by Wayne White
Once again American observers are outbidding each other over how serious a threat the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) poses. Recent IS gains in Iraq heightened Washington’s concern, causing President Obama to huddle with coalition defense ministers. In this air of heightened crisis, the option of deploying US combat troops has been revived. Yet this supposed fix (even just talk of it) involves a host of likely problems.
The 19th Century politician, diplomat and writer Don Piatt once said, “A man’s greatness can be measured by his enemies.” If applied to the Islamic State, IS falls short in terms of the ground conflict. The radical Sunni group’s foes consist of the demoralized, ill-led Iraqi Army; Iraq’s sectarian, dysfunctional government; the better, but potentially shaky, Iraqi Kurds; the paltry forces of the rebel Free Syrian Army; and the fierce-fighting but under-armed and ill-supplied Syrian Kurds. Naturally, IS has scored successes against such weak opponents. But that does not make it the irresistible force portrayed by many.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has been virtually useless since replacing the discredited Nouri al-Maliki. Surrounded by much the same hyper-sectarian Shia politicians, Abadi has not made an earnest, good faith effort to weaken IS by wooing away many of its Sunni Arab tribal and military supporters. This is, by far, the most critical factor in Iraq on the ground. Far more pressure from the US and perhaps mediation by regional actors must be considered.
Without a Sunni Arab game change against IS, isolated western Iraqi garrisons in towns and bases have been falling. The al-Asad Airbase complex near the city of Hit may be next. Largely government-held Ramadi remains out of IS hands, but only because surrounding tribes oppose the group. And even with Baghdad at its back, the Iraqi Army’s performance has been marked by repeated failures.
Meanwhile, the Free Syrian Army has received little of the military support for which it has begged for three years. Plagued by inferior weaponry and ammunition shortages, and comprised of a welter of semi-autonomous local militias, it poses little danger to IS.
Though more determined and coherent than the Iraqi Army, Iraqi Kurdish fighters, the Peshmerga, typically advance behind heavy US air support or in relatively weakly held IS areas. Despite a few exceptions, they are generally reluctant to advance very far—and hold ground—much beyond their own borders.
Meanwhile, the US ignored heroic resistance by tougher Syrian Kurds until recently. They represent the only major contingent of highly motivated anti-ISIS boots on the ground. Probably in response to Turkish wishes, the US largely withheld air support for nearly two weeks.
Yet since declaring Kobani a humanitarian disaster on Oct. 14, the US has hammered IS positions at Kobani with waves of airstrikes, after strikes last week proved too few. Intelligence sharing between the US and the defenders of Kobani has made the strikes more effective. Had strikes this powerful been launched two weeks earlier, Kobani itself would not have become a battlefield.
Providing no military assistance whatsoever, Turkey has blocked thousands of Turkish Kurdish reinforcements from reaching Kobani. Fighters and doctors on the scene report numerous border closures and wounded combatants dying just inside Syria awaiting treatment in Turkey. Other fighters from Kobani have been arrested at the border, including some wounded.
Still, all around the Islamic State’s current holdings are countries with powerful militaries capable of dealing serious blows to IS regardless of the group’s fanaticism. Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, and Jordan to the south represent dangerous potential IS enemies if attacked. Just beyond Damascus and northwestern Jordan lies perhaps the most formidable local foe: Israel. Much of Iraq’s Shia south would become a graveyard for IS forces attempting to seize sizeable portions of this hostile area, in part because Iran would not let this area and Shia Islam’s holiest shrines fall.
The Anti-IS Front
Turkish cooperation with NATO against IS would vastly boost anti-IS operations. Air support could be based much closer to targets, Syrian and Iraqi Kurds could receive assistance, and the Islamic State’s smuggling of goods and recruits could be curbed. A Turkish volte-face might also salvage its peace process with the Kurds. Turkey has been holding its support hostage to demands such as coalition airstrikes against the Syrian regime. The coalition must keep pushing back; compliance would dissipate the air war against IS.
Other coalition partners, including NATO states like Germany, have also remained on the sidelines or provided little. This too needs to change to impose further pressure on IS.
