BAGHDAD // On the western edge of Iraq’s capital, ISIL militants battle government forces and exchange mortar fire, only adding to the sense of siege in Baghdad despite airstrikes by a US-led coalition.
Yet military experts say the militants, who now control a large territory along the border that Iraq and Syria share, won’t be able to fight through both government forces and Shiite militias now massed around the capital.
It does, however, put them in a position to wreak havoc in Iraq’s biggest city, with its suicide attacks and other assaults further eroding confidence in Iraq’s nascent federal government and its troops, whose soldiers already fled ISIL’s initial lightning advance in June. “It’s not plausible at this point to envision ISIL taking control of Baghdad, but they can make Baghdad so miserable that it would threaten the legitimacy of the central government,” said Richard Brennan, an Iraq expert with RAND Corporation and former US department of defence policymaker.
The siege fears in Baghdad stem from recent gains made by ISIL in the so-called Baghdad Belt – the final stretch between Anbar province, where the group gained ground in January, and Baghdad. The group has had a presence in the Baghdad Belt since spring, Iraqi officials say, but recent advances have sparked new worries.
On Saturday, car bomb blasts in two Shiite neighbourhoods of the Iraqi capital killed at least 34 people and wounded 54 on Saturday, police and medical sources said.
A suicide car bomb exploded at a police checkpoint guarding Kadhimiyah, a neighbourhood in northwestern Baghdad that is home to one of the holiest shrines in Shiite Islam.
A police colonel said at least 10 people were killed and 31 wounded, a toll confirmed by a medical source.
Farther west, in the district of Shoala, a car bomb went off in a busy commercial street, killing at least 24 people and wounding another 23, a medical source said.
Last week, ISIL fighters seized the towns of Hit and neighbouring Kubaisa, sending Iraqi soldiers fleeing and leaving a nearby military base with its stockpile of weapons at risk of capture. The US-led coalition recently launched two airstrikes north-west of Hit, US central command said on Saturday.
Government forces still control most of the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi, but the city is vulnerable.
Perhaps most worrying, ISIL fighters now battle Iraqi forces in Abu Ghraib, the town home to the infamous prison of the same name that’s only 29 kilometres from the Green Zone, the fortified international zone protecting Baghdad-based embassies and government offices.
To the south of Baghdad, security forces fight to hold onto the town of Jurf Al Sukr, and to the north, one Sunni tribe has held onto the town of Duluiyah despite ISIL’s onslaught. However, ISIL fighters have taken over a number of towns in Diyala province, east of Baghdad.
Yet authorities believe an assault to take Baghdad remains unlikely. An Iraqi military and intelligence official each said that as many as 60,000 government security personnel, including soldiers and police officers, are currently in position outside the city along the Baghdad Belt.
Since that initial September assault, Baghdad largely has been spared and remained relatively calm, considering the intense sectarian bloodshed residents saw in 2006 and 2007 after the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. Still, many remain worried.
“It’s scary,” said Maha Ismail, who recently visited one of Baghdad’s new shopping malls. “But we have seen a lot worse than this so we are gathering despite all the warnings.”
A US counterterrorism official said Baghdad would remain a target for ISIL attacks, though seizing it outright would be nearly impossible.
“Attacking Baghdad is probably still in [its] playbook but its leaders must know they would face overwhelming odds in striking the city,” the US official said.
ISIL says it has a foothold inside Baghdad, having claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in the city, particularly in the Sadr City neighbourhood – a Shiite stronghold. In August, the group claimed responsibility for an attack on a Shiite mosque in New Baghdad, and another in the Shiite-majority district of Utaifiya in Baghdad, which together killed 26 people.
Yet analysts, like Mr Brennan from the RAND Corporation, say capturing Baghdad remains beyond ISIL’s ability. At its worst, the group might “start pressing into the western areas of Baghdad, going into the Sunni areas of Baghdad and pressing up against the Tigris [River] — if not controlling it, then at least testing the control of the central government,” he said.
At a recent news conference, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm John Kirby also said Baghdad is protected.
“Airstrikes around the city, particularly to the south and to the south-east of the city, we believe, have been effective in blunting” [ISIL], he said.
Beyond the US-coordinated airstrikes and the massing of Iraqi troops, the country’s religious and ethnic lines likely will staunch any advance by the Sunni militants. From Baghdad further south, Iraq’s population is overwhelmingly Shiite and the lands there are home to some of its most important shrines.
* Associated Press
