Al Qaeda militants advanced Friday into new areas of one major Iraqi city and held part of another, after days of violence sparked by the removal of an anti-government protest camp.
Parts of Ramadi and Fallujah, west of Baghdad, have been held by militants for days, harkening back to the years after the 2003 US-led invasion when both cities in Anbar province were insurgent strongholds.
Fighting began in the Ramadi area Monday, when security forces removed the main anti-government protest camp set up after demonstrations broke out in late 2012 against what Sunni Arabs say is the marginalisation and targeting of their community.
Anger at the Shiite-led government among the Sunni minority is seen as one of the main drivers of the worst violence to hit Iraq in five years.
Fighters from the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which operates in both Iraq and neighbouring Syria, advanced amid early morning clashes into areas of central Ramadi and deployed snipers on one street, a police captain said.
Iraqiya state television later reported that Iraq’s Counter-Terrorism Service “killed two snipers and burned four vehicles carrying terrorists” in the city.
A police colonel said the army had re-entered areas of Fallujah, between Ramadi and Baghdad, but that around a quarter of it remained under ISIL control.
Soldiers and armed tribesmen held the rest and had also surrounded the city, he said.
However, another senior officer, a police lieutenant colonel, said that while soldiers had deployed around the city, they had yet to enter Fallujah.
At least 14 people were killed on Monday and Tuesday in and near Ramadi, but casualties from the later clashes there and in Fallujah were not immediately clear.
Fallujah was the target of two major assaults after the 2003 invasion, in which American forces saw some of their heaviest fighting since the Vietnam War.
American troops fought for years, aided by Sunni tribesmen from late 2006, to wrest control of Anbar from militants, suffering almost one-third of their total fatalities during the war in the province, according to independent website icasualties.org.
But two years after US forces completed their withdrawal from Iraq, the power of militants in the province is again on the rise.
Clashes erupted in the Ramadi area on Monday as security forces tore down the sprawling anti-government protest camp on a nearby highway.
The violence then spread to Fallujah, and a subsequent withdrawal of security forces from areas of both cities cleared the way for ISIL to move in.
Police and tribal fighters battled ISIL in east Ramadi on Thursday, but the fighting eased after several hours with militants still controlling some areas.
Iraqi special forces also clashed with militants in Fallujah on Thursday, their commander said.
ISIL is the latest incarnation of an Al-Qaeda affiliate that lost ground starting in 2006 as Sunni tribesmen and former insurgents allied with US troops against the jihadists in a process that began in Anbar and came to be known as the “Awakening.” But the extremist group has made a striking comeback following the US withdrawal from Iraq and the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011.
ISIL’s “strength and territorial control and influence has been expanding in Anbar for some time, but has primarily been focused on rural desertous terrain,” said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center.
But the Ramadi protest camp operation pushed Sunni tribes into conflict with the government, and ISIL “has ridden this wave of popular Sunni anger,” Lister said.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had long sought the closure of the protest camp near Ramadi, dubbing it a “headquarters for the leadership of al Qaeda.”
But the removal of the camp has come at the cost of a sharp decline in the security situation in Anbar.
And while the camp’s closure has removed a physical sign of Sunni Arab grievances, the perceived injustices that underpinned the demonstration have not been addressed.
Violence in Iraq last year reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was just emerging from a brutal period of sectarian killings.
Sunni anger helped fuel the surge in unrest, boosting recruitment for militant groups and decreasing cooperation with security forces, while the civil war in Syria also played a role, experts say.
AFP