Maliki ordered an assault on Ramadi on Sunday, it ended in failure.
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Jan. 21 (UPI) — Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is having a tough time trying to dislodge al-Qaida forces who hold much of the western cities of Fallujah and Ramadi because his army doesn’t seem to be up to the task, despite emergency shipments of U.S. arms.
At the same time, Sunni tribal leaders are shunning the Shiite premier’s appeals to help him battle this new insurgency.
The Sunnis’ reaction to the jihadist offensive is not surprising since it was a brutal government crackdown on protests by the minority sect, incensed at being oppressed and marginalized by Maliki’s Shiite-dominated regime, that al-Qaida exploited when it seized the cities in western Anbar province Dec. 30.
In recent days, the jihadists have escalated attacks in Baghdad and other important cities like Kirkuk and Mosul in the north to pin down large military forces there and prevent their deployment to embattled Anbar province.
“The security situation will continue to be tense, bloody and with escalating attacks for the immediate short-term as Maliki weighs the political versus security costs of launching large-scale military operations against the insurgent targets ahead of this year’s parliamentary elections,” the U.S. global security consultancy Stratfor said.
Al-Qaida in Iraq’s seizure of Fallujah and Ramadi was seen as part of a plan to establish a jihadist emirate in western Iraq — an overwhelmingly Sunni region that borders war-torn northern Syria — where the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an AQI offshoot, is battling to set up a similar emirate.