Leaders of the coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria are touting the success of their airstrike campaign amid long-awaited successes and preparation for a major ground offensive inside Iraq in the coming weeks.
The coalition command said Monday that Iraqi Kurdish forces, backed by airstrikes, seized three bridgeheads on the west bank of the Tigris River north of Mosul. This comes less than two weeks after news that Syrian Kurdish forces, backed by Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters and coalition airstrikes, had pushed the extremist group from the embattled town of Kobani near the Turkish border.
“This most recent peshmerga operation is yet another example of how Daesh can be defeated militarily using a combination of well-led and capable ground forces enabled by coalition aviation and advise and assist capabilities,” coalition military commander Lt. Gen. James Terry said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.
But as lawmakers await a formal White House request for authorization of continued military force, which may come this week, questions remain about whether the campaign is moving too slowly. Some lawmakers have been pushing for U.S. ground troops to enter the fight, which Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey has said he is open to.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee has called a hearing for Thursday on the growing strategic threat posed by the Islamic State and whether the Obama administration is adequately addressing it.
“ISIS continues to control an area the size of Great Britain; makes extraordinary amounts of money through the black market and extortion; and its foreign fighter force numbers in the thousands — recruiting and radicalizing more each day,” said committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif. “This hearing will examine the grave threat ISIS poses to U.S. allies and interests and ask how well the Obama administration is responding.”
Those concerns were echoed by Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, who told NBC, “So far we have not seen any serious action that can quickly defeat ISIS.”
As of Thursday, coalition aircraft had conducted 2,294 airstrikes against the Islamic State, 1,159 in Iraq and 1,135 in Syria. U.S. aircraft have performed the vast majority of the attacks, 1,856, with the rest shared by other members of the 60-nation coalition.
Secretary of State John Kerry was the latest administration official to tout the effects of the strikes, saying the Islamic State has lost 22 percent of the populated areas it held, “and that’s without launching what we would call a major offensive.”
“It’s with the efforts of the Iraqi army, as it’s being retrained and standing up again to reclaim some territory as they begin to probe,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press in an interview broadcast Sunday.
“We have taken out a significant proportion of the top leadership of ISIS. Their command and control facilities have been attacked, interrupting their command and control. They no longer can communicate the way they were, as openly. They no longer travel in convoys, as they were, as openly. Or where they do, they’re at great risk.”
Meanwhile, retired Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, the U.S. envoy to the coalition, told Jordan’s official Petra news agency that Iraqi forces would begin a major ground offensive “in the weeks ahead,” backed by a stepped-up U.S. training effort and “major firepower” from coalition aircraft.
The lack of effective ground forces, especially in Syria, has hampered efforts by the coalition to push back last year’s rapid advance by the Islamic State across large areas of Iraq and Syria. Having ruled out the use of U.S. ground forces, the Obama administration relies heavily on local forces, many of whom are reluctant to enter the fight.
Though Jordan has increased its participation in airstrikes amid outrage over a video released Feb. 3 showing air force pilot First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh being burned to death, officials in Amman are cool to the idea of sending ground troops into Syria. And Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem told a news conference in Damascus on Monday that government forces would resist any foreign intervention.
