[The decisions of the just concluded NATO summit in Wales, as regards the ISIS - one of the two top agenda points, may be summarised as: *a coalition headed by the US, and the UK, to carry out air strikes - in Iraq, and, maybe, also in Syria, to aid and in coordination with the local (ground) forces opposed to the ISIS, but which will exclude Assad; and there will be no NATO boots on the ground. And a UN Resolution in endorsement, if possible, to be obtained. **Special emphasis will be on obtaining active participation of various Kurdish and other Sunni groups and having a national reconciliation government in Baghdad in place*. *Also, in Syria, support for "moderate" opponents of Assad*. (See: < http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/world/europe/nato-summit.html?_r=0 <http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2014%2F09%2F06%2Fworld%2Feurope%2Fnato-summit.html%3F_r%3D0&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNH2nkYIZ7Dnkhyu5CYleZUMZROxPQ>> and < http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/05/us-core-coalition-fight-isis-militants-iraq-nato <http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2014%2Fsep%2F05%2Fus-core-coalition-fight-isis-militants-iraq-nato&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEfOZIbJRNgevz0Vr4iYCwyDKlR_A>> for example.) That's evidently an outline of a broad strategy. The two analytical reports following are not exactly on the same page, and yet in a way complementary. The former one is in close alignment with the decisions taken by the NATO summit.]
I/II. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/world/middleeast/destroying-isis-may-take-3-years-white-house-says.html?_r=1 September 7, 2014 *Destroying ISIS May Take Years, U.S. Officials Say * By ERIC SCHMITT, MICHAEL R. GORDON and HELENE COOPER *WASHINGTON --* The Obama administration is preparing to carry out a campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that may take three years to complete, requiring a sustained effort that could last until after President Obama has left office, according to senior administration officials. The first phase, an air campaign with nearly 145 airstrikes in the past month, is already underway to protect ethnic and religious minorities and American diplomatic, intelligence and military personnel, and their facilities, as well as to begin rolling back ISIS gains in northern and western Iraq. The next phase, which would begin sometime after Iraq forms a more inclusive government, scheduled this week, is expected to involve an intensified effort to train, advise or equip the Iraqi military, Kurdish fighters and possibly members of Sunni tribes. The final, toughest and most politically controversial phase of the operation -- destroying the terrorist army in its sanctuary inside Syria -- might not be completed until the next administration. Indeed, some Pentagon planners envision a military campaign lasting at least 36 months. Mr. Obama will use a speech to the nation on Wednesday to make his case for launching a United States-led offensive against Sunni militants gaining ground in the Middle East, seeking to rally support for a broad military mission while reassuring the public that he is not plunging American forces into another Iraq war. "What I want people to understand," Mr. Obama said in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that was broadcast Sunday, "is that over the course of months, we are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum" of the militants. "We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities; we're going to shrink the territory that they control; and, ultimately, we're going to defeat them," he added. The military campaign Mr. Obama is preparing has no obvious precedent. Unlike American counterterrorism operations in Yemen and Pakistan, it is not expected to be limited to drone strikes against militant leaders. Unlike the war in Afghanistan, it will not include the use of ground troops, which Mr. Obama has ruled out. Unlike the Kosovo war that President Bill Clinton and NATO nations waged in 1999, it will not be compressed into an intensive 78-day tactical and strategic air campaign. And unlike during the air campaign that toppled the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, in 2011, the Obama administration is no longer "leading from behind," but plans to play the central role in building a coalition to counter ISIS. "We have the ability to destroy ISIL," Secretary of State John Kerry said last week at the NATO summit meeting in Wales, using an alternative name for the militant group. "It may take a year, it may take two years, it may take three years. But we're determined it has to happen." Antony J. Blinken, Mr. Obama's deputy national security adviser, has suggested that the United States is undertaking a prolonged mission. "It's going to take time, and it will probably go beyond even this administration to get to the point of defeat," Mr. Blinken said last week on CNN. Mr. Kerry is scheduled to head for the Middle East soon to solidify the anti-ISIS coalition. And Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is traveling to Ankara, Turkey, on Monday to woo another potential ally in the fight against the Sunni militant group. Although details of how the emerging coalition would counter ISIS remain undecided, several American officials said that they believe the list of allies so far includes Jordan, offering intelligence help, and Saudi Arabia, which has influence with Sunni tribes in Iraq and Syria and which has been funding moderate Syrian rebels. The United Arab Emirates, officials said, has also indicated a willingness to consider airstrikes in Iraq. Germany has said it would send arms to pesh merga fighters in Kurdistan. And rising concern over foreign fighters returning home from Syria and Iraq may also have spurred Australia, Britain, Denmark and France to join the alliance. Administration officials acknowledged, however, that getting those same countries to agree to airstrikes in Syria was