Airstrikes Effect Limited As U.S. Focus on ISIS Frees Syria to Battle Rebels

THE GUARDIAN

Turkish soldiers on the border with Syria, with Kobani visible beyond as smoke from a shell rises. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

US-led air strikes in northern Syria have failed to interrupt the advance of Islamic State (Isis) fighters closing in on a key city on the Turkish border, raising questions about the western strategy for defeating the jihadi movement.
Almost two weeks after the Pentagon extended its aerial campaign from Iraq to neighbouring Syria in an attempt to take on Isis militants in their desert strongholds, Kurdish fighters said the bombing campaign was having little impact in driving them back.
Isis units have edged to within two kilometres of the centre of Kobani, according to Kurds fighting a rearguard action inside the city. The jihadis, who this weekend generated further outrage with the murder of the British hostage Alan Henning, are simply too numerous to be cowed by the air assault by US fighter jets, the Kurds say.
“Air strikes alone are really not enough to defeat Isis in Kobani,” said Idris Nassan, a senior spokesman for the Kurdish fighters desperately trying to defend the important strategic redoubt from the advancing militants. “They are besieging the city on three sides, and fighter jets simply cannot hit each and every Isis fighter on the ground.”
He said Isis had adapted its tactics to military strikes from the air. “Each time a jet approaches, they leave their open positions, they scatter and hide. What we really need is ground support. We need heavy weapons and ammunition in order to fend them off and defeat them.”

An American-led airstrike on Wednesday in Kobani, Syria, on the Turkish border. A Turkish official said the bombs did not stop the militants’ advance into town. Credit Sedat Suna/European Pressphoto Agency        

 N.Y. TIMES

The United States’ focus on the Islamic State has given cover to Syrian forces, they say. That has freed Mr. Assad’s military from worrying about checking the militant group’s advances and allowed them to continue to focus attacks on the greater political threat — less extreme Syrian-based insurgent groups bent on ousting Mr. Assad and the communities where they hold sway.

The Syrian government had long focused its attacks on insurgents other than the Islamic State, a group that had seemed more interested in establishing Islamic rule in its territories than in ousting Mr. Assad. But after the group overran parts of Iraq and carried out a series of lightning routs of Syrian Army bases, terrifying many government supporters, Syrian warplanes began attacking it with more intensity in its eastern strongholds.

 

That dynamic is at the heart of Washington’s impasse with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who is demanding that President Obama increase efforts to oust Mr. Assad before Turkey takes tougher action against the Islamic State.

The attacks by the Syrian government are creating other political problems for the United States. With both air forces in the sky, attacks by the Syrian government can be mistaken for American ones, including raids that kill civilians.

 

Mistrust of the United States is deepening among Syrian opponents of the government, including insurgents whom Mr. Obama hopes to train as a ground force against Islamic State militants.

 Some Syrians go further, saying that the simultaneous bombings are evidence that the United States is covertly coordinating with the Syrian government. Mr. Obama has publicly ruled out such coordination, saying Mr. Assad lost his legitimacy after using force against peaceful protesters and carrying out indiscriminate bombings.

 

Syrians feel abandoned by the world, and see Washington’s decision to prioritize the battle against the Islamic State as a victory for Mr. Assad’s strategy of eliminating moderate opposition and presenting his international opponents with a choice between him and extremists.

Since the American-led campaign began about two weeks ago, however, the need for Syrian forces to check the Islamic State has ebbed, and some insurgents who oppose the militant group say the government attacks on them have intensified.

 

A United States official said there were indications that since the American campaign started, Syrian fighter jets and helicopters had increased strikes somewhat in the core territories of non-Islamic State insurgents, such as Idlib, Aleppo and the Damascus suburbs.

“It would be silly for them not to take advantage of the U.S. doing airstrikes,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence reports. “They’ve focused in the west and left off the east, where we are operating. Essentially, we’ve allowed them to perform an economy of force. They don’t have to be focused all over the country, just on those who threaten their population centers.” 

