Falluja, Iraq — Sgt. Ahmed Abdelaziz, with Iraq’s special forces, has been almost continually deployed fighting the Daesh group ever since the militants overran nearly a third of Iraq in the summer of 2014. Now he’s on the front lines of Falluja, a city declared “fully liberated” on Sunday by the commander leading the fight against Daesh. Abdelaziz has with him what he always brings into battle: a photo of his brother.
It’s not a smiling family portrait. It is a picture on his mobile phone of his brother Saad’s body among hundreds killed in a massacre carried out by the terrorists after they captured the military’s Camp Speicher base in 2014. At the time, Daesh fighters killed more than 1,000 captured soldiers at the base, outside the city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad.
At first, Abdelaziz hadn’t been sure of his brother’s fate, but his worst fears were confirmed when Daesh released a video of the massacre and he recognized Saad in it. On his phone, he flipped through a series of stills from the video, saying the grisly images are reminders of his purpose in the fight.
Adding to a string of territorial victories against Daesh over the past year, Iraqi fighters on Sunday entered the last Daesh-held neighborhood of Falluja and declared the city “fully liberated.”
“The fight in Falluja is over,” the head of the counterterrorism forces leading the operation, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, said on Iraqi state TV, surrounded by flag-waving soldiers. The victory marked a new stage in a grueling, more than monthlong operation. Al-Saadi said his troops would now start clearing the bombs planted on Falluja’s streets and in houses by the retreating militants.
As the fight against Daesh in Iraq enters its third year, the long back-to-back deployments are wearing many units in the country’s fractured military thin. The mounting casualties among Iraqi forces have made the fight increasingly personal for those who remain.
In a unit stationed nearby in southern Falluja, Sgt. Ahmed Kamel, 26, said he also brings the memory of lost loved ones to the fight with him.
On his right arm is the name of his brother Saadi tattooed in English cursive script. Kamel’s brother was killed by the Mahdi army, a Shiite militia run by powerful cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, in 2008. Kamel’s right arm bears the name of a fallen comrade: Namar. He died fighting the Daesh group.
At positions on the operation’s frontlines, Iraqi troops carry a variety of good luck charms into battle.
“Most people in Iraq, they just have faith in God and they don’t feel like they need things like this,” said 1st Sgt. Muayd Saad, explaining why some of his friends who aren’t in the military don’t understand why his considers the watch his wife gave him on their anniversary to be good luck. — AP
