians to attempt to return to their homes. ISIS, according to Mr. Ghabban, booby-trapped roads into Tikrit as well as many of the city's buildings. The advance of the Iraqi combined forces temporarily detained, and their Iranian advisers were well advised to take precautionary measures. "The militants are squeezed into a small part of the city centre", he said.


A picture taken from the village of Awja, on the outskirts of the Tikrit, on Thursday shows the palace of Iraq’s former leader, Saddam Hussein.  (AFP PHOTO / AHMAD AL-RUBAYEAHMAD 
 
And just incidentally, the symbol of Sunni Baathist power in Iraq has been erased from existence. Video taken from the village of Ouja, south of Tikrit, illuminates the question of where Saddam Hussein's remains were honoured close to his native town. The tomb is no more, levelled in the battle that inspired the taking of Tikrit in preparation for the liberation of Mosul.

An Iraqi soldier taking a photo of the tomb of Iraq's late dictator Saddam Hussein, which was virtually levelled in heavy clashes between militants from the ISIL group and Iraqi forces on Sunday as both sides fight for control of Tikrit. Khalid Mohammed/AP Photo

Shiite militia flags and photographs of militia leaders are scattered all over the predominantly Sunni village. Prominent among them the visage of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general who has taken the lead in advising Iraqi Shiite militias to strategic success-in-numbers on the battlefield. The Saddam loyalists who welcomed the ISIS arrival in Tikrit, victimized by Baghdad's Shiite government, will certainly be targets for vengeance.

As for Saddam Hussein's body, it was not desecrated along with his tomb, since loyalists had long since moved it, with the knowledge that conflict was imminent. The 20,000 Shiite militias fighting in Tikrit have much on their minds, and much of it has its reflection in murder and mayhem. They have been accused of levelling any Sunni towns captured from ISIS; those residents who had the fortune to flee beforehand now have nothing to return to.

Those who remained behind are incapable of returning anywhere.