Obama, at U.N., Urges Allies to Join Fight Against ISIS. Bombings Continue As ISIS Beheads French Tourist..

                                          Image CreditDamon Winter/The New York Times

N.Y. TIMES

President Obama laid out a forceful new blueprint on Wednesday for deeper American engagement in the Middle East, telling the United Nations General Assembly that the Islamic State understood only “the language of force” and that the United States would “work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death...Those who have joined ISIL should leave the battlefield while they can,” Mr. Obama said in a blunt declaration of his intentions.

In a much-anticipated address two days after he expanded the American-led military campaign against the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, into Syria, Mr. Obama said, “Today, I ask the world to join in this effort,” declaring, “We will not succumb to threats, and we will demonstrate that the future belongs to those who build, not those who destroy.”

 

 

Toward that end the Security Council unanimously approved a resolution Wednesday calling on all countries to adopt laws making it a serious crime for their citizens to join a militant group like the Islamic State or the Nusra Front.

Mr. Obama’s efforts to forge a strong coaltion to fight the Islamic State received another lift Wednesday from Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, who recalled Parliament to meet on Friday and vote on whether to join U.S.-led airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq after Baghdad requested help, the British government said. France has already taken part.

 

The military campaign against the Islamic State, Mr. Obama said, is only the most urgent of a raft of global challenges in which the United States has had no choice but to play a leadership role. These include resisting Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, coordinating a response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, from brokering a new unity government in Afghanistan, and marshaling a new push to confront climate change.

Mr. Obama delivered a searing critique of Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and promised to impose a rising cost on the government of President Vladimir V. Putin for what he called its aggression. He was particularly critical in describing the downing of a Malaysian commercial airliner over eastern Ukraine in July by what the United States and its allies have said was a Russian-made missile system, and he denounced the subsequent efforts to block recovery teams to investigate. All 298 people aboard were killed.

“This is a vision of the world in which might makes right,” he said, “a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilized people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed.”

 On the Syrian civil war and Iran — issues that Mr. Obama identified last year as two of his top priorities — he struck a markedly different tone. He mentioned Iran only in a cursory fashion, asking its leaders not to let the opportunity for a nuclear agreement slip by. American officials have privately expressed deep skepticism about the likelihood of reaching a deal with Tehran, and Mr. Obama’s remarks suggested that he shared that pessimism.

The president also did not single out the Syrian president for criticism, as he did last year, over the use of chemical weapons, though he spoke of the brutality of the civil war. Mr. Assad has voiced support for the American-led strikes in Syria, and his air force has not interfered with American war planes entering Syrian air space.

 

In Mr. Obama’s substance and tone, he conveyed a starkly different president than the one who addressed skeptical world leaders at the General Assembly last year...[instead] He spoke with the urgency of a wartime president, seeking to rally allies. Still, it remained unclear whether Mr. Obama’s speech represented a fundamental reconsideration of his policy or a reluctant response to the threat posed by the Islamic State, which took on emotional resonance for the American public after the militants posted videos of American hostages who were beheaded.

 

Mr. Obama made clear that the United States would act only if surrounded by a broad coalition. He dwelled on his success in signing up five Arab nations to take part in the airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria, casting it as a historic moment in which the Sunni Arab world was united to fight the scourge of Sunni extremism.

 

To some extent, Mr. Obama’s remarks seemed designed to get past months in which the president appeared openly conflicted about the proper use of American military force in the Middle East — an ambivalence that opened him to criticisms of being irresolute.

 

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Hervé Gourdel is seen with his captors moments before his execution in the video distributed by SITE Intelligence Group

 

In a sign of the growing influence of the extremist group known as the Islamic State, fighters aligned with the organization beheaded a French tourist in Algeria and released a video on Wednesday documenting the brutal killing, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

The Frenchman — Hervé Gourdel, a 55-year-old mountaineering guide from Nice — was kidnapped over the weekend, soon after the Islamic State called on its supporters around the world to harm Europeans in retaliation for the recent airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.

