The Washington Post, 9 May 2014
[Excerpts]
Iraq’s acting defense minister looks beleaguered, his face drawn, with deep bags below his eyes from a lack of sleep.
For four months, Sadoun al-Dulaimi has been operating from Anbar, the most dangerous province for U.S. soldiers during the Iraq war and one again riven by conflict.
The army has dispatched 42,000 troops here and this is posing the biggest test for the Iraqi military and the country’s Shiite-led government since the withdrawal of U.S. forces 2 1/2 years ago.
The battle is filled with potential pitfalls. A government failure to regain control in Sunni-dominated Anbar would jeopardize the country’s unity.
But an escalated military offensive could deepen anger among the nations Sunni minority, fanning the flames of sectarian war.
The fight has proved tougher than expected. Hundreds of soldiers have died, and the military is facing mass desertions. The government says it is incapable of stemming the flow of hardened militants, who are often better equipped than Iraqi forces, across the border from Syria.
Even Dulaimi has found himself in the line of fire at his temporary headquarters in one of ousted president Saddam Hussein’s former palaces, now an army compound on the banks of the azure Euphrates River.
The roof of his office sags where a mortar round hit two weeks ago.
Another struck a car outside a few days later. His helicopter has been fired on twice, and once a sniper shot through his window as he slept.
The city of Fallujah, 30 miles east toward Baghdad, remains completely out of government control.
Ramadi, the provincial capital, has largely been subdued, but a steady barrage of artillery thunders out from the main army base in the city, and several neighborhoods have yet to be secured. The flashes of explosions intermittently light up the city’s outskirts.
 Nouri al-Maliki, has been accused of deepening Iraq’s sectarian divide by isolating the country’s minority Sunnis. Iraqi soldiers are often outgunned by the insurgents, who are equipped with advanced weaponry such as shoulder-launched antitank rockets, he said.
The Iraqi army hasn’t seen a challenge of this size and magnitude since 2003, Fleih said.