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Iraqi Victory Over ISIS in Ramadi Could Prove Pivotal

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Iraq Declares Major Victory Over ISIS

A lieutenant colonel described the scene after the Iraqi Army’s takeover of the center of Ramadi from the Islamic State.

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A lieutenant colonel described the scene after the Iraqi Army’s takeover of the center of Ramadi from the Islamic State.CreditCredit...Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Falih Hassan and

BAGHDAD — Breaking a seven-month occupation by the Islamic State, Iraqi troops on Monday retook most of Ramadi, the most populous city in western Iraq, overrunning a government compound held by the terrorist group at the city center and dealing a setback to its deadly grip on large parts of the country.

Iraqi soldiers continued to face stiff resistance by Islamic State fighters in several pockets, and their hold on Ramadi — achieved after a week of fierce fighting with help from American jets that pounded enemy positions — remained tenuous. In Washington, Pentagon officials warned that it would be premature to declare outright victory.

But if the government manages to hold Ramadi, it could prove pivotal to the efforts to beat back the Islamic State in Iraq and, ultimately, to reverse the group’s gains in Syria as well. The Obama administration is hoping that a victory in Ramadi could also help vindicate its strategy of relying largely on air power to aid Iraqi and other partners fighting on the ground.

The Ramadi campaign is the latest in a string of defeats for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and its Arabic acronym, Daesh. The group has lost as much as 40 percent of the Iraqi territory it conquered last year.

Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, who announced the city’s “liberation” on Twitter on Monday night, has vowed to now focus on recapturing Mosul, a larger city in the north that the Islamic State seized in 2014.

The battle for Ramadi, which had proceeded in fits and starts since the summer, was waged partly by Sunni tribesmen whom American troops had trained to fight alongside the forces of the Shiite-dominated government. If it continues, such cooperation — a delicate alliance, given Iraq’s long history of sectarian violence — could help corrode the Islamic State’s claim to represent all of Sunni Islam.

In a televised speech on Monday night, Mr. Abadi extolled what he described as the cooperative effort of “different affiliations and religions and sects” among Iraqis in routing Islamic State fighters from Ramadi. “The year 2016 will be, God willing, the year of ending the presence of Daesh from the Iraq lands,” he said.

The retaking of the city center began around 8 a.m., when government tanks and bulldozers breached the walls around the local government complex. Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Belawi, the leader of a battalion of Sunni tribal fighters, said the remaining militants had either fled or been killed. State television broadcast images of soldiers raising the Iraqi flag above the compound and singing the national anthem. The number of casualties was unclear.

A military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, declared the city “liberated,” but other Iraqi officials later offered more cautious assessments.

By the evening, a military commander, Maj. Gen. Ismail al-Mahlawi, estimated that the government controlled 75 percent to 80 percent of the Ramadi area. Insurgents were still in control of several suburbs, including the villages of Sajariya, Sufiya and Albu Ghanim, northeast of Ramadi, and three towns to the east: Albu Bali, north of the Euphrates River, and Khaldiya and Husayba al-Sharqiya, south of the river.

General Mahlawi said those areas “will be liberated quickly,” but he declined to specify a timetable. A Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details, warned that Islamic State fighters might have escaped by melting into the local population.

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Iraqi security forces were able to re-enter a damaged government compound in central Ramadi that had been held by Islamic State militants since May. Government troops recaptured much of the city on Monday after a week of fierce fighting.Credit...European Pressphoto Agency

Supporters of the Islamic State, which relies heavily on social media for recruitment and publicity, had used Twitter to dismiss reports of the impending fall of Ramadi as exaggerated or fabricated. But on Monday evening, an online account associated with the group called on supporters to “not forget your brothers in Ramadi” in their prayers — an implicit acknowledgment that the Islamic State was under siege.

“The clearance of the government center is a significant accomplishment,” Col. Steven H. Warren, the United States military spokesman in Baghdad, said in a statement. “Today’s success is a proud moment for Iraq.”

Colonel Warren said the American-led coalition had conducted, as part of the Ramadi campaign, more than 630 airstrikes since July, including three on Sunday that hit 18 targets.

In recent months, the Islamic State has had to withdraw from the town of Sinjar, in northwest Iraq, near the Syrian border, and the cities of Tikrit and Baiji, in the “Sunni triangle” north of Baghdad.

Ramadi had been one of the largest cities under the extremist group’s control, along with its self-proclaimed capital, Raqqa, Syria. It still controls Mosul, as well as Falluja, which sits between Ramadi and the capital, Baghdad, nearly 60 miles to the east.

The fall of Ramadi to the Islamic State in May was an embarrassing blow to the Iraqi government and military, setting back efforts to recapture the surrounding Anbar Province from the group.

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A soldier in a heavily damaged building in the Huz neighborhood of Ramadi, Iraq, on Sunday.Credit...Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Reasserting control over Ramadi, the capital and largest city in Anbar, will allow Iraq to cut off supply lines to Falluja and may make it very difficult for the Islamic State to continue to hold that city. American-trained Sunni tribesmen are part of a force that is supposed to hold Ramadi and prevent Islamic State militants from returning.

President François Hollande of France, who declared his country to be “at war” with the Islamic State after the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, congratulated the Iraqi prime minister on Monday and called the “liberation” of Ramadi “the most important victory since the start of the fight against the terrorist organization” last year.

“This is a major step in restoring the authority of the Iraqi state in the service of all its citizens,” Mr. Hollande said.

Eid Ammash, a spokesman for the Anbar provincial council, said in a telephone interview that troops had been careful about entering the government complex in Ramadi to minimize losses, and a police commander, Mazin al-Dulaimi, said forces had to make sure that suicide bombers and snipers were no longer inside the compound.

Through intercepted wireless communications, he said, the police learned that snipers in the government complex had been trying to delay the Iraqi forces’ advance, to facilitate the escape of fellow militants.

But Pierre-Jean Luizard, director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, and the author of a recent book about the Islamic State, cautioned against seeing Ramadi as a turning point. He said the Islamic State’s power derived not from military strength but from “the weakness of its enemies, first and foremost the Iraqi state with its Shiite-dominated government.”

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A military vehicle carrying members of the Iraqi security forces flew the national flag as it drove through Ramadi on Monday.Credit...Reuters

Dr. Luizard added that the Islamic State could not be defeated unless members of the Sunni Arab minority, which dominated Iraq until the United States invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, were assured a place in the government, which he said would require different constitutional arrangements.

“The Islamic State continues to make a better offer to the people it controls than the Baghdad government, whose return is the greatest fear of most inhabitants,” he said of the Sunnis of Anbar Province.

Still, Daniel L. Byman, a Georgetown professor who studies global jihadist movements, said the campaign to retake Ramadi was a cause for cautious optimism.

“It’s not an isolated event or simply a symbolic victory,” he said. “It shows the Islamic State is facing real reversals on the ground.”

He said Sunni tribes in Anbar Province were ultimately pragmatic. “They want a high degree of independence, but they also want to be on the side of the winners,” he added. That said, Dr. Byman warned that the Islamic State still has tremendous resources.

“If it can expand in Syria even while losing in Iraq, it can still claim victory,” he said. “It needs the perception of success. And one reason it’s expanding its terrorist operations outside the Middle East is because of the military losses in Iraq. The more losses it suffers on the ground, the more likely it is to strike back with international terrorism.”

Falih Hassan reported from Baghdad, and Sewell Chan from London. Helene Cooper and Gardiner Harris contributed reporting from Washington, and Kareem Fahim from Cairo.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Iraqis Retake Center of City in Grip of ISIS. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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