The Algerian fighters swiftly responded to the Islamic State’s call by posting a video of Mr. Gourdel in captivity, appearing disoriented and still carrying his camera slung around his neck.

In addition, a militant group in the Philippines also announced that it was holding European captives: two Germans whom it threatened to kill unless Germany pays ransom or stops supporting the American-led campaign against the Islamic State.

 

Policy makers have debated for months whether the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is able to strike directly at the West. Its capacity for large-scale terrorist attacks beyond its home in the Middle East remains in dispute. But the beheading of Mr. Gourdel and the threat to kill the two Germans demonstrate that smaller groups around the world aligned with the Islamic State are capable of kidnapping Westerners and using them for grisly propaganda purposes in sympathy with the organization.

 

Small jihadist groups elsewhere in North Africa — like Libya and Tunisia — as well as in the Caucasus and in Southeast Asia have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, and many of them operate in areas where Westerners frequently travel, including tourists, journalists and aid workers.

The public oaths of allegiance indicate that the smaller groups have placed themselves under the command of the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Analysts have questioned how close these relationships are, but the sequence of events over the weekend suggested that at least the Algerian cell was directly following the larger group’s orders.

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The vast majority of airstrikes launched against Sunni militant targets in Syria have been carried out by American war planes and ship-based Tomahawk cruise missiles, military officials said Tuesday, in what they described as the successful beginning of a long campaign to degrade and destroy the Islamic State.

In disclosing the identities of the five Sunni Arab nations that joined or supported the attacks in Syria — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan and Qatar — the Obama administration sought to paint a picture of an international coalition resolute in its determination to take on the Sunni militant group.

 

Turkey had been reluctant to play a prominent role in the American-led coalition while the militants held 49 Turkish hostages. But now that they have been released, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signaled Tuesday that Turkey would assist the effort in some way.

But Mr. Erdogan, who is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, did not provide details.

 

 

Obama’s strategy to fight Isis cedes too much control

THE GUARDIAN

By addressing the political and presentational aspects of the use of force in advance of military operations, President Obama has signalled a shift in American foreign policy culture, at least in the design of his strategy. In terms of delivery too he has indicated a greater emphasis on CIA-led counterterrorism operations compared with US military-led counterinsurgency operations. But almost every element is fraught with risk and, because he has subcontracted more to other nations than previous US presidents, he has less control over outcomes.

