Kurdish Peshmerga forces launch a missile during an operation near Mosul, Iraq, on Aug. 9, 2014.
The U.S. is pursuing a four-pronged strategy to thwart Islamic State extremists in Iraq
and avert a collapse of the oil-rich nation, while plans to do more
depend on the outcome of the leadership struggle in Baghdad.
The
steps to deal with the immediate crisis include some that have been
made public, such as limited airstrikes and sending arms to the Kurds,
and some that haven’t, such as providing battlefield intelligence to
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and pressing Sunni Arab nations to support
the fight against the insurgents, according to two U.S. officials who
spoke on the condition of anonymity because elements of the evolving
approach are classified.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said
yesterday that the U.S. is prepared to do more to fight the Islamic
State, also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, if Iraqi
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki steps down and a new government is formed
that includes Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.
“The reason President Obama has been so clear about wanting to
get the government formation before beginning to tackle ISIL in the most
significant way -- excepting the kind of emergency circumstances that
have arisen -- is because if you don’t have a government that is
inclusive and that works, nothing else will work, plain and simply,”
Kerry said during a visit to Australia.
Soldiers with the Kurdish peshmerga walk at an outpost on the edges of the contested... Read More
‘Real Test’
A post-Maliki government would
“present the Obama administration with a real test of its strategy,”
said Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel who served in Iraq. “How much
further is the president willing to go?”
While
Mansoor, a former executive officer to Army General David Petraeus,
said he agrees “so far with the administration’s measured approach,” he
added that more will be needed to defeat the Islamic State.
The
options would include more extensive airstrikes in Iraq as well as
extending them into neighboring Syria to deny militants a safe haven,
the deployment of attack helicopters and even the introduction of as
many as 10,000 U.S. personnel on the ground, Mansoor said in a phone
interview.
Still, President Barack Obama
will probably “stick with his no-troops-on-the-ground pledge,” said
Mansoor, who was a brigade commander in Baghdad in 2003 to 2004 and is
now a professor of military history at the Ohio State University in
Columbus.
Political Dilemma
The dilemma Obama faces is
as complicated politically as it is militarily, the U.S. officials
said. While some American defense officials say that even 10,000 U.S.
troops wouldn’t be enough to uproot Islamic State militants, there’s
little public or political support in this congressional election year
for sending any American combat forces back to Iraq.
Photographer: Ahmad al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images
Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters take position as they monitor the area from their... Read More
Even the current U.S. air campaign requires congressional authorization, Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia,
chairman of the Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Near East, said
in a statement yesterday. Republican Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called on Obama to articulate a “comprehensive strategy.”
U.S.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced yesterday that 130 additional
American military advisers have arrived in Erbil in northern Iraq to
help assess conditions amid a humanitarian crisis. The personnel are
Marines and special-operations forces.
“This is not a combat boots-on-the-ground operation,” Hagel said in addressing troops at Camp Pendleton in San Diego.
The
new advisers are in addition to about 700 U.S. military personnel
already in Iraq for embassy security, to serve as advisers to the Iraq
military and to staff joint operations centers in Baghdad and Erbil,
according to the Pentagon.
Special-Operations Units
Even
though Obama has ruled out ground combat troops, “there may be
opportunities to insert special-operations units that can play havoc”
with militant forces, said Frederic Hof, a former special adviser on Syria at the State Department who’s now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington.
U.S.
airpower on its own can’t defeat the Islamic State, he said, so “the
heavy lifting militarily has to be borne by the Iraqi army.”
The
current U.S. airstrikes are having only a “temporary effect” on the
extremists, U.S. Lieutenant General William Mayville, director of
operations for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters at the
Pentagon on Aug. 11. The strikes haven’t been extensive enough to
contain them or reduce their capabilities, he said.
“The history
of using limited airpower in wars like this one shows that a few
pinpricks from the sky rarely make a difference on the ground,” Michael
O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, wrote yesterday on the Foreign Affairs website.