proving harder. "Everybody is on board Iraq," an administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the policy is still being developed. "But when it comes to Syria, there's more concern" about where airstrikes could lead. The official nonetheless expressed confidence that the countries would eventually come around to taking the fight into Syria, in part, he said, because "there's really no other alternative." The talks between Mr. Hagel and the Turkish leadership may be crucial in determining whether the United States will be able to count on Ankara on a number of fronts, including closing the Turkish border to foreign fighters who have been using Turkey as a transit point from which to go to Syria and Iraq to join militant organizations and allowing the American military to carry out operations from bases in Turkey. But Turkish officials have been wary of attracting notice from ISIS, given that the group holds the fate of 49 kidnapped Turkish diplomats in its hands. In June, Sunni militants with ISIS stormed the Turkish Consulate in Mosul, Iraq, kidnapping the consul general and other members of his staff, and their families, including three children. Mr. Obama's planned speech suggests he may be moving closer to a decision on many remaining questions, including whether and at what point the White House might widen the air campaign to include targets across the border in Syria, possibly to include ISIS leadership and its equipment, supply depots and command centers. The time of the speech on Wednesday has not been announced. Senior officials have repeatedly ruled out sending ground combat troops, a vow Mr. Obama reaffirmed in his appearance on "Meet the Press." "This is not going to be an announcement about U.S. ground troops," he said. "This is not the equivalent of the Iraq war." But it is not clear if that declaration would preclude the eventual deployment of small numbers of American Special Operations forces or C.I.A. operatives to call in airstrikes on behalf of Kurdish fighters, Iraqi forces or Sunni tribes, a procedure that makes it much easier to distinguish between ISIS militants, civilians and counter ISIS fighters. Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story During the recent operation to retake the Mosul Dam, Kurdish soldiers, using a more roundabout procedure, provided the coordinates of ISIS fighters to the joint United States-Kurdish command center in Erbil, which in turn passed them to American aircraft, Masrour Barzani, the head of Kurdish intelligence, said in a recent interview. The White House is counting on an effort by American, Iraqi and Gulf Arab officials to persuade Sunni tribesman in western Iraq, now aligned with ISIS, to break their ties after chafing under the harsh Shariah law the group has imposed. Unless the new Iraqi government is substantially more inclusive, American encouragement and support for these groups to turn on ISIS may be far less effective than it was in 2007, when many tribes fought the forerunner of ISIS, Al Qaeda in Iraq. Some Sunni tribal leaders are still bitter at the treatment under former Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite. "Even if they try we will not accept it," said Sheikh Ali Hatem Suleimani, a tribal leader in Anbar who lives in Erbil. "In the past, we fought against Al Qaeda and we cleaned the area of them. But the Americans gave control of Iraq to Maliki, who started to arrest, kill, and exile most of the tribal commanders who led the fight against Al Qaeda." Eric Schmitt and Michael R. Gordon reported from Washington, and Helene Cooper from Tbilisi, Georgia. Julie Hirschfeld Davis contributed reporting from Washington, and Azam Ahmed from Erbil, Iraq. A version of this article appears in print on September 8, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: *Destroying ISIS May Take Years, U.S. Officials Say*. II. http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/25745-focus-in-fact-obama-does-have-isis-strategy-and-it-involves-iran In Fact Obama Does Have an ISIS Strategy, and it Involves Iran By Jacob Siegel, The Daily Beast 07 September 14 *Obama may say "we don't have a strategy yet" for beating ISIS. Growing American operations on the ground paint a different picture--one with Iranian hues.* he President hasn't announced his strategy for dealing with ISIS yet, but there is a clear military approach taking shape in Iraq. On an operational level, the military intervention has shown some early success in using U.S. airpower to support local ground forces and halt ISIS's advances. But the tension between tactics and strategy, methods and goals, is already starting to show. The battle we won yesterday could make it harder to win a war tomorrow. And while the American strategy for ISIS is stalled, the air war in Iraq has been expanding steadily. In early August, when airstrikes were first authorized, the administration articulated a limited set of goals and stressed that it wouldn't be drawn further into Iraq's civil war. In its first phase, the air mission focused on humanitarian relief and defending American personnel from an ISIS advance. That lasted about a week. The air strikes seemed to be working and as ISIS was pushed back so were the limits of the mission. A month ago there was a narrow reactive approach to ISIS, now there is an evolving, offensive mission. Since mid-August, the U.S. has been acting as Iraq's de facto air force. American aircraft are bombing ISIS targets and supporting offensives by Kurdish forces, the Iraqi military and militia groups that were yesterday's anti-American jihadists and are today's anti-ISIS allies. As The Daily Beast's Josh Rogin reported, the administration has given Congress four distinct reasons for waging war in Iraq <http://readersupportednews.org/articles/2014/09/05/congress-set-to-bow-to-obama-on-isis-war.html>: to protect American personnel in Erbil; to save the Yazidi minorities trapped on Mount Sinjar; to protect the Mosul Dam; and to break ISIS's siege on the Shiite town of Amerli. And for each objective, there's