The provincial authorities agreed to take several defensive steps a few days ago at a closed meeting. They plan to deploy thousands of fighters to the northern borders of the province, where it meets Ramadi, and to bring back all of their fighters stationed in other provinces. There are also plans to build dirt barriers and moats to separate Babel from the Amiriyat Al Fallujah and Jurf al-Sakhar areas.
“These are just defensive measures,” Falah al-Rahdi, the head of the Babel provincial council's security committee, told NIQASH. “But the city needs to be prepared for any possible infiltration by the IS group, especially after their control of Ramadi and Fallujah, both of which are close to us.”
Even Karbala, home to one of the holiest cities for Iraq's Shiite Muslims and therefore, one imagines, one of the best guarded areas, seems to be on high alert, with calls for defence from the unofficial Shiite Muslim militias. The IS group threatened to move into Karbala, a Shiite-majority city with an estimated population of 1 million, after Ramadi and influential Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr has said that those threats should be taken seriously. “Fighters should be deployed around and inside the city to protect it,” al-Sadr said.
Fighters from al-Sadr's militia, known as the Peace Brigades, announced that they would deploy to cities and towns in the Anbar province, like Rahala and Naqeeb, that are close to Karbala.
In the meantime Iraq's collection of pro-government forces, including the Iraqi army and unofficial Shiite Muslim militias, have also started their campaign to re-take Anbar province from the IS group. It is uncertain how long such a campaign will take – especially given the mostly Sunni make-up of the population in Anbar as well as tribal conflicts inside the province, not to mention whether the forces involved will fight well together.
And it is obviously impossible to know whether the IS group will be successful in their ambition to get closer to Baghdad. There are no complete or correct answers to any of those concerns. All that Iraqis can be sure of now is that, with their control of Ramadi - however long it lasts - the extremists have come closer to the capital and they are seeking to control other areas that are even closer.
(ISIL image via Shutterstock)
Only a moron could write this report. ISIS is running from Ramadi or already dead. Two weeks from now no one will talk about Ramadi as the GOI takes over.