Obama’s strategy to counter threat of terrorism in the region lacks clarity

What the Arabic-language media says about the strategies to fight ISIL.

Following the recent expansion of ISIL in the region and the wave of violence that has led the entire Arab world into a state of shock, the Unites States, the United Kingdom, Nato and other regional players have announced their strategies to fight against the terrorist organisation.

“The US strategy seems to be in constant confrontation with Al Qaeda and its branches. These organisations, such as the Al Nusra Front and the vicious ISIL, are a bigger menace than their parent organisation,” wrote Abdullah Khalifa Al Shayiji in Al Ittihad, the Arabic-language sister newspaper of The National.

After announcing that the United States lacked a strategy to face ISIL in Syria, the US president Barack Obama and the British prime minister David Cameron have called on Nato to confront ISIL, in a joint opinion piece in The Times of London.

This absence of strategy first came as a shock, “but he later called for a regional and international alliance to face the challenge in cooperation with the Sunni allies in the Middle East”.

Mr Obama’s strategy will include land-based operations, as well as air strikes. Al Shayiji asked: “Does this strategy include fighting the organisation in Syria? What is required and who will participate? And what are the entry and exit strategies?”

He also asked how countries and organisations, classified by the US as terrorists or supporters of terrorism, will participate in the fight against extremism in general and the Sunni extremist organisation in particular? He mentioned Iran, Syria and Hizbollah in this regard.

“What does the US mean by an alliance with moderate Sunni countries? Is it sufficient to arm the Iraqi army and the Kurdish Peshmerga to accomplish the task of eliminating ISIL, or is there a need for the intervention of countries in the region? Especially that Iran and its allies in Iraq and Syria, as well Hizbollah, present themselves as a spearheads in the face of Sunni extremism in the region, while the GCC countries stand as a spearhead against terrorism.”

Thus the need to address ISIL’s threat gathered adversaries and enemies of yesterday in a regional and international alliance of interests led by the Obama administration, but Mr Obama’s strategy remains unclear, he concluded.

In the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, George Semaan considers that “the ball is with Haidar Al Abadi and all Iraqi forces, as the regional-international war against ISIL will either go forth or stumble due to disputes between them”.

“If the international alliance awaits the formation of an Iraqi government before taking its first move against ISIL, then the key to war is in Abadi’s hands and in the hands of his political allies and enemies”, he stressed.

“Should they agree to a government of coalition that excludes none of the parties, then this would mark the first step in building a coalition. It is therefore clear that the main requirement for the establishment of a regional consensus is to suspend the sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis”, Semaan remarked.

“Pursuant to this fact, an international coalition in the political sense is worthless if it is not offset by a regional alliance between allies and enemies alike. Overt and tacit understanding between Washington and Tehran would reiterate Arab concerns on future war and a coalition would be hard to reach”.

Semaan concluded by saying that “Iran imposed itself as an indispensable player in the region with an essential role. This remains to be translated into an active and reassuring factor in the new order of the region”.