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| A photo posted on a militant website last week shows fighters from the Islamic State group in front of a police station in Nineveh Province, Iraq. Credit via Associated Press |
N.Y. TIMES
After six weeks of American airstrikes, the Iraqi government’s forces have scarcely budged Sunni extremists of the Islamic State from their hold on more than a quarter of the country, in part because many critical Sunni tribes remain on the sidelines.
Although the airstrikes appear to have stopped the extremists’ march toward Baghdad, the Islamic State is still dealing humiliating blows to the Iraq government forces. On Monday, the government acknowledged that it had lost control of the small town of Sichar and lost contact with several hundred of its soldiers who had been besieged for nearly a week at a camp north of the Islamic State stronghold of Falluja, in Anbar Province.
The foundation of the Obama administration’s plan to defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is the installation of a new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, who has pledged to build a more responsive government and rebuild Sunni support. But, though at least some Sunni Arabs are fighting alongside the army in places like Haditha, influential Sunni sheikhs who helped lead the Awakening say they remain unconvinced.
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| Sunni Iraqi men, who took up arms alongside security forces to defend the town of Dhuluiyah from the Islamic State militant group, held a position last week. Credit Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
Sunni tribal leaders said they were already disappointed by Mr. Abadi, who has been hailed by President Obama as the face of a more inclusive government. They said that the military had not lived up to a pledge by the prime minister to discontinue shelling civilian areas in the battle against the Islamic State — an accusation that could not be confirmed. They also complained that the government had done nothing to reform abusive security forces, and that it continued to give a free hand to Iranian-backed Shiite militias whom Sunnis and human rights groups accuse of arbitrary killings.“Hundreds of poor people are in prison without being convicted, and today we have the militias as well killing our people, while the military is bombing our cities with barrel bombs and random missiles,” Sheikh Bajjari said. “If we ever put down our weapons, the militias would come over and kill us all.”
Islamic State, for its part, has kept up a public attitude of extreme confidence. Photographs and videos emerging from the cities it controls, including Falluja and Mosul, show its officials opening the school year with a puritanical Islamic curriculum, establishing Shariah courts, or even patrolling the streets in newly painted police cars labeled “the Islamic Police of the Islamic State of Iraq.
The army and some local Sunni tribal fighters captured the town of Barwana and much of Haditha, near a vital dam in the west. Shiite militias and American airstrikes helped the army take the towns of Amerli and Yusufia, as well as Adam, on an important road to the north. And American airstrikes helped Kurdish fighters recapture the critical Mosul dam just days after it fell to Islamic State, at the start of the campaign.
But even with the backing of Western air power, the broad battle lines have remained roughly static.