Obama’s anti-IS Strategy Emerges, Questions Remain

NEW YORK– Last month, US President Barack Obama was blasted for saying he lacked a strategy to fight Islamic State (IS) militants. At this week’s NATO summit in Wales, he announced a coalition of 10 allies to fight the jihadists in Iraq and Syria but, according to analysts, big tactical questions remain unanswered.

Obama unveiled a “core coalition” of the US, Britain, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Turkey to tackle the black-clothed extremists on Friday at a NATO leaders’ summit that was more focussed on Russian acts in Ukraine than the IS holy blitzkrieg across the Middle East.

President Obama has ruled out the use of US ground troops, but said the IS – which is also known as ISIS and ISIL – could be repelled and defeated through a combination of military, intelligence, law enforcement and diplomatic means. 

“It’s interesting that the president … wants to defeat the Islamic State, not contain it. But to defeat ISIS, the Islamic State, will require a substantial sustained military effort well into 2015, if not beyond,” Nick Burns, a Harvard University political scientist, told Rudaw.  

The task of “core coalition” members is not yet clear, he added. “Will the European allies now step up with concrete support, meaning will they contribute their own air assets, aircraft, and personnel into the theatre to combat ISIS?” 

Washington has launched some 130 air strikes against IS targets since August to help Iraqi and Kurdish forces, helping dislodge fighters from peripheral towns of a self-declared caliphate that encompasses about half of Iraq and Syria and some six million people.

“It’s going to be Americans flying the planes. But ultimately, who will the US partner with on the ground?” Joshua Landis, a scholar at Oklahoma University, told Rudaw. “We’ve seen the US partner with the Peshmerga and the Iraqi army. In Syria, it’s much more complicated, but even in Iraq, how far do the Kurds want to go? They don’t want to extend themselves and rule over Sunni areas.”

Global anti-IS efforts gained momentum following the online release of videos showing an apparently British IS militiamen beheading the American journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley as well as gruesome executions of captured Kurdish troops.

Any assault on IS will be complicated by Middle East politics. Iraq’s Shia-dominated government in Baghdad has marginalised Kurds in the north and the western region’s Sunnis – from which IS has been able to rally much support.

Attacking IS in Syria is even tougher for the White House, amid fears that it would help Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who is accused of atrocities against civilians during a three-and-a-half year uprising against his rule.

The Involvement of Sunni Muslim states is seen as vital to avoid stoking fears of a Christian-Shiite alliance of NATO members and Shia-run Baghdad versus the Sunni peoples of Iraq and Syria, who resent their rule from Damascus and Baghdad.

“Will the Sunni Arab states step forward and can it not just be a NATO coalition of NATO members … but can Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar and other states also participate militarily as well as politically in the coalition?,” Burns told Rudaw.

“Will Turkey, a NATO member, agree to take measures to close its border to the introduction of Islamic State-controlled oil – that’s being sold both openly and on the Turkish market – but also in the black market? And that would be an important way to cut off ISIS’s source of financing.”

An already-troublesome situation was worsened on Friday, with revelations from the BBC that Iran’s Supreme Leader has authorised his top commander to co-ordinate military operations with the US – as well as Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

“Many policymakers, including former ambassadors, want to produce strategies that include Iran. That has elicited a backlash by more conservative policymakers who see cooperation with Iran as an anathema. There’s a major arm-wrestling match going on in Washington,” said Landis.

“Intellectually, without Saudi Arabia and Iran coming to some agreement, there’s unlikely to be a solution to this problem – and the problem of growing sectarianism. This produces grave political difficulties in Washington, where Iran has been demonised for so long.”

Obama met with the leaders of Turkey and Saudi Arabia about IS at the NATO summit. US diplomats will ramp up anti-IS efforts ahead of this month's UN General Assembly and a September 25 UN Security Council meeting on stopping would-be jihadists from travelling to Iraq, Syria and other hotspots.