ALAM, Iraq — The area around the Iraqi city of Tikrit is a panorama of blight, littered with the remnants of battle against the Islamic State: burned-out cars and empty mortar casings, roads made jagged from bombs. At one checkpoint, a militiaman sits with his laptop. At another, there is a pink folder on a table. Inside each are thousands of names of people suspected of being militant fighters or collaborators.
“If he is Daesh, I will arrest him,” said Hasan Jibouri, the fighter with the laptop, which he said contained 6,000 names on a no-admittance list, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. “If not, we have no problem.”
The battle for Tikrit and its surrounding villages, which pro-government forces won more than a month ago, was seen as a crucial test of the ability of the Iraqi government and its partners — including Shiite militias, Iranian military advisers and the American-led coalition — to win back territory from the Islamic State.
Update: Tikrit: Iraq’s Abandoned City -- Zaid Al-Ali, New York Review Of Books
WNU Editor: These deep divisions are going to guarantee only one thing .... Iraq is going to face and experience warfare/terrorism/violence for a very long time.
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