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History > 2014 > USA > International > Iraq (I)
A woman and children in a military helicopter
after being evacuated by Iraqi forces
from Amerli, north of
Baghdad,
on Friday.
Credit Reuters
U.S. and Iran Unlikely Allies in Iraq Battle
NYT
31.8.2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/world/middleeast/iraq.html
The Truth About the Wars
NOV. 10, 2014
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor
By DANIEL P. BOLGER
AS a senior commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, I lost 80
soldiers. Despite their sacrifices, and those of thousands more, all we have to
show for it are two failed wars. This fact eats at me every day, and Veterans
Day is tougher than most.
As veterans, we tell ourselves it was all worth it. The grim butchery of war
hovers out of sight and out of mind, an unwelcome guest at the dignified
ceremonies. Instead, we talk of devotion to duty and noble sacrifice. We salute
the soldiers at Omaha Beach, the sailors at Leyte Gulf, the airmen in the skies
over Berlin and the Marines at the Chosin Reservoir, and we’re not wrong to do
so. The military thrives on tales of valor. In our volunteer armed forces, such
stirring examples keep bringing young men and women through the recruiters’
door. As we used to say in the First Cavalry Division, they want to “live the
legend.” In the military, we love our legends.
Here’s a legend that’s going around these days. In 2003, the United States
invaded Iraq and toppled a dictator. We botched the follow-through, and a
vicious insurgency erupted. Four years later, we surged in fresh troops, adopted
improved counterinsurgency tactics and won the war. And then dithering American
politicians squandered the gains. It’s a compelling story. But it’s just that —
a story.
The surge in Iraq did not “win” anything. It bought time. It allowed us to kill
some more bad guys and feel better about ourselves. But in the end, shackled to
a corrupt, sectarian government in Baghdad and hobbled by our fellow Americans’
unwillingness to commit to a fight lasting decades, the surge just forestalled
today’s stalemate. Like a handful of aspirin gobbled by a fevered patient, the
surge cooled the symptoms. But the underlying disease didn’t go away. The
remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni insurgents we battled for more than
eight years simply re-emerged this year as the Islamic State, also known as
ISIS.
The surge legend is soothing, especially for military commanders like me. We can
convince ourselves that we did our part, and a few more diplomats or civilian
leaders should have done theirs. Similar myths no doubt comforted Americans who
fought under the command of Robert E. Lee in the Civil War or William C.
Westmoreland in Vietnam. But as a three-star general who spent four years trying
to win this thing — and failing — I now know better.
We did not understand the enemy, a guerrilla network embedded in a quarrelsome,
suspicious civilian population. We didn’t understand our own forces, which are
built for rapid, decisive conventional operations, not lingering, ill-defined
counterinsurgencies. We’re made for Desert Storm, not Vietnam. As a general, I
got it wrong. Like my peers, I argued to stay the course, to persist and
persist, to “clear/hold/build” even as the “hold” stage stretched for months,
and then years, with decades beckoning. We backed ourselves season by season
into a long-term counterinsurgency in Iraq, then compounded it by doing likewise
in Afghanistan. The American people had never signed up for that.
What went wrong in Iraq and in Afghanistan isn’t the stuff of legend. It won’t
bring people into the recruiting office, or make for good speeches on Veterans
Day. Reserve those honors for the brave men and women who bear the burdens of
combat.
That said, those who served deserve an accounting from the generals. What
happened? How? And, especially, why? It has to be a public assessment,
nonpartisan and not left to the military. (We tend to grade ourselves on the
curve.) Something along the lines of the 9/11 Commission is in order. We owe
that to our veterans and our fellow citizens.
Such an accounting couldn’t be more timely. Today we are hearing some, including
those in uniform, argue for a robust ground offensive against the Islamic State
in Iraq. Air attacks aren’t enough, we’re told. Our Kurdish and Iraqi Army
allies are weak and incompetent. Only another surge can win the fight against
this dire threat. Really? If insanity is defined as doing the same thing over
and over and expecting different results, I think we’re there.
