It is not correct to say that there are no extremist groups in the area anymore, agrees Rutba's mayor, Imad al-Dulaimi. The Rutba area, 450 kilometres west of Baghdad, is still being attacked regularly by extremist fighters.
The Iraqi army in Anbar.
“The massive deployment of Iraqi security forces in this area made the Islamic State group disappear,” al-Dulaimi explains. “But then the military went without leaving any replacements and without totally eliminating the fighters in the desert, so there are plenty of excellent opportunities for the extremists to return again.”
The Anbar intelligence services have had plenty of information about the presence of the Islamic State group in the vast desert around Anbar, a source inside the services says.
Anbar has a long border, that sees over 1,000 kilometres of desert overlapping with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, that is almost impossible to secure.
“The movements of the Islamic State are continuously being monitored,” the intelligence insider told NIQASH. “Its members move freely in the desert though, knowing it is almost impossible for security forces to chase them in these very vast areas.”
Up until now the military on the borders between Iraq and Syria have tended to build dirt berms and erect concrete barriers to demarcate the border and try to keep outsiders from crossing. “But if there are no manned border posts to monitor or respond to any breach, then those measures are not enough to stop the terrorists infiltrating,” the source added. “It would be difficult to achieve any kind of control anyway,” he concluded, “the Islamic State is still present all over this entire desert.”
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