NEW YORK // Barack Obama met on Tuesday with defence chiefs from over 20 countries, including the UAE, to try and craft a strategy to defeat ISIL.
The meeting comes amid mounting pressure on the US to do more to push back the extremists as airstrikes have failed to stop them from taking new territory.
Military and defence officials from countries in the anti-ISIL coalition – including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other regional and European countries – attended the meeting led by the US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Martin Dempsey, at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington.
US officials cautioned that the talks would not result in significant policy decisions, but that they are “part of ongoing efforts to build the coalition and integrate the capabilities of each country into the broader strategy”, said national security council spokesman Alistair Baskey.
But Mr Obama’s strategy of using airstrikes to degrade and destroy ISIL has so far been unable to stop the militant group’s advance in Iraq’s Sunni-dominated Anbar province or end its siege on Kobani, a strategic town on the Syria-Turkey border. The White House insists that the “early evidence indicates that this strategy is succeeding”, a spokesman said Tuesday.
While still in its relatively early days, However, the slow progress in the international fight against ISIL has already brought into focus underlying tensions and disagreements within the US-led coalition, especially on the part of regional allies.
US officials have said that the most important components of the campaign are the Iraqi and Syrian ground forces who fight ISIL. But in Iraq, where the US has focused its military efforts, plans for a Sunni-manned national guard force are dependent on the new Shiite Islamist-dominated government in Baghdad making political concessions to minority Sunni Arabs.
It is still unclear if such political compromises will be forthcoming, especially in the heat of an existential battle with ISIL, which has carried out suicide bombings in recent days that have killed scores of Shiite civilians in Baghdad, and as the government continues to rely on Iranian-backed militias.
In Syria, plans for building up ground forces are even more nascent, and Arab allies and Turkey want the US to help rebels not only take on ISIL but fight the Al Assad regime — which they consider the main cause of the militant group’s ascent.
While US officials have said they are accelerating plans to train and equip thousands of Syrian rebels, the rebels closest to the US have denounced the airstrikes against ISIL, saying they benefit Damascus and allow president Bashar Al Assad’s forces to step up attacks in the areas of Idlib province that the more moderate rebels control.
Addressing these issues were likely to be a central part of the talks on Tuesday.
“This is just to make sure everybody is working off the same song sheet,” a US defence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Speaking from Cairo on Sunday, US secretary of state John Kerry said: “Military leaders, the civilian leaders, from day one, have said this will be difficult, this will take time, we have to rebuild, we have to constitute the coalition, responsibilities have to be divided up, people have to get to their place of responsibility, and that is taking place now.”
A key task for US officials will be to get Turkey to commit more to the coalition, including possible ground troops. The Nato member with the second-largest military in the alliance has so far not intervened in fighting between ISIL and Syrian Kurds for control of Kobani.
Turkey has so far refused to intervene on the side of Kurdish fighters it considers terrorists as ISIL has made steady gains despite increasing coalition airstrikes.
Twenty-one strikes were carried out by coalition jets, including from Saudi Arabia, targeting ISIL positions in and around Kobani since the weekend, the US military said on Tuesday.
Turkey insists that it will not commit its military or military facilities to the coalition unless its demands that the US also focus on removing Mr Al Assad and create a no-fly zone in northern Syria and a buffer zone along the border are met.
Over the past week, US officials have travelled to Ankara for talks with their Turkish counterparts but the results have been unclear.
The US announced on Sunday that Turkey would take part in the training of Syrian rebels and also allow coalition aircraft to bomb Syria from the American Incirlik air base near the southern border. But on Monday, Turkish officials denied that they had agreed to either.
Gen Dempsey said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that a no-fly zone is a possibility, though not an imminent one.
“Do I anticipate that there could be circumstances in the future where ... that would be part of the campaign? Yeah.”
tkhan@thenational.ae
