Parliamentarian Adel al-Mahalawi, who lives in Mohammedi but is from the powerful Albu Mahal tribe, visited Obeidi on Nov. 5. In between meeting with a number of local dignitaries and public officials who had spent years outside the area while IS was in control, he told Al-Monitor that he felt the most urgent issue to be addressed in the area was access to education, if Iraq wanted to avoid similar catastrophes in the future. Children whose families had been unable or unwilling to pay smugglers to get them out of the area have not attended schools for several years.
The entire area south of the Euphrates River to the Syrian border, including Qaim, has now been liberated by Iraqi forces working in tandem with coalition airstrikes, while parts of the desert area north of the river and the town of Rawa are still under IS control.
The clearing of Rawa is not expected to pose major difficulties, Fendi said, adding that it was mostly a matter of clearing IEDs around the city to enable troops to access it safely.
Staff Brig. Gen. Qutaiba Muwafiq Asaad, interviewed by Al-Monitor in the Obeidi area, said his troops were ready, whenever the decision comes.
Whether the area is left ripe for any IS remnants to put down roots and what happens on the other side of the border — where US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have been racing the Syrian regime and its allied militias, many of them foreign and Iran-backed, to take over the remaining bits of land there under IS control — will determine what comes next.
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