The WSJ reports,"Camp Speicher, the headquarters for U.S. forces in northern Iraq during the 2003 invasion and subsequent war, has become a focal point in the fight between Iraqi forces and Islamist militants in the country's north. The battle for the former American base holds significance both because of its strategic location and in the propaganda war between the two sides.
Militants from the extremist group that calls itself Islamic State seized Camp Speicher—now an Iraqi air force and military base—shortly after taking control of Tikrit on June 11. Fighting flared on and off around it until government forces pushed militants out earlier this month in a major ground and air campaign. Failing to keep full control of the camp, some 37 miles northwest of Tikrit, would deprive Iraqi forces and allied militias of a strategic staging ground, local officials and military analysts say.
It would render nearly impossible Iraqi troops' weekslong effort to retake Tikrit, the provincial capital of Salahuddin, and to check the insurgents' advance toward Baghdad. Ahmed Abdulla al-Jubouri, governor of the province, called the former U.S. base "the basic axis to recapture Tikrit."
In recent days, both sides have claimed victory at Speicher, a base named after a U.S. Navy pilot shot down over Iraq during the first Gulf War. On Friday, an Islamic State statement posted online said 12 suicide bombers penetrated the base and fighters took over the airfield. The militants, who formerly called themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, claimed they burned several aircraft and helicopters, destroyed the electronics and communications systems and killed dozens of army soldiers in the operation.
Government officials denied the militants' claims over the weekend, saying they repelled two incursions on Thursday and Friday and continued to hold the militants back on Saturday. On Sunday, state-run television aired footage of an army victory tour through the base. A news report showed corpses and body parts strewed in the desert that a correspondent identified as the remains of the foreign jihadist suicide bombers attempting the incursions.
Two Iraqi officials, including a military official on the base, reached by telephone said elite counterterrorism forces backed by Shiite militiamen had secured the base in the wake of the Islamic State attack on Friday.
Since then, militants have intermittently fired on the base's surveillance towers from their positions surrounding it, the official at the base said. But no major assault has taken place since Friday, signaling the special forces have been—at least for 48 hours—successful in their continuing attempts to repel the incursions.
The counterattacks have also proved an important public-relations exercise for an army struggling badly to keep militants from advancing, despite the enlisting of thousands of volunteer Shiite fighters, hundreds of which have joined troops at Camp Speicher, according to local officials.
"Camp Speicher is safe. It is unreachable to the insurgents," said a special-operations brigade leader, identified as Staff General Karim, to Al-Iraqiya TV. He said the suicide bombers were only able to penetrate the base because its watchtowers were so far apart and visibility was made worse on an especially dusty Friday night. "We hope we will be taking new measures in the coming days to further secure the base," he said.
The news broadcast also showed soldiers firing into the air and declaring victory at the base, as a reporter narrated: "They are killing terrorists and takfiris," using the word for radical Islamists. "The terrorists are terrified here at Speicher, and all over Salahuddin."
For the government, the base is an island of control in a sea of territory captured by Sunni insurgents, allowing government forces refueling, resupply and rest in an area that is otherwise totally under the militants' control. The base lies to the west of the main road connecting Tikrit to Beiji, home to Iraq's largest oil refinery, and to Mosul, which fell to the Islamic State last month.
Government troops were successful in beating the group out of the base last week partly due to an aerial bombing campaign that left the militants walking for hours in the dark—rather than risk detection and bombing—to mount their attacks.
The insurgents' push into the base, once home to American fast-food chains and other amenities for U.S. troops in the war, was a sophisticated operation, according to accounts by local officials.
Wanas al-Jabara, a tribal sheik from the province who fought al Qaeda in Iraq after the war, said the attack was "the fiercest one since they declared what they call the Caliphate, the Islamic State."
The insurgents walked dozens of miles in the desert before breaking into Speicher from Tower Number 5 at around dawn, he said. At least one suicide bomber blew himself up near a runway, burning one helicopter and damaging two others".