The timing of the speech, just two days after the announcement of a new Iraqi government, is no coincidence. It is evidence of intense behind-the-scenes diplomatic activity to ensure that the Maliki regime’s parochial Shia domination does not recreate the conditions that led to the crisis. There is, however, no indication that the new government will be able to unite a country whose identity faultlines are now fractured beyond repair. If that government fails then in a decade or so, the grievances that led to the rise of Islamic State (Isis) may breed another virulent rebellion.
The decision to involve regional, mostly Arab, countries in the conflict represents the most immature and risky part of the US strategy. Middle Eastern countries have spent billions on their defence capability but have shown a remarkable reluctance to deploy it beyond quelling mostly unarmed civilian rebellions. A history of petty squabbling and so little experience of political cooperation or joint military operations further reduces their potential impact. If the anti-Iranian attitude of the Saudis and other Gulf states is not checked before any troops from those countries arrive in Iraq then there is a danger of sparks flying if they come into contact with the Iranian military “advisers”, who appear to be advising very close to the frontline.
Increasing efforts to remove President Assad from power in Syria is probably the greatest strategic flaw. Identification and maintenance of a single clear aim is a maxim of strategic success. If defeating Isis is the main aim of this strategy then why complicate an already difficult task by simultaneously engineering regime change in Syria? It seems that US foreign policy has still to evolve through a realisation that the only thing worse than the tyranny of dictators is the anarchy that succeeds them, as illustrated by the removal of Saddam and Gaddafi.
In terms of delivery, too, the strategy has risks. Integration of air and land forces is a highly skilled task that even western forces struggle with. As the British discovered in Afghanistan, delivering air support to ground troops under fire in a timely and accurate fashion is not always possible, prompting one British army major to describe his air force as “utterly, utterly useless”. If the Iraqi, Iranian and Arab forces on the ground do not understand these difficulties then any delays or failures in US air support may be interpreted as a western ploy to permit losses to those forces.
President Obama’s primary objective of “degrading and destroying” Isis is to be achieved through counterterrorism operations where the CIA has a lead. This is the one element of strategy where the US has full control and a formidable track record of success. However, it is also one that is most full of pitfalls. It is no accident that Obama only mentioned Somalia and Yemen as examples where that strategy has been employed with success against al-Qaida instead of the Afghanistan and Pakistan tribal belt where its leadership and operational capability were mostly destroyed. A considerable number of civilian deaths occurred from the drone strikes there, resulting in a huge political backlash in the region with continuing insecurity and the emergence of a militant anti-western movement. Unless there is an improvement in intelligence and greater restraint in the use of drones, there is a danger that each successful attack on Isis could generate new recruits radicalised by the deaths of innocents.

ALL'S NOT QUIET IN THE MID-EAST: U.S. MIL ACTION AGAINST ISIS EXPECTED / CEASE FIRE IN ISRAEL- HAMAS CONFLICT.

As the United States begins mobilizing for possible military action in Syria, rebels on Tuesday were in a war-torn area of Aleppo. Credit Zein Al-Rifai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images        

The United States has begun to mobilize a broad coalition of allies behind potential American military action in Syria and is moving toward expanded airstrikes in northern Iraq, administration officials said on Tuesday.

President Obama, the officials said, was broadening his campaign against the Sunni militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and nearing a decision to authorize airstrikes and airdrops of food and water around the northern Iraqi town of Amerli, home to members of Iraq’s Turkmen  minority. The town of 12,000 has been under siege for more than two months by the militants.

 

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Islamic State fighters parade in the group’s stronghold of Raqqa in north-eastern Syria. Photograph: Uncredited/AP

The US has [also] begun reconnaissance flights over Syria in preparation for a possible cross-border expansion of its aerial campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq.
The flights, involving both manned aircraft and drones, began on Tuesday, an official confirmed to AP, after they were approved by the US president, Barack Obama, over the weekend.

Obama has been reluctant to take military action in Syria, but the flights are being seen as laying the groundwork for extending US air strikes against Islamic State militants (Isis) into the group's stronghold of Raqqa in north-eastern Syria, where it has been leading the fight against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in a civil war that has killed almost 200,000 people.

On Tuesday, Obama vowed to pursue the killers of American journalist James Foley.
 "Rooting out a cancer like ISIL won't be easy and it won't be quick," he said.
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Steven Senne/Associated Press        

As Mr. Obama considered new strikes, the White House began its diplomatic campaign to enlist allies and neighbors in the region to increase their support for Syria’s moderate opposition and, in some cases, to provide support for possible American military operations. The countries likely to be enlisted include Australia, Britain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, officials said.

Enlisting the Sunni neighbors of Syria is crucial, experts said, because airstrikes alone will not be enough to push back ISIS. The administration, Mr. Ford said, needs to pursue a sequential strategy that begins with gathering intelligence, followed by targeted airstrikes, more robust and better coordinated support for the moderate rebels, and finally, a political reconciliation process similar to that underway in Iraq.

