Army Col. Steve Warren, the top spokesman for the counter-ISIS coalition in Baghdad, said “wholesale defections, sparsely manned checkpoints and elite foreign fighters pressed into mundane duty indicate that the U.S.-led campaign and advances by Kurdish forces are eroding the forces of the ISIS in Iraq, ” USA Today reported. “In terms of forcing ISIS to adapt to a less permissive environment it’s probably been a D-“. The Kurds have been the strongest American partners in the fight against IS, battling – often with significant success – as a U.S.-allied ground force against IS.
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In response to those spasms of wanton killing, the United Nations Security Council has approved a resolution urging countries around the world to take “all necessary measures” to prevent terrorist acts by the Islamic State and similar groups. “Without them, most ISIS-produced oil would have remained going between Iraq, Syria and Turkey”, the industry official added. Since last September, some members of the US-led coalition have also been pounding purported Daesh positions inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a United Nations mandate.
“I think that while ISIS is a long-term problem for us, we have near-term issues associated with it”.
When news emerged that the USA had shared intelligence with France in the wake of the Paris attacks, giving the French military 20 ISIS-related targets to strike, some observers expressed surprise that the US hadn’t eliminated those targets itself.
“What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be when the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our children”, Obama declared at the White House Tuesday, with French President François Hollande at his side. As new information comes to light, some targets are prioritized over others.
The next question is what will the US and its allies do in Syria and Iraq after a clear-wave bombing of ISIS territories. Camera crews fan out across the caliphate every day, their ubiquitous presence distorting the events they purportedly document. But the Kurdish Peshmerga are the most effective boots on the ground versus ISIS.
“It’s smoke and mirrors and that is the dirty little secret”, said Derek Harvey, one of Obama’s senior former intelligence officials, a Middle East specialist, who said he resigned from his job in frustration at the administration’s handling of the conflict.
The U.S. military agrees. “Airstrikes alone won’t defeat them”.
Those social explosives were detonated by the upheaval unleashed by the USA war in Iraq and the civil war in Syria.
“I think we need to look at what they are trying to accomplish”. There are many reasons for that, but perhaps the most important one is that in Iraq the USA has legitimate partners on the ground that it can support from the sky. The Shiites have the backing of Iran and, therefore, are regarded with suspicion when they enter traditional Sunni territory.
In Syria, Sunnis were sidelined even earlier, with the rise in 1971 of Hafez Assad, father of current dictator Bashar Assad, who, under the cloak of Syria’s own Baathist party instituted de facto rule by his extended family, all Alawites (an offshoot of Shiite Islam). Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, the chief of Central Command who is overseeing military operations in the Middle East, said “the campaign is inflicting maximum pain on the enemy”.
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I hear pundits criticize President Barack Obama for either having no strategy or the wrong strategy in fighting the Islamic State.