If Kobani is an example of solid boots on the ground, Iraqi troops fighting west of Baghdad represent the opposite (despite heightened air support and attacks by US Apache helicopter gunships). In Kobani, Kurds have responded to strikes by attacking to clear IS fighters from some areas lost earlier. Heavier strikes near Baghdad barely shore up wavering defense lines.
Instead of responding to lackluster ground forces by boosting air strikes, it should be made clear that forces willing to fight hard to capitalize on air strikes will receive priority. Otherwise under-motivated forces may do even less, hoping air power would do their jobs for them—a losing proposition.
Is such a policy risky? Yes, but so is pouring in US combat troops in the numbers being discussed. Iraqi forces—with Baghdad at stake—must be forced by circumstance to stand their ground. And if densely populated Shia neighborhoods in Baghdad are threatened, they probably would.
Some have downplayed the impact of airstrikes against IS. They maintain strikes must be complimented by decent ground troops–correct where IS goes for more territory. However, a month of pounding undoubtedly has had an overall impact on IS even if that is not yet evident in some frontline fighting. The air campaign also is a long-term affair, with adjustments, mounting contributions, and accumulated impact. One plus is the Islamic State’s fanaticism, driving it to continue exposing its military assets to airstrikes along frontlines where heavy damage could be inflicted.
Committing US combat troops to battle around Baghdad would signal to Iraqi ground troops that they need not take most of the responsibility for the capital’s defense. Americans concerned that sending combat troops would escalate demand for more (“mission creep”) are correct. Reliance on US troops also would regenerate an unhealthy dependency.
More US advisors instead of line combat troops would be wiser, but competence is not the main problem; Iraqi soldiers must see they have no choice but to fight it out with IS. That goes beyond advice, and some advisors caught up in rapid, haphazard Iraqi retreats could be killed or captured by IS. Although advisors are also valuable in coordinating frontline aerial targeting, Americans would have to be prepared for losses. Some of those might well involve the ritual execution of captured US soldiers—perhaps the biggest risk involved in committing large forces.
]]>US combat troops may be deployed against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) if the strategy announced by President Barack Obama last week fails to make substantial progress against the radical Sunni group, Washington’s top military officer warned here Tuesday.
The statement by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, delivered during testimony before a key Congressional committee, suggested for the first time that the administration may substantially broaden military operations in Iraq beyond air strikes and advising Iraqi and Kurdish forces far from the front lines.
“If we reach the point where I believe our advisers should accompany Iraqi troops on attacks against specific targets, I will recommend that to the president,” Dempsey told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“At this point, his [Obama’s] stated policy is we will not have US ground forces in direct combat,” he said. “But he has told me as well to come back to him on a case-by-case basis.”
Dempsey’s remarks, which came as Congress appeared poised to approve a pending $500 million request to train and equip Syrian rebels committed to fighting ISIS, as well as the government of President Bashar al-Assad, appeared certain to fuel doubts about Obama’s plans, particularly given his promise last week that US forces “will not have a combat mission.”
“We will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq,” he declared in last week’s nationally televised speech in which he also pledged to build an international coalition, including NATO and key regional and Sunni-led Arab states, to fight ISIS in both Iraq and Syria.
While Secretary of State John Kerry has since gathered public endorsements for the administration’s strategy to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS, notably at a meeting of Arab states in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, last week and from a larger group of nations in Paris Sunday, skepticism over the strength and effectiveness of such a coalition appears to have deepened.
Although Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and France appear committed to providing some air support to anti-ISIS operations, several key allies, including Britain, have remained non-committal about their willingness to help with military operations.
Turkey, whose army is the largest and most potent in the region and whose porous borders with ISIS-controlled regions in eastern Syria have been fully exploited by the group, has been particularly disappointing to officials here.
Despite repeated appeals, for example, Ankara has reportedly refused to permit US military aircraft to use its strategically located Incirlik air base for carrying out anything but humanitarian missions in or over Iraq, insisting that any direct involvement in the campaign against ISIS would jeopardise the lives of dozens of Turkish diplomats seized by the group at Ankara’s consulate in Aleppo earlier this year.
