The struggle between Iraqi government forces and Shia militia against Islamic State (IS) for control of the country's largest oil refinery, Baiji, is at yet another critical moment.
Although it has changed hands several times in recent months, the current offensive by IS threatens once again to displace Iraqi troops and their allies.
The importance of retaking the nearby IS-held town of Baiji and relieving the refinery was stressed last month by the United States' most senior military officer, Gen Martin Dempsey, who said doing so would deprive IS of a major source of revenue.
Its capture is also seen as crucial for plans to attack IS in Mosul, owing to its position on the main road north to the city from Baghdad.
However, despite the emotion of the moment, the strategic value of this piece of territory is in actual fact mixed.
To the victor of Baiji go the spoils, according to the current narrative of the conflict in Iraq, but this conclusion is questionable given the effort required to take it combined with the equivocal gains.
Disruption not defeat
At the moment, about 200 Iraqi security personnel are besieged inside the sprawling 10-sq-mile (26-sq-km) refinery, where IS fighters might have taken over up to two-thirds, according to reports.
For either side, keeping control of the refinery will come at a cost.
To hold on to Baiji requires personnel and robust logistics support. Even worse for the Iraqis tactically, the fight to hold the refinery tends to favour IS.
As a battlefield it offers all of the complications of urban warfare micro-terrain which allow small, dispersed forces to fight and maintain a presence nearly indefinitely given the lesser demands of such a campaign.
It is also important to note that IS does not need to win so much as make it impossible for the Iraqis to do so. Such an objective relies upon disruption not defeat of the opponent and thus does not require large numbers of fighters or sophisticated battle plans.
A senior Iraqi army official has said only about 230 IS fighters are involved in the fight for the refinery. They are reported to have set fire to storage tanks and other parts of the refinery, making air strikes and air drops of provisions more difficult.
As well, in considering how the government forces could defend or retake it, the destruction of the refinery, which had been producing upwards of 175,000 barrels of oil a day until it was shut last summer, is a fraught outcome to be avoided.
This limits the military methods available, including US-led coalition air strikes, to defeat or displace IS.
Alternatively, despite its tangible importance to them, IS fighters will likely destroy the facility before losing it.
Isolated frontier
However, were the fight to go in its favour, for the foreseeable future IS will not benefit from the gains.
Neither will the group be able to rely upon it for fuel or revenue, two areas in which its reserves are limited and shrinking.
The refinery has been shut since IS launched its offensive in June 2014
Geographically?, Baiji is part of the high-water mark of the IS eastern advance into Iraq. For that, however, it may also represent how the group has overreached and now suffer the burdens of supporting its gains.
Recent events support this. Having lost Tikrit in April and facing challenge in western Anbar province, the refinery becomes a relatively isolated frontier.
Moreover, the Baiji area's relevance to Mosul may be overstated. While it does lie astride the path to Mosul, on its own - minus oil and revenue production - it provides little of value to the defence of the IS "capital" in Iraq.
Cut off from support from the north or west, it is entirely possible that Baiji can be isolated and bypassed by Iraqi forces following a leapfrogging strategy rather than a straight-corridor approach.
Thus, although the oil revenues would benefit the Iraqi state, in the short-term the military costs well outweigh the need.
Unsustainable asset?
Turned on its head, Baiji can be reckoned as a strategic burden to IS.
The group faces real weaknesses in resources, logistics and manpower. Its income is fragile. It has an insurgent infrastructure to support its military campaigns. And at the end of the day it has a limited army with severe manpower constraints.
Were IS to take the Baiji refinery, the need to hold it would be difficult to avoid.
However, garrisons are neither easy nor cheap to maintain. Forcing IS to hold there and support the fixed position will cost the group without necessarily providing any real strategic benefits.
Baiji may look like an obstacle to Iraq and the coalition, but in fact it may be the metaphor of victory.
Jill S Russell is a military historian with an extensive background in defence and security affairs. Her submitted doctoral thesis for the War Studies Department at King's College London surveys the development of logistics in modern military practice and its influence on strategic culture. Follow her @jsargentr
He drew a comparison to World War II. “Countries with different ideologies, different priorities, different systems of government, cooperated to defeat the Nazis,” he said. “It’s foreseeable that we see countries which might not get along very well in terms of their bilateral relations working to help Iraq to defeat this threat.” http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=111462883
Mapped: The State of Play in Iraq Following the Fall of Ramadi
By Elias Groll May 19, 2015 - 5:42 pm
So much for the Islamic State militant group being on the “defensive,” as President Barack Obama put it .. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/11/remarks-president-request-congress-authorization-force-against-isil .. in February. Over the weekend, the group’s forces stormed into the Iraqi city of Ramadi and seized control of government buildings, as forces loyal to Baghdad melted away in the face of the assault. It’s the Islamic State’s most significant victory since seizing Mosul in June and has set in motion a series of events that raise questions about the Iraqi army’s ability to repel the Islamic State and sets the stage for a likely battle to reclaim Ramadi.
