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Fall of Ramadi Reflects Failure of Iraq's Strategy Against Islamic State
(Washington Post) Hugh Naylor - As Islamic State militants repeatedly attacked Ramadi this year, police solicited cash from local families and businessmen to buy weapons, recalled Col. Eissa al-Alwani, a senior police officer. The Iraqi government didn't pay the police for months, he said. Now, with Ramadi being overrun, many Sunni tribal leaders and fighters who might have helped the government in Anbar have been killed or have fled, analysts say. "Now the Sunnis are even more suspicious of the government, and now it will be even harder to get them to cooperate with a political system that they already deeply distrusted," said Ihsan al-Shamari, a political analyst in Baghdad. A number of Sunni tribes in Anbar held out for months against the Islamic State. But they complained that the national government failed to deliver weapons and military reinforcements despite repeated requests for support.