As a veteran, and a general who learned hard lessons in two lost campaigns, I’d
like to suggest an alternative. Maybe an incomplete and imperfect effort to
contain the Islamic State is as good as it gets. Perhaps the best we can or
should do is to keep it busy, “degrade” its forces, harry them or kill them, and
seek the long game at the lowest possible cost. It’s not a solution that is
likely to spawn a legend. But in the real world, it just may well give us
something better than another defeat.
Daniel P. Bolger, the author of “Why We Lost,” retired from the United States
Army last year as a lieutenant general.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on November 11, 2014, on page A31 of
the New York edition with the headline: The Truth About the Wars.
The Truth About the Wars, NYT, 11.11.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/opinion/
the-truth-about-the-wars-in-iraq-and-afghanistan.html
Obstacles Limit Targets
and Pace of Strikes on ISIS
NOV. 9, 2014
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — More than three months into the American-led air
campaign in Iraq and Syria, commanders are challenged by spotty intelligence,
poor weather and an Iraqi Army that is only now starting to go on the offensive
against the Islamic State, meaning that warplanes are mostly limited to hitting
pop-up targets of opportunity.
Weekend airstrikes hit just such targets: a convoy of 10 armed trucks of the
Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, near Mosul, as well as vehicles and
two of the group’s checkpoints near the border with Syria. News reports from
Iraq said the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been wounded in
one of the raids, but American officials said Sunday that they were still
assessing his status.
In Iraq, the air war is tethered to the slow pace of operations by the Iraqi
Army and Kurdish forces. With relatively few Iraqi offensives to flush out
militants, many Islamic State fighters have dug in to shield themselves from
attack.
The vast majority of bombing runs, including the weekend strike near Mosul,
Iraq’s second-largest city, are now searching for targets of opportunity, such
as checkpoints, artillery pieces and combat vehicles in the open. But only one
of every four strike missions — some 800 of 3,200 — dropped its weapons,
according to the military’s Central Command.
In Syria, the United States has a very limited ability to gather intelligence to
help generate targets. Many Islamic State training compounds, headquarters,
storage facilities and other fixed sites were struck in the early days of the
bombing, but the military’s deliberate process for approving other targets has
frustrated several commanders.
In neither country are American commandos conducting raids on militant camps or
safe houses, operations that in Afghanistan and in the Iraq war generated a
continuous trove of information for additional missions.
Airstrikes have also been constrained by a serious concern about civilian
casualties, particularly in western Iraq. Commanders fear such casualties could
alienate Sunni tribesmen, whose support is critical to ousting the militants, as
well as Sunni Arab countries that are part of the American-led coalition.
Another challenge is weather, as sandstorms have thwarted many surveillance
missions needed to identify targets.
President Obama’s decision last week to double the number of American trainers
and advisers in Iraq, to about 3,000, and request more than $5 billion from
Congress for military operations against the Islamic State was viewed as clear
acknowledgment of the challenges in fighting a limited war. They are especially
acute when Washington’s allies on the ground in Iraq and Syria need far more
training to battle a formidable adversary that offers little in the way of clear
targeting.
In an interview broadcast Sunday, Mr. Obama said he had made his decision,
announced Friday, in order to accelerate the mission by taking a set of fresh,
if incremental, steps toward greater involvement.
“What it signals is a new phase,” the president said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“What we knew was that phase one was getting an Iraqi government that was
inclusive and credible, and we now have done that,” he said. “And so now what
we’ve done is rather than just try to halt ISIL’s momentum, we’re now in a
position to start going on some offense. The airstrikes have been very effective
in degrading ISIL’s capabilities and slowing the advance that they were making.
Now what we need is ground troops, Iraqi ground troops, that can start pushing
them back.”
