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Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel
Publish Date August 21, 2014. Image CreditYuri Gripas/Reuters
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While fielding questions at a Pentagon briefing on Thursday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declared that ISIS is as “sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen." Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said it will take more than airstrikes to beat ISIS. When asked about hitting the group in Syria, Dempsey responded, “To your question, can they be defeated without addressing that part of their organization which resides in Syria? The answer is no. That will have to be addressed on both sides of what is essentially at this point a nonexistent border.”
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| Kurdish soldiers stood guard at the Mosul Dam after recapturing it from Sunni militants. Credit Youssef Boudlal/Reuters |
N.Y. TIMES
But General Dempsey and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who both spoke at a Pentagon news conference, gave no indication that President Obama was about to approve airstrikes in Syria.
General Dempsey also was circumspect in describing the sort of broad effort that would be required to roll back ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
In the current battle with ISIS inside Iraq, Mr. Obama’s military strategy has been aimed at containing the militant organization rather than defeating it, according to Defense Department officials and military experts. Pressed on whether the United States would conduct airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria, Mr. Hagel said that “we’re looking at all options.”
Any use of air power involves risk, including the possibility that innocent civilians may be hurt or killed, or that a piloted aircraft might be shot down. Airstrikes in Syria would also draw the White House more deeply into a conflict from which it has sought to maintain some distance. But there is also risk in not acting, because it is very difficult to defeat a militant group that is allowed to maintain a sanctuary.
Estimates of the number of fighters that might be affiliated with ISIS vary from more than 10,000 to as many as 17,000.
The situation also is complicated by Iran’s presence in Syria. Iran has been sending arms and Quds Force personnel to support the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Iran also arranged for Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group it supports, to join the fighting in Syria on the side of the Assad government.
Much of eastern Syria is now under the control of ISIS, which announced that it has established a caliphate that extends from its base in Syria into northern and western Iraq. Mr. Obama has said he will not accept the establishment of an ISIS state but had not publicly articulated a detailed strategy to stop the group.
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| Jonathan Ernst for The New York Times |
When the United States began airstrikes in Iraq this month, senior Obama administration officials went out of their way to underscore the limited nature of the action.
“This was not an authorization of a broad-based counterterrorism campaign,” a senior Obama administration official told reporters at the time.
But the beheading of an American journalist and the possibility that more American citizens being held by the group might be slain has prompted outrage at the highest levels of the United States government.
As proved during the initial American military mission to rout Al Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American airstrikes would be more effective if small teams of Special Operations forces were deployed to identify ISIS targets and call in attacks.
Deploying such teams is believed to be one option the Pentagon is considering. Another step that some experts say will be needed to challenge the militant groups is a stepped-up program to train, advise and equip the moderate opposition in Syria as well as Kurdish and government forces in Iraq.
But both Pentagon leaders reflected the prevailing view within the Obama administration — that the United States should not move aggressively to counter ISIS without participation from allies in the region.
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| A mortar strike by Islamic State in Mosul, northern Iraq, this July. Photograph: Maria de la Guardia/Barcroft Media |
Isis continues to entrench itself within Sunni areas of Iraq, making it difficult to dislodge them through the bombing options that the administration has embraced. Kurdish and Iraqi security forces, as well as cleavages between Iraqi Sunnis and Isis, remain the administration’s hope to roll back the group that has redrawn the map of the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Isis has reportedly seized a dozen new villages north of Aleppo in Syria, providing it with greater strategic depth.
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Since August 4, Saudi Arabia has beheaded at least 19 people reports Human Rights Watch. According to local news reports, eight of those executed were convicted of nonviolent offenses. Seven were killed for drug smuggling, one for sorcery. “Any execution is appalling, but executions for crimes such as drug smuggling or sorcery that result in no loss of life are particularly egregious,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director for the organization.---Human Rights Watch (via Daily Beast)
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