Falluja: Isis believed to have stopped 20,000 civilians leaving city

Falluja: Isis believed to have stopped 20,0Islamic State militants in central Falluja are believed to have prevented at least 20,000 residents from leaving the city and are offering fierce resistance to advancing Iraqi forces.

A string of cautious early engagements, which are believed to have killed scores of Isis members and a smaller number of Iraqi troops, have set the scene for a protracted and difficult fight for Iraq’s fourth city that will likely expose large numbers of trapped civilians, whom the group is using as human shields.

Almost three days after Iraqi officers declared that troops had breached the outskirts of Falluja, they have stopped at three points near the city’s dense urban centre, which is thought to hold as many as 1,000 Isis members. Many are hiding in a fortified tunnel and bunker network built over the past two-and-a-half years.

Military planners say Isis leaders appear unsure about whether to stay and fight, as they did in the battle for the Kurdish city of Kobani in late 2014 and Ramadi late last year, or to flee and regroup elsewhere as happened during the fights for Tikrit and Sinjar, both of which fell within 48 hours of a final assault.

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Equally unsure is the makeup of Iraqi forces that will eventually move on the city centre, with large numbers of Iranian-backed Shia militias determined to join an attack nominally led by the national military. State forces number around 20,000, nearly a quarter of whom are Sunnis who have been positioned at the vanguard for the almost exclusively Sunni city. US airstrikes have been pivotal to the early days of the operation, the most ambitious launched by Iraq’s military since Isis overran much of the north of the country in June 2014.

Isis had occupied Falluja for six months before then and, despite being besieged since late last year, has concentrated many of its most fervent fighters there. In messages on the group’s main social media sites, it vowed not to leave and threatened to take the fight to Shia forces. In an equally sectarian pitch, Aws al-Khafaji, the leader of the Shia Abu al-Fadl al Abbas brigades, was seen on video on Monday urging his members to “cleanse Iraq of the tumour that is Falluja”.

It is understood that the US military has partly conditioned its support on the Iraqi military taking the lead in the attack and the militias remaining on the outskirts. Air strikes have been focussed on the southern approach to the city centre, which is where the army assault is concentrated.

Some senior Isis figures had fought with the group’s forerunner, al-Qaida in Iraq, in two battles against the US military in April and November 2004. The first fight took a month and the second around six weeks to subdue similar numbers of militants to those now in Falluja.

The long, brutal battles helped give rise to Isis’s reputationfor fielding diehard fighters that can defy technically superior militaries. Sunni militants have since then seen Falluja as a bastion of resistance, not just against US forces but also the Iraqi government, which has long viewed the city and its residents with deep suspicion.

Some Iraqi officials have maintained that Falluja was being used as a command post for Isis members who have launched regular attacks inside Baghdad, 50km to the east, including a series of coordinated bombings earlier this month that killed more than 300 people. The city, however, and its surrounding areas have been sealed for more than two years, with the only access point being through the deserts to the west.

Unlike in 2004, the western entrances to the city and many of the approaches to the cities of Ramadi and Heet, which Isis held until earlier this year, have now been cleared. US officials say the group maintains a small number of “rat runs” into Anbar province, which could potentially be used as an escape route. Paths to the north, which have seen more than 3,000 civilians flee in the past week, are controlled by militias and Iraqi troops, who are allowing women, children and elderly men to cross, but detaining all military-aged males for screening.

Aid organisations had previously accused Iraqi troops of detaining some young men without explanation after they fled Falluja in 2015 and earlier this year, but most detainees are now being released in less than a week.

Iraqi leaders say the move to retake the city is essential to the war against Isis, but it has caught US officials unaware. The offensive came as Washington urged that efforts be focused instead on Mosul, one of two main centres of gravity for Isis, along with Raqqa in Syria.

Falluja is deeply symbolic for Isis and its loss would be damaging for the group. It has, however, concentrated much of its energy in the fight for the two cities through which it imposed itself as a force in both Iraq and Syria, after shredding the sovereignty of both states in 2014. Ever since, the jihadis have shaken the regional order, pursuing a genocide against minorities including the Yazidi sect and attempting to act as a de facto representative of the region’s Sunnis.

“We will beat them in Mosul,” said a senior western official directly involved in the war against Isis. “The Iraqis can wound them in Falluja, but the reality is that this is a confidence builder for them. The real fight starts later, but only when they can sort out their political differences.”

Before the launch of the Falluja operation, Iraqi politics had been crippled by stalled anti-corruption reforms. Two mass protests that breached the country’s seat of government had also weakened the authority of the prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi. The powerful Shia cleric Moqtadr al-Sadr organised both of the rallies, demonstrating a formidable ability to harness public sentiment when the government could not.

Abadi last week urged demonstrators to not invade Baghdad’s green zone for a third time, so his officials could focus on Falluja. Protesters heeded his request, marching towards the area while chanting “peaceful, peaceful.”

sourced: the guardian international