Critics of the air campaign describe an often cumbersome process to approve
targets of opportunity, and say there are too few warplanes carrying out too few
missions under too many restrictions. To some veterans of past air wars, the
campaign fails to apply the unrelenting pressure needed to help fulfill Mr.
Obama’s objective to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the terrorist
organization.
“Air power needs to be applied like a thunderstorm, and so far we’ve only
witnessed a drizzle,” said David A. Deptula, a retired three-star Air Force
general who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the
1991 Persian Gulf war.
The campaign has averaged fewer than five airstrikes a day in both Iraq and in
Syria. In contrast, the NATO air war against Libya in 2011 carried out about 50
strikes a day in its first two months. The air campaigns in Afghanistan in 2001
averaged 85 daily airstrikes, and the Iraq war in 2003 about 800 strikes a day,
according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. American
officials say targeting is more precise than in past campaigns, so not as many
flights are needed.
To be sure, this air campaign has achieved several successes. It has blunted the
advance of ISIS fighters in most areas by forcing them to disperse and conceal
themselves. Allied warplanes have attacked oil refineries, weapons depots,
command bunkers and communications centers in Syria as part of a plan to hamper
the Islamic State’s ability to sustain its operations in Iraq, and for its
senior leaders to communicate with one another.
Through mid-October, the overall operation against the Islamic State was costing
the Defense Department more than $8 million a day, or $580 million since
airstrikes began in Iraq on Aug. 8. But senior American officers acknowledge the
limitations of air power, and say the campaign is more about providing breathing
room to build up Iraqi and Syrian ground forces than an all-out effort to
destroy ISIS from the skies.
“The airstrikes are buying us time. They aren’t going to solve the problem by
themselves,” said Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff and a former top
commander in Iraq. “It’s going to take people on the ground, ground forces.”
General Odierno said the priority was developing “indigenous forces” to retake
territory from ISIS. “Over time, if that’s not working, then we’re going to have
to reassess, and we’ll have to decide whether we think it’s worth putting other
forces in there, to include U.S. forces,” he said.
The effort to rebuild Iraq’s fighting capability, however, risks allowing the
Islamic State to use the months to entrench in western and northern Iraq and
carry out more killings.
In addition to the United States, countries that have conducted airstrikes in
Iraq are Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France and the
Netherlands. Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have
joined the United States in carrying out attacks in Syria.
Other countries are also providing surveillance, transport and refueling planes.
Non-American members of the coalition are flying 15 percent to 20 percent of all
strike and support missions, a figure that military officials said was likely to
creep up as more allies joined the fight.
The airstrikes are mostly carried out from bases in Persian Gulf countries or a
Navy aircraft carrier in the gulf, and include a range of aircraft including
fighter jets, B-1B bombers and lumbering AC-130 gunships. Armed drones have
accounted for about 15 percent of the airstrikes, according to Central Command.
No allied strike missions are flown from bases in Iraq or in neighboring Turkey.
Turkey has refused American requests to do so, forcing pilots to fly longer
distances and spend less time over their potential targets than commanders would
like.
The air campaign has focused almost solely on Islamic State targets. In one
important exception, the United States carried out strikes on Thursday against a
shadowy group of Qaeda operatives in northwestern Syria called the Khorasan
Group. The United States fired 47 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Khorasan leaders
on Sept. 23, the first night of the air war in Syria.
The main American focus of these strikes is Muhsin al-Fadhli, a senior Qaeda
operative who was close to Osama bin Laden, but his fate remained unclear.
American officials are cautious in assessing the fate of Mr. Fadhli and Mr.
Baghdadi, since past reports of their possible deaths in airstrikes proved
false.
In Syria, more than 70 percent of the airstrikes have been directed at ISIS
fighters in and around Kobani, an embattled Syrian town on the Turkish border
that has become symbolically important to both sides after American officials
initially said the town was strategically irrelevant.
Senior American commanders are preaching patience and warning against trying to
replay previous air campaigns on the shifting battlefield of Iraq.
