Iraqi Tribes to Take Lead in Falluja Fight

The Iraqi Army is planning to cordon off Falluja city now occupied by extremists so that tribes can lead the mission to secure it at a time, a senior US State Department official told Congress on Wednesday.

“The plan is to have the tribes out in front, but with the army in support,” said Brett McGurk, the State Department’s top official on Iraq, describing preparations to try to oust the takfiri militants from the city of Falluja, in Anbar Province.

The Iraqi strategy to take on the militants has been developed with advice from American military officers, including General Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of the United States Central Command, who met in Baghdad last week with Iraqi officials and military commanders.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said in a weekly address on Wednesday that “the battle is about to end in Anbar within days.”

On Jan. 1 of this year, the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants drove into Falluja and the nearby city of Ramadi in as many as 100 trucks equipped with heavy machine guns and antiaircraft guns, McGurk said. The militants moved quickly to control key intersections and destroy local police stations.

Though Al Qaeda has broken with the ISIL, the latter has about 2,000 fighters in Iraq, and its longer-term objective is to establish a base of operations in Baghdad, McGurk added. The group is led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has been officially designated as a global terrorist by the U.S. State Department.

American officials have been pressing the Maliki government to build ties with the tribes by giving them the same benefits that Iraqi soldiers receive and promising to integrate them into the security forces.

Another challenge is a military one. When Maliki’s forces took Basra in 2008, they did so with the help of American air power. But the Obama administration has not offered to assist the Iraqi forces that are preparing to retake Falluja with American-operated drones or airstrikes.