Reports of U.S. Ground Fighters Emerge as ISIS Gains in Iraq

No matter how many bombs Americans drop on ISIS forces, Iraqi troops are losing ground. If al-Anbar is lost, the entire Iraqi front dynamic will shift to favor ISIS again, and months of the U.S.-led air campaign will have been wasted.

Maybe that’s why we had reports from an Iraqi field commander on Tuesday that U.S. forces had their first ground clash with ISIS terrorists at midnight on Monday, Baghdad time. ISIS fighters were forced to withdraw after U.S. air force fighters bombed enemy positions.

The minor victory was well timed. After six weeks of defeats in Iraq, ISIS made its first gains in the western province of al-Anbar last week, threatening the remaining Iraqi government forces and its tribal Sunni allies who are defending the remaining cities and army camps there.

“We have ammunition to fight ISIS for five days only. After that, we will not be able to fight them with their advanced arms,” said Sheikh Naeim al-Gaud, a tribal leader who suffered hundreds of losses in a massacre committed by ISIS several weeks ago near the city of Hit, western Iraq.

A lot is riding on Al-Anbar. It’s Iraq’s largest province, about one-third the size of Iraq. It borders Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It also borders Baghdad, Babil, Karbala, Najaf, Salahuddin and Nineveh provinces. Most of the province is controlled by ISIS. Nevertheless, the provincial capital, Ramadi, is divided between the Iraqi government and ISIS. Several other towns are still controlled by the government as well, including an army camp that hosts 100 U.S. soldiers.

On the days following al-Gaud’s warning, ISIS retook many areas to the west of Ramadi, near the town of al-Baghdadi, forcing the army and its allies to halt an attack to restore the city of Hit. Shekh al-Gaud said he only received 72 AK-47 rifles that are out of service despite his public appeals for help. He also said that the army’s seventh division, which is fighting ISIS in his area, has no tanks at all while ISIS has many of them. His tribal fighters used rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, to counter ISIS tanks. That is no longer working. “They have developed a way to make their tanks avoid our rockets.”

He lost 762 members of his tribe who were killed by ISIS.

One of the reasons the Iraqi government hesitates to arm the tribes in al-Anbar is that some of the weapons sent previously ended up in ISIS hands. “I was told that 4000 Russian PKCs heavy machine guns were sent before. 800 of them ended up with ISIS,” al-Gaud said.

http://nunezreport.blogspot.com/