A very great deal rests on the Iraqi government's drive to retake Tikrit. The already deeply-discredited former premier Nouri Al-Maliki undermined his standing yet further by twice claiming, entirely falsely, that the so-called Islamic State had been driven out of the city. His replacement Haider Al-Abadi must avoid such fatuous and empty boasts and stick to the realities on the ground. On the face of it, the 30,000 men advancing on Tikrit represent a formidable challenge to IS, which analysts reckon may not have more than that number of fighters all told scattered throughout all the areas of Syria and Iraq that it currently controls. The government attack is said to be spearheaded by the Iraqi army. While there are a few well-led and well-disciplined units within its ranks, overall the country's regular armed forces have not so far distinguished themselves. Their precipitate flight from well-prepared positions when they were attacked by terrorists was a shameful failure, which they must now be seeking to expunge. The problem is that they will find themselves fighting against an enemy that is now using the weapons and equipment that they or their comrades abandoned as they cut and run last year when IS attacked. Apart from poor discipline and lousy leadership, the reason for the collapse of the Iraqi military was an astonishing complacency. No one expected the IS terrorist cancer to spread so quickly from the borderland areas between Syria and Iraq. The collapse was so extensive that at one point IS commanders were boasting that they would soon take Baghdad itself. Nervous families, not least Sunnis who feared victimization by Shia neighbors, began to flee the capital. Now, there is a clear danger that there might be complacency in the opposite direction. Commanders of the assault on Tikrit may be imagining that they have such overwhelming superiority in numbers that the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Viewing Monday's footage of regular army soldiers popping up from behind a bund and firing unaimed bursts in the general direction of the enemy only inspires confidence in the shares of ammunition manufacturers. In addition to the Iraqi army there is a large contingent of Shia militiamen. If trained soldiers can employ such poor tactics, for all their enthusiasm, the fighting qualities of these untrained volunteers must also be doubted. Sheer firepower ought to allow the Iraqis to seriously damage IS positions. But it will probably require tough house-to-house fighting to winkle out the last resistance and take out the key snipers, often now using a devastating US-made weapon firing 12.5mm bullets. Then there is the issue of counterattacks. At moments of seeming triumph, troops are most vulnerable to a fanatical assault from an enemy they thought was beaten. The tragedy is that if the Iraqi forces decide to avoid hand-to-hand combat but instead choose to blast IS out of Tikrit, the damage to the city and its Sunni inhabitants is going to be enormous. In the final analysis, the military destruction of IS is secondary to the countering of its evil ideology. Sunni opinion is already disturbed at reports that there is a senior Iranian commander helping to coordinate the Tikrit assault. Iran's greatest contribution to Iraq's stability would be to stop interfering it is affairs. To quell Sunni suspicions, Prime Minister Abadi needs to make absolutely clear the limits of Iranian involvement in this military operation.
