This town has resisted Islamic State for 18

months. But food is running low.

Fa
milies in Haditha receive sacks of flour in a food aid delivery July 16. Prices of food and
gasoline have skyrocketed in the town after supply routes were cut off. (Loveday
Morris/The Washington

By Loveday Morris-July 21
HADITHA, Iraq One by one, the cities around this Iraqi town have fallen. Fallujah.
Ramadi. The walled community of Hit.
Islamic State fighters have slaughtered thousands of people as they have tightened
their grip on Iraqs western province of Anbar. But Haditha has remained an outpost of
resistance.
Its local tribes and the beleaguered Iraqi army have fought doggedly in the face of
persistent attacks. Perhaps even more important, the U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi
government have been determined to prevent its large hydroelectric dam from falling
to the insurgents.
The people of Haditha, though, are struggling to survive in a town largely cut off from

the outside world. Meanwhile, the Islamic State has singled it out as its next target.
Its like were not living in Iraq, said one resident, Israa Mohammed, 38, as she
waited for a rare delivery of food aid last week. Theres no way in or out. Its like we
are an island in the desert.

The first group of reporters to gain access to Haditha in more

than a year found the besieged city in desperate straits. With gasoline selling for more
than quadruple the national price, bicycles are a more common sight than cars on its
winding streets. Doctors have fled, and medicines are hard to come by. Electricity
flickers on for just three hours a day.
For the Islamic State, Haditha is a valuable prize, with its nearly six-mile-long dam,
Iraqs second-biggest producer of hydroelectric power. In its latest audio message, the
extremist group urged Sunni tribesmen here to surrender, warning that the militants
could enter at any moment.
For the citys defenders, the pressure is intense. At the army command center at the
base of the dam, Maj. Gen. Ali Daboun, the head of operations, described the most
recent assault by Islamic State forces, early this month. His voice cracked with
emotion as he recalled how the group unleashed 37 suicide car bombs in the area
during the offensive.
All the sectors in the country have a hard job, but we have an exceptionally hard job,
he said.
People are suffering a lot
Haditha lies deep in the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar, about 150miles west of
Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. Between the two cities sits a string of Islamic State

conquests: the provincial capital, Ramadi, and the extremist groups bastion, Fallujah.
Hit, the nearest city, fell 10 months ago, cutting Hadithas supply lines from
government-held areas.
To the west of Haditha, the desert stretches toward the Syrian border, now almost
entirely under the control of the militant group.
[Fall of Ramadi raises new questions about U.S. strategy in Iraq]

Young boys in Haditha with food

delivered by local charities on July 16. (Loveday Morris/The Washington Post)
Mohammed, displaced from Fallujah a year and a half ago, said she and her extended
family of 23 have been trying to leave Haditha for three months.
But usually the only way out is on military flights from the nearby Ayn al-Asad Air
Base the towns lifeline and spaces on the planes are hard to come by. A group
of journalists was granted access with an aid mission last week organized by Prime
Minister Haider al-Abadis office.
About 96,000 people remain in Haditha, according to its mayor, Abdelhakim alJughaifi.
The people are suffering a lot because of the siege, he said. Then also Daesh are
attacking all the time, he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.
In April and May, the price of a 50-kilogram sack of flour reached 1million dinars, or
about $840. Thats the equivalent of about $38 for a five-pound bag, around 50 times
what it costs in Baghdad and roughly 10 times the price in the United States.
Local officials say prices have dropped recently as a few aid convoys have managed
to reach Haditha. They are escorted by helicopter for the riskiest part of the route,
which runs past Islamic State-held towns.
Residents complain, though, that when aid arrives escorted by tribal fighters or the
army, it does not reach them and is instead distributed to certain local tribes or sold on
the black market.
From time to time, supplies arrive, and we dont get anything, said 50-year-old Samir

Mishal, who had picked up a 50-kilo (110-pound) sack of flour.

For that reason, aid workers and Iraqi officials traveled along with a convoy bringing
21tons of food to the town last week.
We came here today, despite all the risks, because we wanted to see it go directly to
the families, said Mustafa al-Obaidi, a 26-year-old working with Iraqi Volunteers, a
charity.
Hundreds of men and women queued to receive the flour, rice, tomato paste and oil
Thursday, a day so hot that it had been declared a national holiday, with temperatures
soaring above 120degrees.
They need food supplies; they need medicine. But because of the siege, this is the
first time weve reached the city, said Haider Majeed, an official with the prime
ministers office.
Withstanding attacks
The towns center has largely been protected from the fighting. But the 25-mile road
from Ayn al-Asad to Haditha has been battered. It winds through Baghdadi, a village
where pro-government forces expelled Islamic State fighters this spring. There, the
police station is charred, and bridges are bombed out.
After government forces lost Ramadi in May, attacks on Haditha sharply increased,
said Ibrahim al-Jughaifi, a spokesman for Hadithas tribal fighters (and not a close
relative of the mayor). However, assaults have dropped off recently as the Islamic
State appears to be preoccupied with defending Ramadi from a counterattack.
Jughaifis tribe has been leading the fight here, but its members are under no illusions
as to why theyve managed to withstand the Islamic State assaults.
The U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi military have provided critical assistance because
of the towns strategic dam and its vicinity to Ayn al-Asad, where more than 300 U.S.
Marines are based on a training mission.
Everyone agrees that there are two things that have helped us, Jughaifi said. The
existence of Haditha dam and Ayn al-Asad base.
The dam is so important that the U.S. government expanded its air campaignagainst
the Islamic State in September to prevent it from falling into the militants hands. Until
then, the airstrikes in Iraq had been limited to areas near Sinjar mountain and the
Kurdish region in the north.
The Islamic State, which is struggling to provide basic services in the areas it controls,
wants to take over the dam to boost electricity supplies to its caliphate.
Unlike in some other areas of the country, the U.S.-led coalition has shown
seriousness about protecting Haditha, Jughaifi said. However, he said, they appear
only when the battle is very hard and the danger is very close to us.
During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. Army Rangers were dropped into Haditha and

seized the dam eight days before the fall of Baghdad. If it was breached, floods would
wreak havoc on villages and farmland for hundreds of miles.
But the U.S. military is also remembered here for another reason. In November
2005, Marines killed at least 24 Iraqis in the town, including women and children,
allegedly in revenge after one of their colleagues was killed by a roadside bomb. None
of the accused served jail time, with only one convicted on a count of negligent
dereliction of duty.
The U.S. military has recently overseen training for about 750 tribal fighters at Ayn alAsad, though Jughaifi complains that promised ammunition and equipment from the
Iraqi government have not materialized so the fighters are largely limited to
defensive operations.
We have been forgotten, said Awad Khalaf, a local police officer. But weve agreed
to all fight together until we die.
Indeed, despite the hardships, many people in the town say they do not want to leave.
But even if we wanted to, theres no way, said Ahmed Khalaf, a 35-year-old tribal
fighter, as he queued for a bag of flour.
Mustafa Salim contributed to this report.
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Islamic State appears to be fraying from within
What a year of Islamic State terror looks like

Loveday Morris is a Beirut-based correspondent for The Post.

She has previously covered the Middle East for The National, based in Abu Dhabi, and
for the Independent, based in London and Beirut.

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