Analyzing ISIS’s strategic position, Bill Roggio sees the militants’ moves so far as part of an effort to encircle the capital, very similar to the strategy Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Islamic State of Iraq employed in 2006:
The ISIS advance toward Baghdad may be temporarily held off as the government rallies its remaining security forces and Shia militias organize for the upcoming battle. But at the least, ISIS should be able to take control of some Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad and wreak havoc on the city with IEDs, ambushes, single suicide attacks, and suicide assaults that target civilians, the government, security forces, and foreign installations. Additionally, the brutal sectarian slaughter of Sunni and Shia alike that punctuated the violence in Baghdad from 2005 to 2007 is likely to return as Shia militias and ISIS fighters roam the streets.
Meanwhile, many Western embassy personnel are being evacuated and bombings are already happening in and around the city:
In Baghdad on Sunday, a suicide attacker detonated explosives in a vest he was wearing, killing at least nine people and wounding 20 in a crowded street in the centre of the capital, police and medical sources said. At least six people were killed, including three soldiers and three volunteers, when four mortars landed at a recruiting centre in Khlais, 50 km (30 miles) north of Baghdad. Volunteers were gathered by army to join fighting to regain control of the northern town of Udhaim from ISIL militants.
Nader Uskowi adds that the militants’ capture of the Turkmen-majority city of Tal Afar yesterday strengthens their position in Iraq’s northwest:
With the capture of Tal Afar, the ISIL now controls the entire Nineveh province, solidifying their grip on the Tigris valley north of Baghdad. The insurgents want to establish an Islamic caliphate in the area. …
Meanwhile, there were reports of heavy fighting on Sunday between Iraqi security forces and ISIL in the city of Baquba, 37 miles northeast of Baghdad, and the provincial capital of Diyala. If the city were to fall, the insurgents will have three-pronged access to Baghdad: from Anbar to the west, Nineveh and Salahuddin to the north, and from Diyala to the northeast.
And Maliki is calling up his Iranian-trained Shiite militias to defend it:
Before the fall of Mosul this week, the activities of both Asaib [Ahl Haq] and Kataeb Hezbollah had been kept out of the open. Politicians and group members acknowledged the militias’ activities in private, but government spokesmen and Asaib and Kataeb Hezbollah publicly denied their involvement in fighting. Now, with Sunni armed groups pushing to break through Baghdad’s western, northern, southern and eastern edges, Asaib and Kataeb Hezbollah are at the tip of the vanguard of informal volunteers. No one bothers to pretend any more that the fighters are not patrolling and battling in Baghdad’s hinterlands.
Amid rumors and allegations of Iranian advisers or units working in Iraq to defend Shiite territories, the likelihood is that any Iranian presence is tied to these groups, which have been nurtured and trained by Iraq’s neighbor for years.
If ISIS fails to capture Baghdad, James Barnes expects the group to fail spectacularly:
ISIS took over Mosul, parts of Kirkuk and then moved south to Tikrit and have been on the march since. Since then, the Kurds in the north have retaken Kirkuk (they did it in a day) and have sworn to defend Iraqi Kurdistan from any incursion. Mosul is within spitting distance of Kurdish forces and they could, frankly, invade and begin retaking it at any time if they chose to. Western Iraq is a desert and if ISIS is routed on its way to Baghdad and tries to retreat back into Syria it will have an enormous problem doing so. They’d have to either go back north whence they came and possibly face Kurdish forces or they’d have to head straight west across the desert where they’d be sitting ducks for Iraqi (or even Iranian) air strikes. This is a classic case of bad strategy on the part of ISIS. They can get in but unless they take the capital of Baghdad then they have no way of getting out and despite what the news is saying, Iraqi Sunnis don’t have the stomach to engage in a protracted civil war. They’re too few in number, no one would support them, and they’re ultimately Iraqis, not heart eating al-Qa’ida affiliates.
(Map by the Long War Journal)
The Dish 