The Retaking of Ramadi

The Ramadi victory was accomplished largely by the Iraqi military, mainly by its Sunni forces with the help of local Sunni tribes, who were aided by U.S. training and weapons. That formula could be a model for success in clearing Islamic State (ISIS) from the rest of Western Iraq and Syria.

The U.S. has helped by picking up the pace of its assistance in recent weeks, inserting more special forces into the theater and supplying more arms. Tactical bombing by the U.S. has limited Islamic State movement, and shoulder-fired antitank weapons have been able to stop ISIS truck bombs from a distance. Recapturing Ramadi, which Islamic State captured last May as the Iraqi army fled, also removes an immediate ISIS threat to Baghdad.

This success will be good for morale as the Iraqis undertake the campaign in 2016 to retake the much larger Mosul. This project will be harder, but the Ramadi tactics can be applied to that offensive. Retaking Mosul is crucial to showing that ISIS can be rolled back from the center of its self-proclaimed caliphate.

The challenge for the Iraqis now will be to show they can hold Ramadi and win back the long-term loyalty of its nonradical Sunni population as happened during the successful U.S.-led surge in 2007. This means keeping out the Shiite militias that will want to ethnically cleanse the city. It also means giving the local Sunni population a stake in governing, not repeating former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s mistake of dominating everything from Baghdad. Iraq’s current leader, Haider al-Abadi, may understand this, as shown by his decision to keep the Shiite militias out of the Ramadi military campaign while working with local Sunnis.

The other caveat is that Islamic State will remain a threat to Iraq as long as it has a safe haven in Syria. The Ramadi campaign shows that air power alone, even “carpet-bombing,” can’t push ISIS from territory. That means ground troops will be needed in Syria too. We’re paying a price for the Obama Administration’s long failure to train and arm Sunni Syrians not allied with ISIS, and for the lack of a safe zone protected by U.S. air power.

The modest good news on that score is the announcement earlier this month of the new moderate Sunni coalition of nations against Islamic State. Led by Saudi Arabia, the group—which includes Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan—has promised weapons and perhaps even ground troops to assist local forces fighting Islamic State.

The motive behind this newly formed coalition is in part to fill the vacuum left by the lack of confidence in President Obama. But it will be a very good sign if these countries actually deliver. The Turks, for example, have spent most of their time so far attacking Syrian Kurds, not Islamic State. The U.S. should want these countries to help retake Sunni-dominated territory, rather than leave it to an Iraq-Assad-Russia-Hezbollah axis.

Also worth noting is that ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, issued a rare public message late last week trying to buck up Islamic State forces after Iraqi forces had besieged the city. This may have been in anticipation of the Ramadi defeat. He also issued a broadside against pretty much everyone—the Saudi coalition, the West, the Russians, “the Jews” and the “apostates.”

Al-Baghdadi knows that Islamic State’s success depends on projecting an aura of inevitable victory to keep recruiting jihadist cannon fodder. Retaking Ramadi is the first step toward shattering that Islamist illusion.