Iraq's Shia paramilitaries said on Tuesday they had taken charge of the campaign to drive Islamic State from the western province of Anbar, giving the operation an openly sectarian codename that could infuriate its Sunni Muslim population. The United States described the codename as "unhelpful" while France, which will host a meeting of nations fighting Islamic State next week, accused the Shia-led government of failing to represent fully the interests of all Iraqis.
The Iraqi government is scrambling to reverse the fall of Ramadi, its biggest military setback in nearly a year. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has vowed to recapture the city, the Anbar provincial capital, within days. Shia militiamen, supported by a smaller group of government troops, advanced on Tuesday to within a few kilometres of a university on Ramadi's south-western edge, police sources and Sunni tribal fighters allied to the government said.
As they passed through farmland south of Ramadi, the militiamen told people to return home and stay inside, promising they would not be harmed. The loss of Ramadi a week ago was swiftly followed by the fall of the UNESCO heritage city of Palmyra in Syria, the two biggest gains by Islamic State fighters since the United States began air strikes on them in Iraq and Syria last year.
Islamic State controls swathes of territory in both countries, where it has proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims according to strict mediaeval precepts. Its gains in the past week have raised doubts about the US strategy to bomb the militants from the air but leave fighting on the ground to local Iraqi and Syrian forces. In Iraq, the regular military's failure to hold Ramadi has forced the government to send in the Iran-backed Shia paramilitaries. Washington fears this could enrage residents in the overwhelmingly Sunni province and push them into the arms of Islamic State.
A spokesman for the Shia militias, which are known as Hashid Shaabi, said the codename for the new operation would be "Labaik ya Hussein". This is a slogan in honour of a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed killed in a seventh century battle that led to the schism between Shia and Sunni Muslims. "The Labaik Ya Hussein operation is led by the Hashid Shaabi in co-operation and co-ordination with the armed forces there," the spokesman, Ahmed al-Assadi, told a news conference. "We believe that liberating Ramadi will not take long." In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said the key to victory would be a unified Iraq "that separates itself from sectarian divides, coalesces around this common threat". Asked about the sectarian codename, he said: "I think it's unhelpful."
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