Carter countered Wednesday that the Pentagon would offer more support in Ramadi, including attack helicopters and US advisers to accompany ground troops, if required and requested by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
Advertisement
Despite this depletion of Islamic State forces, USA officials are reluctant to predict how long it will take to reclaim the city, which is the capital of Anbar province and a key to the Iraqi government’s hopes of restoring its borders.
Iraq’s military seized a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city center and raised the Iraqi flag over a facility that once housed an Iraqi military operations center before it fell to the Islamic State in May.
“Like stepping up the number of coalition air sorties, however, it also risks being one more step in a process of strategic incrementalism where the Obama administration reacts to every new problem with ISIS by making a limited increase in military force that is too little and too late”, Cordesman wrote recently, using another acronym for the Islamic State, which has been branded a terrorist group by the US government.
The announcement comes after Iraqi forces backed by US-led coalition strikes reclaimed Al-Tameem, the south-western side of the city, on 8 December this month. They supported President George W. Bush’s 2008 agreement with the Iraqi government that US forces be withdrawn by the end of 2011.
U.S. forces have been involved in airstrikes and training assistance in the region for 16 months without a new military force authorization for the mission, which Obama called for Congress to provide in the televised address. In Syria, U.S. warplanes have destroyed oil tankers and infrastructure that ISIL relies on to finance its attacks. There, some residents say, they’re locked inside a “sealed casket”. “From the start, our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them”.
The battle to retake the city however continues.
The force consists of around 500 fighters, a military source said. “But there’s still no ground force that is both willing and able to retake Raqqa, nor is there a realistic prospect of one emerging soon”, McCain said.
Some private analysts are skeptical that adding 100 more special operations troops in Iraq will make a significant difference.
The exchange encapsulated a morning of tough grilling by members of the committee as Selva and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter defended the argument Obama made Sunday: the ISIS strategy is working, so give it time. Iraq’s Joint Military Command reported on Tuesday that dozens of ISIS fighters were killed and 60% of the city had been retaken with the aid of US airstrikes.
For example, in recent days Iraqi tanks were used alongside infantry troops to fire on militant positions in the Tamim neighborhood to provide cover for other Iraqi troops building a berm along a nearby road with armored bulldozers, Warren said.
Advertisement
Turkey needs to do more to control its borders with Syria, and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have been distracted by the conflict in Yemen after taking part in the U.S.-led air campaign early on, he said. “In the near term, it would be a significant undertaking that, much as we may wish otherwise, realistically, we would embark upon largely by ourselves; and it would be ceding our comparative advantage of special forces, mobility, and firepower, instead fighting on the enemy’s terms”, Carter told lawmakers.
