| ANALYSIS
“The grim sectarian tableau in Falluja — starving Sunni civilians trapped in a city surrounded by a mostly Shiite force — provides the backdrop to a final assault that Iraqi officials have promised will come soon. The United States has thousands of military personnel in Iraq and has trained Iraqi security forces for nearly two years, yet is largely on the sidelines in the battle to retake Falluja. It says its air and artillery strikes have killed dozens of Islamic State fighters, including the group’s Falluja commander. But it worries that an assault on the city could backfire — inflaming the same sectarian sentiments that have allowed the Islamic State to flourish there,” Tim Arango writes for the New York Times.
“No one should be under any doubt about what will happen once Fallujah is ‘liberated’. Sectarian cleansing is a well-established programme in Iraq, under the aegis and encouragement of the radical mullahs of Iran. In fact, areas around Samarra are being actively cleansed of any Sunni Arabs in order to create a Sunni-free corridor that stretches from the Iranian border to what the Shia consider to be their holy shrines and sites in the predominantly Sunni city,” Tallha Abdulrazaq writes for Middle East Eye.
“The assault on Falluja comes amid a concerted campaign against Isis in Iraq and Syria that has stretched the militants across multiple fronts. It is likely to last at least a few days with stiff resistance from the militants, who have long been entrenched there. Falluja was the first major city to be seized by Isis, taken long before the militants surged into northern Iraq and conquered the Nineveh plains and Iraq’s second city, Mosul. Although it has less strategic value than the populous city of Mosul, the Sunni city carries great symbolic weight for the Iraqi government and Isis,” Kareem Shaheen writes for the Guardian. |