Athal al-Fahdawi, a provincial council member from Ramadi, said in an interview with Al-Monitor, “Sadr categorically refused the return of US ground troops to Anbar, and Sadr even refuses the entry of US warplanes bombing IS in Iraqi cities.”
According to Fahdawi, the Shiite leader “promised to share the weapons owned by the Sadrist factions with the fighters in Anbar to expel the IS guerrillas” from the province, where there is daily fighting between the army and the extremist elements of the organization.
The Anbar government is voicing concerns over IS’ progress in several cities, insisting on coming to a quick solution to prevent the fall of the province in the hands of IS.
Fahdawi said, “We need US ground forces, or let the government give us the Apache aircraft capable of securing air coverage for the protection of our tribal fighters.”
The Iraqi government, whose President Haider al-Abadi rejects the entry of foreign ground troops into Iraqi territory, does not have the choice but to negotiate with tribal clans in Anbar to help the Iraqi security forces expel IS from the cities it controls.
Abadi and his government intensified meetings with Iraqi figures living in Jordan and in Baghdad to reach an agreement about the recruitment of tribal members in the fighting, but those meetings have not yielded any disclosed agreement.
“The events on the ground are accelerating and should be addressed with the same pace to repel the attacks.” Meanwhile, Fahdawi saw that “the IS threat must be faced with a lot of support from the central government,” Karhout said.
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