The call by Sabah al-Karhout, the president of Anbar's provincial council, will test the nerve of officials in the Iraqi and American capitals. It comes as a rash of  suicide bombings in Baghdad late on Saturday killed more than 50 people and wounded nearly 100, mostly in Shiite districts of the city.

Set beside the ongoing failure of US-led airstrikes to turn the tide in the battle for Kobane, a small Kurdish community in the north of neighbouring Syria, and desperate fighting in the oil refinery town of Baiji, north of Baghdad, Mr Karhout's appeal will leave many in the region and beyond wondering how the US and its allies intend to save an entire country, when seemingly they can't save a single town.

Similarly, a stubborn refusal by Turkey, a member of NATO and the Obama coalition, to send its columns just a few kilometres over its southern border to help punch-drunk Kurdish forces in Kobane will raise questions about the coalition's capacity to agree and to act on what appears to be obvious.

Kobane is a gut-wrenching human story, with the world's media training their cameras from Turkey on pillars of smoke rising over the Syrian town as coalition missiles seek out Islamic State positions and refugees straggle over the border.

But the plight of the town may have served as a calculated distraction as IS set about locking in another surprise strategic objective – control of Iraq's Anbar province, which sprawls all the way from the Jordanian border to the fringe suburbs of western Baghdad.

Amidst reports that IS is on the verge of capturing Abu Ghraib, a 20-minute drive west of the capital, the jihadist force has spent the last 10 days mopping up in a province that constitutes a quarter of the country's land area – it now has Hit and Kubaisa on top of other centres which it consolidated despite coalition air strikes and, according to Mr Karhout, has as many as 10,000 fighters in the province.

It also appears set to make a clean sweep by taking the provincial capital, Ramadi. On Saturday, an unnamed US official was quoted: "I think it's fragile [in Ramadi] now – [Iraqi government forces] are being resupplied and they are holding their own, but it's tough and challenging."

Assessing Islamic State's march across Anbar, Iraq analyst Joel Wing observes on his Musings on Iraq blog: "They successfully took Camp Saqlawiya outside of Fallujah, followed by the seizure of Hit, Kubaisa, Muhammadawi, and then Ramadi itself . . . That leaves only Haditha, and two military bases still under government control.

"This was a huge victory for IS, as it gives the insurgents virtual control over Anbar and poses a serious threat to western Baghdad."

A force of 10,000 would have a hard time taking a city like Baghdad, with a population of almost four million and security forces reportedly numbering 60,000.

But with a significant Sunni population in the city, some of whom could be relied on to provide cover, Anbar would be useful territory for an IS campaign of destabilisation – suicide bombings, ambushes and the like – in a city in which locals wait with bated breath for an inspiring display of courage or bravery by their civilian and military leadership.

And if they look beyond Baghdad for a sense of security – to Washington or, dare one say it, Canberra – they will take little comfort from weekend observations on the fate of the Syrian Kurds in Kobane by Pentagon spokesman Rear-Admiral John Kirby.

Urging the need for a long-term view, he conceded that air strikes alone might not save Kobane.

"People need to understand we need a little strategic patience here," he told CNN. "This group is not going to go away tomorrow, and Kobane may fall. We can't predict whether it will or it won't.

"There will be other towns that they will threaten, and there will be other towns that they will take. It is going to take a little bit of time."

That's all well and good for the admiral in his Pentagon bunker. But ordinary Iraqis, who worry that the guy coming down the road might want to lop off their heads, are not likely to be exemplars of strategic patience.