Haider al-Abadi’s statement late Tuesday came hours after U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told Congress that a new special operations force will be deployed to Iraq to step up fighting against IS.
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Carter, who testified alongside Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, faced skeptical lawmakers who argued that the USA needs to be more forceful in countering the threat from IS, credited with attacks in Paris and Beirut and the downing of a Russian airliner. Carter said that will improve intelligence and generate more targets for attacks.
He announced the USA would deploy 50 special operation forces to work with anti-ISIS fighters in Syria. “Any such support and special operations anywhere in Iraq can only be deployed subject to the approval of the Iraqi Government and in coordination with the Iraqi forces and with full respect to Iraqi sovereignty”.
“We are acting to defeat ISIL at its core”, said Carter, using the government’s acronym for ISIS.
“We don’t know yet how many forces are going to be deployed”, she said. “And that’s the sensation that we want all of ISIL’s leadership and followers to have”.
“Targeting and raiding are not going to do the trick, even if we did it more” Donnelly said. He said the new force would conduct operations similar to two conducted earlier this year.
The objective would be to gather intelligence, free hostages or prisoners and kill or capture ISIS leaders. None of this requires an expansion of USA ground operations in Syria or Iraq. In May, a Delta Force raid in Syria killed IS financier Abu Sayyaf, yielded intelligence about the group’s structure and finances, and his wife, held in Iraq, has been cooperating with interrogators. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy expressed concern about a possible mission creep, saying the “slow buildup of US combat soldiers inside Syria and Iraq risks repeating the mistake of the Iraq War – believing that extremism can be defeated by USA troops absent local political and military capacity”.
“We fought them before and we are ready to resume fighting”, he said. “We will win, but we need others to help us”. There are also about 3,500 USA military personnel working with Iraqi troops. It comes as Republicans have called for more USA boots on the ground, while war-weary Americans stand divided about the prospect of greater military involvement. The militant group controls a wide swath of Iraq and neighboring Syria.
Carter said that in recent weeks, airstrikes have destroyed IS oil wells, processing facilities and almost 400 oil tanker-trucks.
Carter said the USA also is expanding attacks on the militants’ infrastructure and their sources of revenue, particularly from oil. They now are trying to move south to isolate and hopefully retake the IS stronghold of Raqqa, he said. “Rubio succeed in toppling Assad, the result will be the radical Islamic terrorist will take over Syria, that Syria will be controlled by ISIS, and that is materially worse for US national security interests”, Cruz told the AP.
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Hof, who is now at the Atlantic Council think-tank, said the U.S. special forces were filling a gap in capable ground forces to fight Islamic State, which won control of Iraq’s Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi in May and also controls the northern of Mosul. Officials said the new unit would be stationed in Iraq, probably near Erbil, and would consist of about 200 USA service members.