a slightly different set of American allies being supported by U.S. air power. "The ground coalitions we're supporting with air power are uniquely different in each case," said Doug Ollivant, a former advisor to Gen. David Petraeus who served in the National Security Council under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. "In Sinjar, it's largely the PKK [a Kurdish militia] who rescued the Yazidis," Ollivant said. "In Mosul, it was the Golden Brigades [An elite unit of the Iraqi army] with the Peshmerga in support, and in Amerli it looks like Shia militias with the Iraqi military in support. Not all of these allies would ordinarily be considered friends of America. The PKK, which by some accounts has been leading the fight against ISIS in northern Iraq, is still listed as a foreign terrorist organization. <http://readersupportednews.org/articles/2014/08/16/pkk-kurdish-terrorists-are-fighting-isis-terrorists-with-u-s-help.html> War makes strange bedfellows and the U.S. has certainly been promiscuous before choosing its allies in past wars. The question is whether short-term partnerships will undermine longer-term interests. Working with the PKK presents complications, especially in regard to our NATO ally Turkey, but no clear threat to the American people or our goals in Iraq. With other emerging allies the calculus is trickier and leaves less margin for error. In Amerli, the U.S. backed operation was spearheaded by Asaib Ahl al-Haq <http://readersupportednews.org/articles/2014/07/15/who-s-butchering-baghdad-s-prostitutes.html>, an Iranian backed group known for sectarian violence against Sunnis and attacks on American troops during the last war in Iraq. After American airstrikes helped Asaib Ahl al-Haq take control of Amerli, a spokesman for the group told a New York Times reporter, <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/world/middleeast/iraq.html> "we don't trust Americans at all" and added "we don't need them." The militia leader's words could have been taken for loose talk but the photo that leaked online shortly after the battle had the hallmarks of a deliberate message. The photo reportedly shows the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani <http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2013/09/05/iran-plotting-revenge-against-u-s.html>, commander of the Qods force, Tehran's chief military strategist, and the man many American officials consider to be America's most dangerous foe on the planet. His visit to the site underscores the convergence of U.S. and Iranian interests in Iraq, and Iran's desire to be seen as orchestrating the efforts. Amerli was clearly a defeat for ISIS and a relief for the townspeople who had held off the group for six weeks. But it's less clear what the alliance between U.S. airpower and Iranian-backed militias says about the vision guiding the mission in Iraq. Even leaving aside questions of a grand regional strategy for the Middle East--and how our track record suggests that U.S. led wars in Iraq can benefit Iran--its not clear how the precedent set in Amerli will serve the President's more immediate goals for resolving the war in Iraq. The president has been criticized for lacking a larger strategy to deal with ISIS <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/02/after-steven-sotloff-murder-congress-demands-a-vote-on-obama-s-isis-war.html> but he's been consistent on Iraq, stressing that military force can only be effective as the prelude to a political solution. To push ISIS out of Iraq, the thinking goes, Baghdad needs to reintegrate marginalized Sunnis who have supported but are not ideologically aligned with the group. But the difficult task of dislodging ISIS from its Sunni support base will only become harder as Shia sectarian groups <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/03/a-sectarian-storm-is-brewing-in-iraq.html> increases their influence in Baghdad and appear to receive U.S. backing. "If you're goal is to cause some level of reconciliation, [Amerli] doesn't assist it one bit," said Phillip Smyth, a researcher at the University of Maryland on Shia militant groups. "The fact is this is being promoted by Tehran as an Iranian initiative. It's them saying we run the show." Hassan Hassan, an analyst at the Delma Institute, believes "the appearance of U.S. support for Shia militias and tacit coordination with Iran are a mistake many thought the Obama administration would avoid." It's a mistake that "plays into the hands of ISIS and makes it difficult to draw a wedge between extremists and other Sunni forces that have legitimate concerns and demands," according to Hassan. One former senior leader in the U.S. intelligence community disputed the interpretation that the campaign in Amerli would undermine American interests in Iraq. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said, "I'm not concerned by the Amerli operation for several reasons: first, the ground force consisted of a mix of Peshmerga, Iraqi forces, and Shia militia, so this wasn't the US supporting just Shia militia against Sunni Arabs; second, the targets were predominantly ISIS, not just Sunni insurgents who might once again reconcile." One instance of U.S. airpower backing a Shia militia may not undermine the chances of political reconciliation in Iraq, but there's no reason to think Amerli will be an isolated event. Baghdad relies on the militias for its defense, as does the Iraqi military. At this point, any anti-ISIS coalition that aims to take back central Iraq will be forced to rely on the militias. The question is whose air cover they will operate under and whose objectives they will be pursuing on the ground. Events in Iraq, where an approach to confronting ISIS is being tested, will likely lay a foundation for the president's coming strategy. It remains to be seen whether the compromises the current approach has required will lead to a political resolution in Iraq or a longer and more open-ended commitment from the military. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
