Ramadi

Ramadi was twice fought over during the Mesopotamian Campaign of World War I. It was held initially by the forces of the Ottoman Empire, which garrisoned it in March 1917 after losing control of Fallujah to the east. The British Army's Lieutenant General Frederick Stanley Maude sought to drive out the garrison in July 1917 but faced severe difficulties due to exceptional heat during both day and night. A force of around 600 British soldiers plus cavalry units faced 1,000 Turks with six artillery pieces. The attack was a costly failure and a combination of exhaustion, disorganisation, Turkish artillery fire and an unexpected sandstorm forced Maude to call off the attack with heavy losses. More than half of the 566 British casualties were caused by the heat.[12]

Maude tried again during a cooler period in September 1917. This time the attacking force, led by Major General H.T. Brookings, was better organised and the British force was able to cope with the temperatures. The British mounted their attack from a direction that the Turks had not expected and managed to cut off their enemy's line of retreat. Many members of the Turkish garrison were killed or forced to surrender and the British were able to take control of Ramadi.[12]

Ramadi was contested again during World War II following the 1941 Iraqi coup d'état. The coup leader, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, initiated a siege of the British base at RAF Habbaniya near Ramadi. This prompted a British counter-attack to break the siege, sparking the brief Anglo-Iraqi War. An Iraqi brigade occupied Ramadi under the auspices of a training exercise. The British assembled an ad hoc relief force dubbed Habforce which advanced from the British Mandate of Palestine into Iraq.[13] The force succeeded in relieving RAF Habbaniya and Iraqi resistance rapidly crumbled as their counter-attacks were defeated,[14] allowing a British column to seize control of Ramadi.[15]

The Ramadi Barrage was built near the city in 1955 to feed water into Lake Habbaniyah to the southeast.[16] The University of Anbar was founded there in 1987 and, together with Ramadi's trade and transport links, gave the city a more cosmopolitan, liberal and secular culture than others in the Sunni Triangle.[17] Many high-ranking officials of the ruling Ba'ath Party came from Ramadi. Its local elites were also closely tied to the regime. The Anbar tribes in and around the city were largely co-opted to support the regime and Ramadi was the home base of the Iraqi Army's combat engineers, special forces and many active and retired senior officers.[18]

Ramadi was the scene of large-scale demonstrations against Saddam Hussein in 1995. This made it virtually unique in Sunni Iraq, where support for Saddam was strongest.[17] The demonstrations were prompted by Saddam's execution of a prominent member of the Dulaim tribe from Ramadi, Iraqi Air Force General Muhammad Madhlum al-Dulaimi, and three other Dulaimi officers. The four had criticized the regime and Saddam's notoriously violent and dissolute son Uday. After their execution, the bodies were sent back to Ramadi. The regime's security forces put down the demonstrations which ensued and Saddam subsequently viewed the Dulaimis with suspicion, though he was unable to purge them without risking a full-scale tribal revolt.[19]

Iraqi police review in front of the government headquarters in Ramadi, 2007

The policy of de-Ba'athification and the disbandment of the Iraqi Army, implemented by the United States following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, hit Ramadi particularly hard because of its links to the party and the army. Many senior officials and military figures in the city suddenly found themselves excluded from public life. This gave them both the motivation and the means, given their connections and technical expertise, to mount a campaign of violence against coalition forces. As a result, Ramadi became a hotbed of insurgency between 2003 and 2006 and was badly affected by the Iraq War.[18]

Following the withdrawal of US and Coalition forces in 2011, Ramadi was contested by Iraq and the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) during the ongoing Iraqi insurgency. On 15 May 2015 Ramadi was captured by ISIS after an assault that included suicide car bombs, mortars, and rocket launchers. CNN reported that ISIS took over 50 high-level security personnel prisoners during the assault. The ISIS flag was also raised at the Ramadi government headquarters.[20] By 17 May 2015 Ramadi had been completely captured by ISIS forces.[21]

Since the ISIS occupation of Ramadi, efforts have been made to re-take the city. In November 2015, Iraqi government forces completed an encirclement of Ramadi.[22] On 28 December, Iraqi forces advanced into the centre of the city of Ramadi and liberated it.[23]

On 28 December 2015, Iraq's government claimed that it retook the city from the Islamic insurgency group ISIS. The operation started in early November. The city's recapture is seen as a major reversal for ISIS. ISIS occupied the city beginning in May 2015. The ISIS occupation of the city was a major defeat for the Iraqi government forces. The recapture of Ramadi was backed by US-led coalition air strikes, but made slow progress, mainly because the government chose not to use the powerful Shia-dominated paramilitary force that had previously helped it regain the mainly Sunni northern city of Tikrit, to avoid increasing sectarian tensions. The military said remaining ISIS militants have headed out to the north-east of Ramadi. The PM of Iraq declared that 30 December as celebrations of the recapture of Ramadi. However, Ramadi was highly damaged afterwards, with some estimates as high as 90%.