So how can we now understand the state of play in Iraq? The map below .. http://understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/ISIS%20Captures%20Ramadi%20--%20May%202015.pdf , drawn up the analysts at the Institute for the Study of War .. http://understandingwar.org/ , a Washington think tank, gives us some idea. The conquest of Ramadi helps consolidate the group’s control of Anbar province. Though it’s a little hard to see, the city of Haditha remains one of the major holdouts in Anbar. Iraq and U.S. forces still hold Al Asad air base.
The analysts at ISW place this latest Islamic State offensive in the context of a series of maneuvers to consolidate the area under their control. They see the action in Ramadi as part of a long-running effort to eliminate pockets of resistance in Baiji, the al-Qaim/al-Bukamal border crossing, the seizure of Sinjar following the fall of Tal Afar, and the attempted assault in Kobani, in Syrian Kurdistan.
[ Screen Shot 2015-05-19 at 3.51.29 PM ]
The ISW analysis .. http://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/isis-captures-ramadi .. points out that the Ramadi attack comes as the Iraqi security forces have been forced to commit significant resources to the battle for control of the Baiji refinery, Iraq’s largest.
[ Screen Shot 2015-05-19 at 4.00.58 PM ]
As after the fall of Mosul, images are now circulating on social media of Islamic State fighters posing with U.S.-supplied equipment seized by fleeing Iraqi security forces.
[ tweets ]
Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said Tuesday that the Iraqi army left behind “half a dozen” tanks, about 100 wheeled vehicles — including several artillery pieces — and “dozens” of tracked armored vehicles. If there’s any bright side in this, Warren said that at least some of these vehicles were in such disrepair that they were all but unusable.
[ which doesn't say much for the vehicles they are using elsewhere ]
As in Mosul, the fighting in Ramadi has been accompanied by a humanitarian disaster as civilians flee from in a city that had once been home to nearly half a million residents. According to the International Organization on Migration, just over 40,000 people have been displaced by the fighting in Ramadi since May 15. In total, there are about 420,000 displaced persons in Anbar province, and 2.8 million have been displaced throughout Iraq since January last year.
For a sense of the enormity of such storms and how difficult it is to carry out airstrikes in such conditions, check out this video of a 2005 storm that hit a U.S. base in Anbar:
Iraqi and paramilitary forces are now massed .. http://news.yahoo.com/shiite-militias-converge-iraqs-ramadi-takeover-032630771.html .. outside Ramadi in anticipation of an attempt to quickly reclaim the city. Abadi has called up Shiite militias to aid in Iraqi forces, a move that echoes the assault on Tikrit earlier this year. Many observers are deeply concerned, however, that an assault by a Shiite-majority force on a Sunni-dominated city may lead to ethnic violence and further exacerbate tensions within the group. The Islamic State has gained some public support among Sunnis in Anbar province, where large parts of the population feel the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad has systematically excluded them.
[ GRRRRR .. De-Ba'athification (Arabic: ?????? ??? ??????) refers to a Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) policy outlined in CPA Order 1 which entered into force on 16 May 2003.[1] The policy’s goal was to remove the Ba'ath Party's influence in the new Iraqi political system. To accomplish its goal, the policy declared that all public sector employees affiliated with the Ba'ath Party were to be removed from their positions and to be banned from any future employment in the public sector. The policy was highly controversial among US academics, institutions, government, military, and international media and debate outlets. The policy under the Coalition Provisional Authority was officially rescinded on 28 June 2004 as part of the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi Interim Government on 30 June 2004. Critics of the policy, however, claim that the policy continued under the new authority of the Iraqi Interim Government, Governing Council, and later under the elected Iraqi Parliament. Proponents of the policy contend that the policy effectively cleansed Iraqi society of Ba'athist influence, facilitating the creation of a democratic Iraqi government. Critics argue that the policy was not only undemocratic, but also a significant factor in the deteriorating security situation throughout Iraq
No thanks at all to Ahmed Chalabi and Douglas Feith .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba%27athification#Formation .. terrible, idiotic, inane lack of foresight? .. or 'on purpose' which of course could be used/is probably used as a filler in NWO conspiracy theory .. i mean they couldn't be that thickened by ideological blinkers .. or maybe they were ]
[ tweet with photos as the others above had .. wish they could make the tweets all image ]
In perhaps a sense of what’s to come, an image of Hadi al-Amiri, the transportation minister and the head of the powerful Iranian-backed Badr Brigades, conferring with Iraqi officers about a coming assault on Ramadi has been circulating on Twitter:
In another revealing piece of social media, the Iraqi Ministry of Defense has released what passes as good news for the country’s beleaguered armed forces, a video of a helicopter rescue of Iraqi troops trapped by Islamic State fighters:
That’s about as good as it gets in Iraq these days.
FP staff writer Paul McLeary contributed reporting.
Maps: Institute for the Study of War; Top: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
