The top US military officer will press the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi during a visit to Iraq this week about its plans for avoiding sectarian fallout once the Iranian-backed operation to dislodge the Daesh group from the city of Tikrit concludes, The Washington Post reported.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was confident that Iraq would ultimately defeat the Sunni militants in Tikrit, a largely Sunni city north of Baghdad. He said the group's fighters numbered only in the hundreds there, while the force of Iraqi troops and Iranian-backed militia fighters advancing on the city stands around 23,000.
"The important thing about this operation in the Tikrit in my view is less about how the military aspect of it goes and more about what follows," he told reporters ahead a visit to Iraq, where he will meet with Iraq's Shiite-led government. "Because if the Sunni population is then allowed to continue to live its life the way it wants to, and can come back to their homes … then I think we're in a really good place."
"But if what follows the Tikrit operation is not that, if there's no reconstruction that follows it, if there's no inclusively that follows it, if there's the movement of populations out of their homeland that follows it, then I think we've got a challenge in the campaign."
The Tikrit offensive, launched earlier this week, is the first test of al Abadi's ability to orchestrate the recovery of a major city from the Daesh. It is also an illustration of the government's deepening partnership with Shiite militia organizations and the military of Shiite neighbor Iran, which has provided adviseors, weaponry, training, surveillance and intelligence to counter the militant group.
US officials say two-thirds of the force poised to make an attempt for Tikrit are militiamen rather than Iraqi government forces.