Iraqi officials fear Daesh ‘water war’ in Ramadi

BAGHDAD — Iraqi officials voiced fears Wednesday that jihadists will use their seizure of a dam in Ramadi to mount fresh attacks on pro-government forces preparing to try to retake the city.

A string of advances last month by the Daesh terror group cast doubt on the strategy of the US-led coalition battling the jihadists, but Washington has insisted it is on the right track.

Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi said after the May 17 fall of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, that his men would take it back within days but operations are moving slowly.

Daesh militants used an unprecedented wave of suicide truck bomb attacks to seize Ramadi in a three-day blitz last month.

In recent days they have again used this weapon, which Abadi has described as having the same effect as “small nuclear bombs”.

Daesh claimed responsibility Tuesday for a huge suicide attack that killed 47 people at a police base, which had been recently retaken as part of efforts to tighten the noose on Anbar.

As they edge towards Ramadi, officials said Iraqi forces risked coming under attack because Daesh had closed the gates of a dam in the city to dry up the Euphrates.

The move will enable Daesh fighters to cross the river more easily and to infiltrate more territory.

Ramadi dam

“Daesh is now waging a filthy water war,” said Sabah Karhout, the head of Anbar’s provincial council, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant.

“Cutting the water is the worst crime they could commit. It will force children, women and elderly people to flee and allow them to move in to launch attacks,” he said.

“Daesh may not have enough fighters to face us in a conventional battle right now,” said Arkan Khalaf Al Tarmuz, another provincial council member.

“So they are using water as a weapon to weaken areas where there are military bases,” Tarmuz said.

The chaotic retreat from Ramadi last month was reminiscent of the complete collapse of federal forces in second city Mosul a year ago, when Daesh-led fighters conquered almost a third of Iraq within days and brought the country to the brink of breakup.

US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken told France Inter radio that 10,000 Daesh members had been killed since the start of a nine-month-old US-led air campaign in Iraq and Syria.

After Ramadi fell, Abadi had to call in the Hashed Al Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) forces, an umbrella for mostly Shiite Iran-backed militias and volunteers.

He and Washington had been reluctant to deploy them in Anbar, a Sunni bastion, for fear of stoking sectarian tensions.

Speaking at a forum in Qatar, the head of the coalition, US General John Allen, admitted that the Hashed Al Shaabi’s involvement was inevitable in the short term.

“But then we have to secure the population and that should be done with Sunni police or Sunni tribes, and we’re trying to invigorate both of those,” he said.

At a meeting in Paris that wrapped up on Tuesday, Western powers and other members of the 60-nation coalition vowed more support for Abadi’s efforts.

‘Winning strategy’

Abadi had said that Daesh’s regained momentum on the ground was a sign of the “failure” of the international community to provide adequate support.

But Washington, which continues to refuse to send combat troops back to Iraq, and the coalition insisted they had a “winning strategy” of air strikes combined with thousands of forces training and advising Iraqi forces.

“In Iraq right now we have the right strategy, a combination of air strikes, training and effective global partners,” Blinken said at the meeting.

On Syria, where a civil war has raged for more than four years and the humanitarian situation is even worse than in Iraq, Washington and its coalition partners said a solution would have to start with a political process.

Syrian President Bashar Assad’s “unwillingness” to fight Daesh made a UN-backed process for a more inclusive leadership the only way forward, a statement said.

On Wednesday, Syrian regime aircraft dropped barrels bombs near the northern cities of Aleppo and Idlib, killing at least 24 people including eight children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Assad has denied using barrel bombs — crude weapons made of containers packed with explosives, known for causing indiscriminate damage — but evidence collected by activists and rights groups includes footage of the barrels being pushed from army helicopters.