Iraqi army has liberated six villages from Islamic State militants in west of Anbar, a security source said on Monday. Speaking to AlSumaria News, the source said, “the army’s seventh division managed to liberate villages of al-Bayda, al-Bowaiba, al-Jaabariya, al-Samma, Melili and al-Rumiya, west of Rawa town.”
The troops, according to the source, who preferred to remain anonymous, “freed the villages after IS militants escaped toward the desert.” “Troops reached to the borders of Rawa ahead of invasion to free it,” he added.
On Sunday, Qutri al-Obeidi, a senior leader with al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces), said in remarks that the militants fled all locations in Rawa and headed toward regions in south of Salahuddin, after the security troops declared intentions to invade the town in addition to airstrikes by army jets targeting the militants’ hideouts.
Last week, Hussein al-Okaidi, Rawa mayor, said the number of remaining Islamic State militants is estimated at no more than twenty members. Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi announced, earlier November, the liberation of Qaim in record time. Troops also freed Ebeidi and Krabla regions in western Anbar.
Operations were launched, late October, to liberate Qaim and Rawa towns. Both have been held by the extremist group since 2014, when it occupied one third of Iraq to proclaim a self-styled Islamic “Caliphate”.
On the other hand, In the unforgiving deserts of Iraq, there is just one way to deal with defeated members of the ISISI terrorist group who try to come home -- tribal justice. No pardons are possible among tribes which have agreed among themselves to treat with the utmost severity those members who became jihadists.
As for the families of ISIS members, many have already fled, fearing reprisals, reported Agence France Presse on Monday. The former army commander for operations in the western province of Anbar, where ISIS once held sway after a sweeping offensive across Syria and Iraq in 2014, told AFP returning members face short shrift.
"The Bumahal and the other tribes have agreed to adopt a common stance" on the issue, said General Ismail Mehlawi, himself a Bumahal. In the vast region where tribal law prevails, the tribes have addressed the thorny question of what to do about any relatives who pledged allegiance to the self-proclaimed ISIS "caliphate".
"They've all fled to neighboring Syria," say residents of Al-Obeidi village in the heart of what was the last ISIS bastion in Iraq, which has just been retaken by Iraqi forces. But if any return or are discovered in the area, they "will be treated with severity", Mehlawi said.
"No pardon will be possible," said the mustachioed Iraqi whose home was dynamited by members of his own tribe who had joined ISIS. "We will punish them as prescribed by God so justice is done to the tribesmen who have been wronged" during the ISIS occupation.
The cycle of revenge has already begun in Al-Obeidi, said a security official in the Al-Qaim region whose 150,000 inhabitants belong to around half a dozen tribes. "A week ago, Busharji fighters blew up the house of a member of their tribe who had joined ISIS" and who was himself accused of blowing up homes in Al-Obeidi, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.