 

Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat, recently wrote an opinion article declaring that the president needed congressional authorization for military action in Iraq. Credit Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images        

 The White House is also debating how to satisfy a second constituency, Congress. Mr. Obama’s advisers are considering whether to seek congressional authorization for expanded military action and if so, under what legal rationale. Lawmakers had been reluctant to vote on airstrikes in Iraq, but several have begun arguing that the broader action being contemplated by Mr. Obama would demand a vote in Congress.

 

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A San Diego native fighting for ISIS in Syria was killed over the weekend, according to the Free Syrian Army. NBC News reported Tuesday that a passport and tattoo positively identified the body as that of Douglas McArthur McCain, 33. Calling himself “Duale ThaslaveofAllah” on Facebook and Twitter, he declared “It’s Islam over everything.” In 2004, McCain “reverted” to Islam, according to his Twitter. “I’m with the brothers now,” he tweeted on June 9.

McCain was once an aspiring rapper in a blue-collar Minnesota neighborhood. His high school classmates described him as a "goofball" and "always smiling." He had multiple run-ins with police and was convicted of obstruction and disorderly conduct. McCain started school at San Diego City College and worked at a Somali restuarant in the city. “He was a normal guy, who was social, open-minded, like to smile always, and always wanted to be a good Muslim," said a person who knew him from the restaurant.
McArthur actively tweeted, and his messages ranged from homophobic hate to just plane stupid.  In December 2012, he tweeted "Wallahi I wants fried chicken." However, his account went silent in January 2013 until spring of this year. McCain appears to have gone to Turkey, which is a popular jihadi route to Syria. McAuthur is among hundreds of Westerns believed to have joined ISIS's war in Syria and Iraq, like Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary, the British man suspected of beheading of James Foley.

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A Hamas militant fired into the air in Gaza City on Tuesday to celebrate a cease-fire that will open border crossings for aid and reconstruction supplies. Credit Roberto Schmidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images        

After 50 days of fighting that took some 2,200 lives, leveled large areas of the Gaza Strip and paralyzed Israel’s south for the summer, Israeli and Palestinian leaders reached an open-ended cease-fire agreement on Tuesday that promised only limited change to conditions in Gaza and left unresolved the broader issues underpinning the conflict.

Hamas, the militant Islamist faction that dominates Gaza, declared victory even though it had abandoned most of its demands, ultimately accepting an Egyptian-brokered deal that differs little from one proffered on the battle’s seventh day. In effect, the deal put both sides back where they were at the end of eight days of fighting in 2012, with terms that called for easing but not lifting Israeli restrictions on travel, trade and fishing in Gaza.

 

In Israel, continual barrages of rocket fire and fears about starting school on Monday without a cease-fire had increased pressure on the government from citizens exhausted by what had become a war of attrition. Yuval Steinitz, a senior Israeli minister, said in a television interview Tuesday night that he accepted the cease-fire “with a sour taste of missed opportunity.”

 

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations welcomed the cease-fire but said in a statement, “The blockade of Gaza must end; Israel’s legitimate security concerns must be addressed.” He warned, “Any peace effort that does not tackle the root causes of the crisis will do little more than set the stage for the next cycle of violence.”

 

In Israel, support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s performance dropped by more than half this weekend from a high of more than eight in 10 Israeli Jews in the battle’s early days, according to polls conducted for Channel 2 News. Israel’s central bank cut interest rates on Monday to their lowest level ever to counter economic fallout, and Mr. Netanyahu has lashed out in recent days against senior ministers critical of the campaign, which commentators and politicians have increasingly argued was ill conceived.

 

Israel achieved its original stated goal, to restore quiet, but Hamas’s repeated penetration of Israeli territory through tunnels, the deaths of the most Israeli soldiers since the 2006 Lebanon war, and the killing on Friday of 4-year-old Daniel Tregerman in a kibbutz near Gaza have scarred the country’s psyche.

 

Israeli analysts said that since 1973, no prime minister has emerged from a war unscathed. Yehuda Ben Meir, an expert on public opinion at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, cautioned that it was too early to assess the outcome of the campaign.