Iraqis poised for Tal Afar ‘victory’

TAL AFAR, Iraq, Aug 27, (Agencies): Iraqi forces backed by local militia and a US-led coalition were poised Sunday to drive the Islamic State group from the city of Tal Afar, dealing another blow to the jihadists.

Just a week after authorities announced an offensive to push the jihadists from one of their last major urban strongholds in Iraq, the Joint Operations Command said Iraqi forces held all 29 districts of the city and were pursuing final mopping up operations.

Pro-government fighters could already be seen celebrating, waving Iraqi flags and flashing victory signs as their tanks rolled through the streets.

The offensive comes just weeks after Iraqi forces retook second city Mosul from IS, in their biggest victory since the jihadists seized control of large parts of Syria and Iraq in mid-2014.

Much of that territory has since been retaken with support from coalition air strikes, and IS is also facing a major US-backed offensive against its de facto Syrian capital Raqqa.

The loss of Tal Afar, in northern Iraq between Mosul and the Syrian border, will deprive IS of what was once a significant hub for movement between the Syrian and Iraqi components of the selfstyled “caliphate” it declared three years ago.

On Saturday, Iraqi forces took control of the city centre and Tal Afar’s Ottoman-era citadel. Nearby, a huge crater could be seen on Sunday at the base of the city’s main mosque, a testament to the intensity of the air strikes that battered the city.

Surrounding buildings still featured religious slogans written by the jihadists and an IS flag lay upside down on the ground.

Government troops and units of the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary coalition launched the assault last Sunday after weeks of coalition and Iraqi air strikes.

Progress in Tal Afar was far more rapid than in Mosul, which fell to Iraqi forces only after a gruelling nine-month battle.

Officials have said they hope to announce victory by Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday set to start in Iraq on Sept 2.

The next target in the area was the town of Al-Ayadieh 15 kms (10 miles) north of Tal Afar and strategically located on the road between the city and the Syrian border.

In the whole Tal Afar region, “1,155 square kms (445 square miles) of 1,655 square kms (640 square miles), or 70 percent of the area, have been taken” the JOC said late on Saturday.

Pro-government forces faced an obstacle course of roads blocked with earth embankments and strategically parked trucks, as well as sniper and mortar fire during the battle for Tal Afar.

Troops also said they discovered a network of underground tunnels used by IS to launch attacks behind lines of already conquered territory, or to escape.

Most of the city’s 200,000-strong population had fled after IS seized it. Until its takeover by IS, Tal Afar was largely populated

by Shiite Turkmen, whose beliefs are considered heretical by the Sunni jihadists of IS.

Some of the city’s former Turkmen residents returned as fighters with the Hashed, like Abu Zineb who accused IS of having “blown everything up” in Tal Afar.

“They destroy homes because of the fighting, but also to stop residents from returning,” he told AFP.

The jihadist group has lost much of the territory it controlled and thousands of its fighters have been killed since late 2014, when the US-led international coalition was set up to defeat the group.

Once Tal Afar is retaken, Baghdad is expected to launch a new offensive on Hawija, about 300 kms (185 miles) north of the Iraqi capital.

The coalition has announced carryThe

ing out strikes near Hawija in recent days, including two that killed IS fighters and destroyed a command post.

IS is also present in the vast western province of Anbar, where it controls several zones along the border with Syria, including the Al-Qaim area.

Despite its losses in Iraq and Syria, IS has continued to claim responsibility for attacks carried out by its members or supporters abroad, including this month’s deadly attacks in Spain and knife attacks in Russia and Brussels.

Even as the Islamic State group’s rule is being torn down in Iraq, the seeds are there for it — or a successor extremist group — to rise again one day.

It’s a disquieting fact: There are those among Iraq’s Sunni Muslim minority who find some good in the group, though they denounce the militants for suffering inflicted during their nearly three-year rule.

Listen to the words of a young Iraqi who was impressed by an Islamic State cleric — a compassionate man, Mowafy Abdul-Qader said, recalling his “sweet demeanor” as he gave lessons on Shariah law.

“He taught me like he was an angel from heaven. He was accurate and righteous,” Abdul-Qader said, speaking at a camp for Iraqis driven from their homes during the past year’s fighting to uproot the militants in northern Iraq. “Because of people like him, I sometimes felt I was actually living in a real caliphate.”

In nearly two dozen interviews with Sunnis living in the camps of the displaced, The Associated Press heard many variations on the same theme: IS was too brutal and individual members were corrupt, but its goals to restore morality and faith were worthy.

The direction of Sunni sentiment can have great significance for Iraq’s future. There are fears militants could take root again if Sunnis’ lives are not rebuilt or if the Shiites who dominate the government don’t end past discrimination and give Sunnis a share of political power.

When the Sunni militants overran much of Iraq and Syria in 2014, the group’s dream of an ideal Islamic rule had appeal among some in the community. Iraq’s Sunnis in general are deeply conservative and feel oppressed under the majority Shiites. So

some saw hope in a group promising to bring morality, uplift Sunni Islam and implement God’s law, which many felt would ensure justice.

Instead, the self-declared caliphate turned into a bloody horror. The group committed atrocities on a startling scale, including a systematic network of sex slavery and rape against the Yezidi religious minority and mass killings that targeted everyone, including Sunnis. Prisoners were shot or beheaded, or even set on fire, drowned or blown up with explosives.

Religious police were relentless in punishing the slightest transgressions. Punishments included stoning, beheadings, amputations and whippings. Suspected spies — including those simply caught with a mobile phone— and policemen or soldiers were among those dragged into public squares for death. IS members took the lion’s share of resources, alienating others struggling to get by.

After the extremists’ brutality, some now say they reject anyone promising to bring “true Islam.”

“We cannot trust them anymore. We don’t want Islamists to rule us,” said Mohammed Ibrahim, a government employee in Mosul.

In one camp for the displaced, the imam delivering the Friday sermon urged worshippers not to shun their religion on account of horrors they experienced under IS. “Return to your true faith,” he said, according to several men who heard the sermon.

Khaled Shaaban, a displaced Mosul resident, said he used to pray five times a day, but ever since IS took over he hasn’t set foot in a mosque. “It was like military rule, only religious. Like a checklist: beard, check. Short pants, check. No smoking, check.”

Another of the displaced said the militants’ sermons never addressed the concerns of the people. Instead, “they admonished us for ‘crying’ over the scarcity of basic food items like bread and rice,” and told people to endure deprivations, Abed Ahmed said.

Ali Abu Graer, a member of the Shamar, a large tribe in Iraq and the Gulf region, said IS members sounded like they knew religion well, “but when you see their actions you wonder who they really are. What do you make of a people who set a fellow human being on fire in front of your very eyes? What do you make of a people who kill

you because they found that you are in possession of a mobile phone?” Others seemed more conflicted. Sitting outside the tent he shares with his pregnant wife, Mowafy Abdul-Qader recounted how a passing IS patrol saw that his wife and sister were not meeting the militants’ dress code as they worked with him at their farm. As their guardian, he was ordered by the militants to take Shariah lessons from an IS cleric, an Egyptian.

He struggled to reconcile the kindly and pious cleric with everything else he saw from the group.