The Iraqi army and militias appear to have retaken Ramadi from Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) and there is a rising mood of triumph in Baghdad. There should not be. For a start Ramadi ought never to have been lost to the terrorists in the first place. No more than 600 of these bigots put to flight a well-equipped Iraqi army force of several thousands, which had had months to plan and prepare for such an assault.
Not only did the soldiers flee but they left behind vast stores of equipment and ammunition, which have since been used to murder their fellow Iraqis. It also now appears from captured terrorists that the Daesh advance was “exploratory”. It was designed to test the defenses. Even though it has been Daesh’s policy to strike terror into their opponents by their wanton brutality, even they could not believe that such an important city as Ramadi had fallen to them without a fight.
But now Iraqi generals are talking about “the turning of the tide”. The next target is Mosul. One Shia politician even went so far as to boast that the back of Daesh was about to be broken. This is complete nonsense. Whatever its pretensions to statehood, Daesh is nothing more than a terror group. It may have captured tanks and artillery in which it loves to parade around beneath its black banners and it has attracted military professionals from Syria and Iraq, but this is not an army. What military organization is does have is being hugely interrupted by US-led allied airstrikes. Essentially the movement of fresh supplies of ammunition and reinforcements is regularly interdicted. A modern army could not survive such disruption. But these people are criminals who can survive in urban environments through theft and thuggery. In the end their ammo will run out and when that happens, they will do what terrorists always do… they will fade away into the background.
At that point Daesh will be going all-out to demonstrate that although it may have been defeated on the conventional battlefield, where it was always doomed when faced with professional troops, it can return to its roots as shadowy killers. Even when the entire territory it controls in Iraq and Syria has been cleansed of its rule and its captive civilians released from their horrific ordeal, Daesh will not be defeated.
There may even be those in the terror leadership who deplored the risk-filled vanity of seizing and trying to hold vast swathes of territory. The loss of Ramadi is likely to be causing their star to rise in the killers’ councils. Even now it is likely that Daesh is planning for its future terror activities, for the time when it no longer represents a clear and obvious target for allied warplanes. Arms caches are being built up, sleepers planted, underground networks established, safe houses acquired, forged documents assembled and secret finances put in place.
When the last captured Daesh tank is destroyed and the last poseur military unit blown to pieces, then the real war will begin, the war against merciless killers who hide in the shadows and choose the moment when they will wreak their evil. At a stroke they will become vicious enemies who are a great deal more difficult to defeat.
