Forces quickly reclaim Tal Afar from ISIS

Iraqi military quickly advanced to city center in contrast to battle for Mosul

TAL AFAR, Iraq — Iraq’s military fully reclaimed this northern city from the Islamic State on Sunday in a rapid campaign that defied expectations that the extremist group would put up a fierce resistance in one of its last major strongholds.

The battle for Tal Afar, which lasted just eight days, highlighted the diminished capabilities of the Islamic State in Iraq a month after it lost the key bastion of Mosul to a coalition of Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led airstrikes and is likely to determine how future fights against the militant group will be executed.

Senior Iraqi military officers said the group has lost the will to fight in the face of a motivated and increasingly more professional military and are advocating that Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi authorize his armed forces to launch simultaneous battles for the last major cities that the Islamic State controls.

Since the Islamic State took over nearly one-third of Iraq’s territory in 2014, Abadi has opted to reclaim cities one by one while the U.S. and other Western nations helped to rebuild Iraq’s armed forces, which collapsed during the Islamic State blitz.

Now, with more than three years of combat experience, Iraq’s security forces are eager to quicken the pace of the fight, with some commanders urging that the battles for the two remaining Islamic State strongholds, Hawija and Qaim, be launched at the same time.

“The enemy’s back is broken,” said Lt. Gen. Sami al-Aridhi, a commander of the elite counterterrorism service units in Tal Afar. “Their morale is gone.”

Forces, along with 12 brigades of mostly Shiite militias, attacked Tal Afar from three fronts, breaking Islamic State defense lines on the edges of the city before rapidly advancing to the city center.

The troops were surprised by what Col. Arkan Fadhil, a counterterrorism service officer, called a “controlled resistance” by small clusters of Islamic State fighters and the near-total lack of civilians in the city.

The desolate city provided ample room for Iraqi troops to use heavy weaponry without fear of killing civilians. That use of firepower, along with the months-long siege, apparently sapped Islamic State’s fighters of the ability to effectively use their most ferocious weapons: car and truck bombs rigged with armor, commanders said.

The number of Islamic State fighters in Tal Afar appeared to be vastly overstated. Before the operation was launched, Iraq’s intelligence services estimated that between 1,400 and 2,000 militants occupied the city. Iraq’s military said Saturday that they had killed 259 fighters.

The swift collapse of the militancy in Tal Afar was unexpected. The city had a unique standing in the Islamic State’s hierarchy, with several top figures in the group and deputies to leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi hailing from Tal Afar. Along with its strategic location, it was one of the few places the Islamic State occupied despite the large presence of Shiites there, making it an important propaganda tool.

With the Shiite militias surrounding the city, experts had expected the militants to fight fiercely, said Hisham al-Hashimi, who has advised the Iraqi government.

“Tal Afar was an important point of identity for Daesh,” Hashimi said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.