May 19--REPORTING FROM BEIRUT -- Iraqi authorities ramped up recruitment of volunteers on Tuesday to join pro-government forces fighting the Islamic State, official media said, even as the militants launched multiple attacks on a town east of the city of Ramadi.
Government forces beat back several Islamic State assaults on the town of Khaldiyah, 11 miles east of Ramadi and 65 miles west of the capital, Baghdad, according to statements from the Ministry of Defense.
The town of Khaldiyah borders the Habbaniyah area, where pro-government forces, including the largely Shiite militias collectively known as the Popular Mobilization Units, have been assembling in anticipation of a wide-scale campaign to eject the Sunni militants from Ramadi, provincial capital of Anbar province
Islamic State fighters seized Ramadi on Sunday, pushing out government forces who fled hurriedly in a scene reminiscent of the army's humiliating collapse in the city of Mosul last June. Iraqi officials have vowed to recapture the town. Pro-government forces in the center of Ramadi had held out for 18 months against an array of Sunni militants, including many local fighters opposed to the central government.
On Tuesday, Iraq's Council of Ministers issued a statement "calling for voluntary recruitment to add new forces in the army." It also confirmed "the government's obligation to recruit and arm" Sunni tribal fighters in Anbar, a predominantly Sunni province where many residents deeply mistrust the Shiite-dominated central government and allied Shiite militias.
But the Shiite paramilitaries, perhaps the strongest pro-government force in Iraq, now appear vital to any campaign to retake Ramadi, despite widespread fears that deploying them broadly in Iraq's Sunni heartland may deepen the nation's Sunni-Shia divide. The U.S. military has accelerated airstrikes against Islamic State in the Ramadi area and has vowed to provide assistance to the Washington-backed government in Baghdad.
Anbar was the hub of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces following the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. Hundreds of American personnel were killed and wounded in the province. A massive U.S. offensive in November 2004 took back the city of Fallouja in Anbar from Sunni militants linked to Al Qaeda. Fallouja is also now in the hands of Islamic State, an Al Qaeda breakaway faction that controls vast swaths of territory in Iraq and neighboring Syria and has been the target of a U.S.-led bombing campaign for nine months.
Iraq's mostly Shiite Popular Mobilization Units spearheaded the successful government offensive in March to rout Islamic State from central Salahudin province, but the militiamen were not initially deployed in strength in Anbar because of sectarian sensitivities. Officials feared deploying the mostly Shiite fighters could inflame tensions in Anbar. The Shiite paramilitaries were accused of reprisal attacks against Sunnis in Salahudin, especially in the provincial capital of Tikrit, which is overwhelmingly Sunni and was the hometown of Saddam Hussein, who was popular among many in Iraq's Sunni minority.
The fall of Ramadi, however, has forced Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Abadi to call upon the militias to join the campaign to take back Anbar, a largely desert expanse that includes about a third of the country and borders Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The government says the militias, like the military and police forces, are under Baghdad's control. But many militias have autonomous command structures. Some have received training from Iran, a Shiite country that is a close ally of the Baghdad government.
A spokesman for the Badr Brigades, the largest pro-government paramilitary group, said on Tuesday that the size of Popular Mobilization Units could be increased to "100,000 fighters so as to liberate Anbar." The militiamen, along with regular army and police units, were reported to be massing east of Ramadi in preparation for a counterattack.
"There is a call for all of the Popular Mobilization Units since yesterday," said the Badr spokesman, Moeen Al-Kadhimi, according to the Al-Iraqiyah state news broadcaster. He added that the clashes now in Anbar province are nothing more than "skirmishes" between the Popular Mobilization Units and the Islamic State, and that "large-scale operation in the cities of Anbar province has not yet begun."
Tens of thousands of people have fled the Ramadi area, adding to the more than 1 million people who have been forced out of their homes in Iraq in the past year or so. About 40,000 people have fled Ramadi since May 15, according to the International Office of Migration, an intergovernmental group that aids migrants.
Bulos is a special correspondent
UPDATES
10:20 a.m.: This article has been updated throughout with staff reporting, quotes and background.
This article was originally posted at 9 a.m.
