The Islamic State jihadist group will use its seizure of a dam in Ramadi to mount fresh attacks on pro-government forces preparing to besiege the city, Iraqi officials warned Wednesday. The day after the US-led coalition opposing IS met in Paris, General John Allen - who is co-ordinating international efforts against the jihadists - warned the fight to defeat them could last "a generation or more". A string of IS advances last month cast doubt on the coalition's strategy, but Washington has insisted it is on the right track.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said after the May 17 fall of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, that his men would take it back within days but operations are instead focusing on sealing off the city. IS militants used an unprecedented wave of suicide truck bomb attacks to seize Ramadi in a three-day blitz last month, and have again used this weapon in recent days.
IS claimed responsibility Tuesday for a huge suicide attack that killed 47 people at a police base, which had been recently retaken as part of efforts to tighten the noose on Anbar. As they edge towards Ramadi, officials said Iraqi forces risked coming under attack because IS had closed the gates of a dam in the city to dry up the Euphrates. The move will enable IS fighters to cross or operate near the river more easily and to infiltrate more territory.
"Daesh is now waging a filthy water war," said Sabah Karhout, the head of Anbar's provincial council, using an Arabic acronym for IS. "Cutting the water is the worst crime they could commit. It will force children, women and elderly people to flee and allow them to move in to launch attacks," he said. "Daesh may not have enough fighters to face us in a conventional battle right now," said Arkan Khalaf al-Tarmuz, another provincial council member.
"So they are using water as a weapon to weaken areas where there are military bases," Tarmuz said. US Deputy Security of State Anthony Blinken told France Inter radio that 10,000 IS members had been killed since the start of a nine-month-old US-led air campaign in Iraq and Syria. IS fighters have repeatedly attempted to control dams in Iraq, in some cases reducing the flow of water to areas under government control or flooding swathes of land to impede military operations.
"In the arid lands where the Islamic State fights, control of water is the ultimate weapon of terror," the Soufan Group intelligence consultancy said in a briefing note Wednesday. After Ramadi fell, Abadi had to call in the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) forces, an umbrella for mostly Shia Iran-backed militias and volunteers. He and Washington had been reluctant to deploy them in Anbar, a Sunni bastion, for fear of stoking sectarian tensions. Speaking at a forum in Qatar, Allen admitted that it would be Shia forces retaking ground from IS.