Critics of Washington’s strategy are also concerned that Kerry may have reduced the chances for co-operation with another potentially key anti-ISIS ally—Iran—which he explicitly excluded from participation in any international coalition due to its support for Assad and its alleged status as a “state sponsor of terror.”
While Kerry Monday said Washington remained open to “communicating” with Tehran—which, among regional powers, has provided arms and advisers to both Kurdish and Iraqi forces—about its efforts against ISIS, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who earlier this month reportedly authorised limited co-operation over ISIS, ridiculed the notion, insisting that it was Iran who had rebuffed Washington.
But Kerry’s exclusion of Iran from the anti-ISIS coalition, according to experts here, was motivated primarily by threats by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to drop out if Tehran were included—a reflection not only of the ongoing Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the region, especially in the Syrian civil war, but also of the difficulty Washington faces in persuading governments with widely differing interests to unite behind a common cause.
“Leaving Iran out of the collective effort to contain and eventually destroy ISIS, especially after what happened in Amerli [a town whose siege by ISIS was eventually broken by a combination of US airpower and Iranian-backed militias and Iraqi troops], defies logic and sanity and cannot be explained away by anyone in Iran,” noted Farideh Farhi, an Iran specialist at the University of Hawaii.
“It suggests to many [in Iran] that the fear of legitimising Iran’s role in regional security continues to be a driving force in US foreign policy,” she told IPS in an email exchange.
Indeed, the success of Obama’s strategy may well depend less on UA military power than on his ability to reconcile and reassure key regional actors, including Iran.
“To have any hope of success, “America’s do-it-yourself approach needs to be replaced with an effort to facilitate co-operation between the region’s great Muslim powers,” according to Amb. Chas Freeman (ret.), who served as Washington’s chief envoy to Riyadh during the first Gulf War.
“… As long as Saudi Arabia and Iran do not make common cause, any coalition to combat Islamist fanatics will be half-hearted at best and unrooted in the region at worst,” he told IPS.
Despite these difficult diplomatic challenges faced by Obama, most of the skepticism in Washington revolves around his military strategy, particularly its reliance on air power and the absence of effective ground forces that can take and hold territory, especially in predominantly Sunni areas of both western and north-central Iraq and eastern Syria.
While US officials believe that Kurdish peshmerga forces and the Iraqi army—with Iranian-backed Shi’a militias—can, with US and allied air support, roll back most of ISIS’s more-recent gains in Iraq, it will take far more time to wrest control of areas, including cities like Fallujah and Ramadi, which the group has effectively governed for months.
Obama announced last week that he was sending nearly 500 more military personnel to Iraq, bringing the total US presence there to around 1600 troops, most of whom are to serve as trainers and advisers both for the peshmerga and the Iraqi army.
According to Dempsey, however, these troops have not yet been authorised to accompany local forces into combat or even to act as spotters for US aircraft.
As for Syria, Washington plans to train and equip some 5000 members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a fractious coalition of “moderate” fighters who have been increasingly squeezed and marginalised by both pro-government forces and ISIS and who have often allied themselves with other Islamist groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate.
It will take at least eight months, however, before that force can take the field, according to Dempsey and Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel.
Even then, they said, such a force will be unable “to turn the tide” of battle. Dempsey said he hoped that Sunni-led Arab countries would provide special operations forces to support the FSA, although none has yet indicated a willingness to do so.
Hawks, such as Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, have argued that these plans are insufficient to destroy ISIS in either country.
Some neoconservative defence analysts, such as Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, have called for as many as 25,000 US ground troops, including thousands of Special Forces units to work with “moderate” Sunni forces, to be deployed to both countries in order to prevail.
They have also warned against any cooperation with either Iran or Assad in the fight against ISIS.
Paratroopers of the 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade depart Lielvarde Airbase, Latvia, Sept. 8, 2014, at the conclusion of NATO Exercise Steadfast Javelin II.
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