Commando Teams
The
U.S. may need to set up several dozen commando teams -- requiring 1,000
to 5,000 special-operations troops -- to strike “hard, fast, and early”
so the enemy doesn’t have time to adjust, he said. Alternatively, the
U.S. might deploy as many as 100 security assistance teams of 10 to 20
U.S. soldiers each to embed at the small-unit level with Iraqi forces
for as long as two years, he wrote.
“None of this will be
appealing to the U.S. public, the Congress, or Obama,” he wrote, adding
that the “intolerable” alternative is for the Islamic State to build the
caliphate it envisions in Iraq and beyond.
Maliki, who came to
power eight years ago with U.S. backing, is locked in a power struggle
with his nominated successor, Parliament Deputy Speaker Haidar al-Abadi,
a rival Shiite politician from Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party. Maliki has
lost the support of his two key foreign backers, the U.S. and Iran.
Creating Opening
Obama
erred by backing Maliki too long and creating an opening for Sunni
militants to exploit, said Ali Khedery, a former U.S. adviser in Iraq
who’s now chairman and chief executive of Dubai-based Dragoman Partners,
a strategic consulting firm on the Middle East.
While
supporting the current approach of replacing Maliki with an inclusive
government, Khedery said that a major U.S. military offensive would be a
mistake -- a view shared by some Obama administration officials.
“The
worst thing we could do is more military action and boots on the
ground,” he said. “You need to strengthen and support regional allies.
Only Muslims, and particularly Sunni Muslims, can clamp down and
strangle and isolate” the Islamic State militants.
Four Prongs
First
in the four-pronged U.S. strategy now under way is the campaign of
airstrikes on militants’ armed vehicles and mortar positions to protect
Erbil, where there are Americans, and to help save Yezidi civilians
trapped on a mountain.
Second, the CIA and other intelligence
agencies are providing some arms, advice and information directly to
Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, said the two officials who spoke on
condition of anonymity. This includes what one of the officials
described as timely reports on the position, movements and size of
Islamic State forces, aimed particularly at the defense of Erbil, seat
of the Kurdish Regional Government and home to a U.S. consulate.
Third,
U.S. defense and intelligence agencies are helping to coordinate
support for the Kurds from other Sunni states, including Turkey, Jordan
and Persian Gulf nations. It’s vital that Sunni powers be prominent to
discredit the Islamic State as a legitimate protector of Sunni Muslims,
both officials said.
Fourth, the U.S. is continuing the effort
to press Iraqi political leaders to replace Maliki to clear the way for
new American military aid and intelligence support.
Sunni Awakening
There’s
debate among Obama’s advisers on an additional step: reaching out to
some Sunni tribal leaders in a bid to recreate the 2006-2007 Awakening,
when the U.S. paid and armed some Sunni tribesmen to fight al-Qaeda in
Mesopotamia, a predecessor of the Islamic State.
“We are
convinced that with a unified effort by Iraqis, and particularly if
there is a return to the kind of localized efforts that existed in the
Sons of Anbar or the Iraqi Anbar Awakening, as it’s referred to, that
there will be plenty of opportunity here for a pushback against ISIL
forces, which is why the restoration of a unified, inclusive government
is so critical as a starting point,” Kerry said.
A U.S. military
official said Kerry’s comments didn’t reflect a consensus, and that
military planners oppose the effort to restart the Sunni Awakening. The
issue has been a matter of dispute between the Pentagon and State
Department, according to the official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity to discuss internal discussions.
Low Profile
Some
administration officials involved with Iraq policy said that there are
multiple reasons why the U.S. should act cautiously and keep a low
profile.
A major American military operation against the Islamic
State would create a backlash in the Sunni world that would draw more
militants to the Islamic State, said the officials who asked not to be
identified discussing internal policy debate. It also could provoke the
group and others to increase efforts to attack U.S. and allied
interests.
The Islamic State, which controls parts of Iraq and
Syria, can be stopped only by a coalition of Sunni states, themselves
threatened by the group’s vision of a transnational caliphate, said one
of the officials.
To contact the reporters on this story: Terry Atlas in Washington at tatlas@bloomberg.net; John Walcott in Washington at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net; David Lerman in Washington at dlerman1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net Larry Liebert
end quote from: U.S. Officials Weigh Next Moves to Defeat Iraq Extremists
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