U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened a gathering of defense ministers and other officials outside Washington Wednesday with an upbeat assessment of the war against the Islamic State and arguing nations in the coalition “now have momentum in this fight and clear results on the ground.”
Carter summoned the ministers to Joint Base Andrews in the Maryland suburbs to press for “accelerants” to finish off the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
In his welcoming remarks, Carter acknowledged that simply defeating the Islamic State militarily on the ground, will not end the threat from what he called the terrorists group’s “barbaric ideology.”
“We’re going to destroy the fact and the idea of an Islamic state,” he told the ministers.
Carter said the deliberate, methodical campaign to destroy the Islamic State has been building on success, and is effectively isolating Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, the two de facto Islamic State capitals.
“We also set in motion a series of specific and deliberate steps through the winter, spring, and summer — the first plays, as President Obama called them — that we would accomplish as soon as possible to put ISIL on a path to a lasting defeat,” Carter said.
U.S. officials have been encouraged by the performance of Iraqi Security Forces, especially the recent capture Qayyarah West airfield in northern Iraq, which will serve as a base of operations in the future Mosul offensive.
“Mosul is now increasingly coming upon us. We have it in sight,” White House Special Presidential Envoy to the Coalition Brett McGurk told reporters on a conference call Tuesday.
Carter is asking the ministers from more than 30 countries to do more to step up the pressure on the Islamic State.
“Play by play, town after town, from every direction and in every domain — our campaign has accelerated further, squeezing ISIL and rolling it back towards Raqqa and Mosul. We’re isolating those two cities and effectively setting the stage to collapse ISIL’s control over them.”
U.S. officials are still waiting for Iraq to assemble the necessary forces that will aim to retake Mosul, estimated to be about 15,000 troops, a combination of Iraqi Army, police and local fighters.
“And we are now very much underway of identifying those fighters; of getting them trained, equipped, and incorporating into what will be the overall campaign,” McGurk said Tuesday.
