BAGHDAD — Baghdad has announced its next battle against Daesh (the so-called IS) group is retaking Anbar province, but analysts say entrenched militants and limited Iraqi forces put a full reconquest out of reach for now.



Anbar is by far Iraq’s largest province, shares a border with militant-held territory in Syria and has historically been a difficult area to control.



Iraqi security forces and allied paramilitaries are on a high after retaking most of Salaheddin province and its capital Tikrit in recent weeks, but those victories will not be easy to replicate.



“Anbar differs from Tikrit and Salaheddin more broadly because IS is much more entrenched there,” said Kirk Sowell, the publisher of the Inside Iraqi Politics newsletter.



Militants had a presence in Anbar long before the June 2014 offensive that saw the government lose around a third of the country to Daesh.



“This will have to be a limited-goals campaign to be successful,” Sowell said.



After recapturing Tikrit, some expected government and allied forces to continue their push toward Mosul, which is Iraq’s second city and the main hub of Daesh.



But Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi announced on April 8 that “our next stand and battle will be here in the land of Anbar to completely liberate it.”



Anbar is a vast arid expanse traversed by the Euphrates River, stretching east from the Baghdad governorate to the western borders with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria.



Its capital is the city of Ramadi, much of which is under IS control, while the militants hold all of the city of Fallujah, which lies between it and Baghdad.



Fighting has been relentless in the province in recent months but government forces have struggled to make major advances.



It took 10,000 US Marines to seize Fallujah from insurgents a decade ago and analysts agreed that retaking it now would be too big an ask for Iraqi forces.



“Anbar, and especially Fallujah, is like Asterix’s village,” said Victoria Fontan, a professor at American University Duhok Kurdistan, referring to an unconquerable town in the French comic book series.



The province is packed with experienced fighters and while some Sunni tribes have allied with the government, others are fighting alongside Daesh or sitting on the fence.



Local knowledge is seen as key to clawing back territory along the fertile strip lining the Euphrates, where Daesh has inflicted severe military setbacks to the police and army since last year.



“The Anbar operation is likely to be a Ramadi operation,” said Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.



“The key to controlling Ramadi is to control the Euphrates Valley palm groves and farmlands around the city. This is what the Iraqi security forces have consistently failed to do for over a year now,” he said.



Fighting is ongoing on Anbar’s eastern edge, where Iraqi regular forces on Tuesday launched their latest attempt to retake the Garma area, a 40-minute drive from Baghdad.



A military official from one of the countries in the US-led coalition battling Daesh said Iraqi forces were likely to stick to very specific objectives in a province where thousands of government fighters have perished since 2014. — AFP