Washington: At the heart of President Barack Obama’s quandary over the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) militants is their haven in Syria.
The president may continue helping Iraqi forces try to reverse the group’s land grabs in northern Iraq by providing more arms and American military advisers and by using US warplanes to support Iraqi ground operations.
But what if the militants pull back, even partially, into Syria and regroup, as Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel on Thursday predicted they would, followed by a renewed offensive?
“In a sense, you’re just sort of back to where you were” before they swept into Iraq, said Robert Ford, a former US ambassador to Syria who quit in February in disillusionment over Obama’s unwillingness to arm moderate Syrian rebels.
“I don’t see how you can contain the Isil over the medium term if you don’t address their base of operations in Syria,” he said in an interview before an intensified round of US airstrikes last week helped Kurdish and Iraqi forces recapture a Tigris River dam near Mosul that had fallen under control of Isil.
On the other hand, Obama has been leery of getting drawn into the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011.
More immediately perhaps, Obama faces choices in Iraq, whose sectarian divisions and political dysfunction created the opening that allowed Isil fighters to sweep across northern Iraq in June almost unopposed. They captured US-supplied weapons that Iraqi forces left behind when they fled without a fight.
Among his options:
- Sending more troops to Baghdad to strengthen security for the US Embassy, as requested by the State Department. Officials said the number under consideration is fewer than 300. They would be in addition to the several hundred US troops already in the capital to help protect US facilities and personnel.
- Speeding up the arming of Iraqi and Kurdish forces. The administration has been supplying Iraqi government forces with Hellfire missiles, small arms and ammunition, but critics say the pace has been too slow. The administration has been reluctant to openly arm the Kurds, since their militia, known as the peshmerga, is a semi-autonomous force seen in Baghdad as a threat to central government authority.
-Increasing the number and expanding the role of the dozens of US military advisers who are in Baghdad and the Kurdish capital of Arbil to coordinate with Iraqi forces. They could be given more direct roles in assisting the Iraqis on the ground by embedding with Iraqi or Kurdish units in the field or scouting targets for US airstrikes.
-Committing US ground troops in Iraq. Obama has said repeatedly he would not do this. “We’re not the Iraqi military. We’re not even the Iraqi air force,” Obama said Monday. “I am the commander in chief of the United States armed forces, and Iraq is going to have to ultimately provide for its own security.”
-Extending the Iraq air campaign to Isil targets in Syria. Stretches of eastern Syria are a sanctuary for the group. The US has warplanes available in the Middle East and Europe that could vastly increase the number and intensity of strikes in eastern Syria if Obama chose.
At a Pentagon news conference Thursday, Hagel appeared to leave the door open to extending US strikes into Syria.
“We’re looking at all options,” he said when asked whether airstrikes inside Syria were a possibility.
This is hardly the first time Obama has faced options for military action in Syria.
