Security
The rural areas located north of the capital and in Kirkuk Governorate are witnessing remarkable field developments that have brought back to the forefront concerns associated with the movements of extremist groups, as Iraqi officials warned of the possibility of ISIS resuming its terrorist activities following a series of coordinated attacks targeting military and security units, resulting in a number of casualties between martyrs and wounded, which prompted local authorities to approve strict measures including the imposition of a curfew in the villages covered by those events to control the security situation. In field details, the second battalion belonging to the 61st Brigade of the Popular Mobilization Forces was subjected, late Tuesday evening, to a violent armed attack in the village of Al-Barhliyah - Al-Dandish, located within the Hawija district in the southwestern part of the governorate, where the attack began with a precise targeting by a sniper who targeted a thermal camera fixed at a military site, leading to its complete outage from service, prompting security forces to immediately launch extensive combing operations and intensive tracking in the vicinity of the village and adjacent areas in search of the perpetrators. This attack came just one day after another bloody incident represented by the 9th Brigade of the Federal Police being subjected to an attack in the same village, which resulted in the death of one person and the injury of four others and the destruction of a number of thermal cameras at the site. The Federal Police Forces Command mourned one of its members, Commissioner Bakr Majid Muhammad, who died while heroically confronting a group of ISIS elements who tried to storm his guard post in the Al-Barhliyah area located north of Al-Riyadh sub-district in Hawija within the sector of the third battalion, 9th brigade, 3rd division of the Federal Police. In the wake of these rapid developments, the Federal Police Command decided to impose a comprehensive curfew in the Hawija district and its affiliated villages in Kirkuk Governorate, starting daily from six in the evening until eight in the morning. The measures included a complete ban on movement, intensification of field monitoring on owners of motorcycles and cars, as well as tightening restrictions on cargo motorcycles and preventing their passage throughout the curfew period except for extreme necessity and with prior official approvals. The Federal Police Command called on all residents to fully abide by the instructions and positive cooperation with the security forces to preserve the security and safety of the region, warning that violating those directives will subject the perpetrators to strict legal accountability. Procedures were also tightened in the farms and villages near the deployment points of the Federal Police, and the movement of farmers whose lands are located near those military sites was organized for purely security reasons. For his part, the head of the Security and Defense Committee in the Kirkuk Provincial Council, Ahmed Ramzi Kوبرلو (Kobrlo), confirmed that the recent attack clearly emphasizes the continued danger of sleeper cells, calling for the necessity of intensifying intelligence efforts and security operations to prevent the recurrence of such attacks, and stressing the importance of not giving those cells any opportunity to reorganize their ranks or exploit remote areas to carry out attacks targeting forces and civilians, while emphasizing the continuation of coordination and exchange of information between various security devices. In the same context, ISIS announced last Monday its responsibility for the attack that caused the death of a policeman and the injury of others southwest of the city of Kirkuk, which is the first attack announced by the organization against security forces since the completion of the US forces' withdrawal from Iraq on September 30 and the end of their military mission in the country. Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi had called, on the day of the withdrawal, for permanent vigilance, raising the level of coordination between security agencies, updating plans and databases, and relying on modern technological means to preserve stability. Regarding the assessment of the current threat magnitude, security expert Sarmad Al-Bayati explained that what remains of ISIS can pose a limited danger to military units in some areas given its possession of weapons and explosive belts, but it no longer poses a real danger to national security, considering that Hawija attacks remain within the scope of limited sleeper cell capabilities, and suggesting they will be politically invested in the ongoing debate over the US withdrawal and the factions' disarmament file. In turn, security expert Mukhlaz Hazam pointed out that the organization no longer poses a widespread threat heralding the repetition of the 2014 scenario, indicating that the capability of its militants currently translates to moving scattered detachments that forces work to restrict through preemptive operations, considering that the timing of the attacks with the US withdrawal represents an attempt to prove existence, while political science professor Abbas Abboud saw that the current intelligence capabilities differ from previous years and limit the expansion of the organization's activity, adding that the danger may also come from other terrorist groups used by parties to achieve specific goals.