“Every air campaign is different and can’t be a reflection of a past one,” said
Maj. Gen. Jeffrey G. Lofgren of the Air Force, the deputy commander of coalition
air forces in the Middle East. “A lot of people would like us to drop hundreds
of bombs and make the problem go away, but it’s not that kind of war.”
A version of this article appears in print on November 10, 2014, on page A1 of
the New York edition with the headline: Obstacles Limit Targets and Pace Of
Strikes on ISIS.
Obstacles Limit Targets and Pace of Strikes on
ISIS, NYT, 9.11.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/world/middleeast/
trouble-pinning-down-isis-targets-impedes-airstrikes.html
U.S. Airstrikes in Iraq Target ISIS Leaders
NOV. 8, 2014
The New York Times
By BEN HUBBARD
BAGHDAD — An airstrike by a United States-led coalition hit a
gathering of leaders of the Islamic State jihadist group in northwestern Iraq on
Saturday, and Iraqi officials said they believed that a number of top militants
had been killed.
An Iraqi security official and a military commander said that at least one
strike had targeted a meeting near the town of Qaim, which is in Anbar Province,
across the border from the Syrian town of Bukamal. The area is in the desert
heartland of the territory the group has seized for its self-declared caliphate.
Both officials said that the strikes had killed many militants from the Islamic
State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, including two of its regional governors.
Rumors also swirled that the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been
either wounded or killed. The officials said they had no confirmed information
about Mr. Baghdadi’s presence at the meeting.
A Defense Department official confirmed that coalition aircraft had carried out
an air attack “against what was assessed to be a gathering of ISIL leaders,”
adding that it had destroyed a convoy of 10 trucks. But the official said the
strike had been near Mosul, which is 180 miles from Qaim. The discrepancy in the
reported locations could not be immediately explained.
The official also said there had been no confirmation that Mr. Baghdadi was at
the meeting.
The United States and its allies have been carrying out airstrikes against the
Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria to try to loosen the group’s grip on
territory in both countries. President Obama has authorized the deployment of
1,500 more American troops to Iraq, roughly doubling the number of American
service members there to train and advise Iraqi and Kurdish forces.
While the air campaign has limited the movements of Islamic State fighters,
analysts say that the only way to push the group out of territory is with
capable ground troops, which are lacking in both Iraq and Syria.
The Iraqi officials said they believed that the dead included the Islamic State
ruler, or wali, of Anbar Province, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Muhannad
al-Sweidawi, and the ruler of Deir al-Zour Province in Syria, Abu Zahra
al-Mahamdi.
Hisham Alhashimi, an Iraqi researcher and an expert on the group, said that he
had also heard that both men were dead, and that their killings would constitute
a new threat to the group.
Mr. Alhashimi said that Mr. Sweidawi, like many of the group’s leaders, had
served in the Iraqi Army under Saddam Hussein and joined Al Qaeda after
Hussein’s fall. Like Mr. Baghdadi, he had been detained by American forces but
later released, Mr. Alhashimi said.
The Islamic State had no immediate comment on the strikes.
A version of this article appears in print on November 9, 2014, on page A18 of
the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Airstrikes Target Leaders Of ISIS
in Iraq.
U.S. Airstrikes in Iraq Target ISIS Leaders,
NYT, 8.11.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/world/middleeast/
us-airstrikes-in-iraq-target-isis-leaders.html
Obama Enlists 9 Allies
to Help in the Battle Against ISIS
SEPT. 5, 2014
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER
NEWPORT, Wales — President Obama escalated the American response
to the marauding Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Friday, recruiting at least
nine allies to help crush the organization and offering the outlines of a
coordinated military strategy that echoes the war on terror developed by his
predecessor, George W. Bush, more than a decade ago.
In his most expansive comments to date about how the United States and its
friends could defeat ISIS, a once-obscure group of Sunni militants that has now
upended the Middle East and overshadowed Al Qaeda, Mr. Obama said the effort
would rely on American airstrikes against its leaders and positions, strengthen
the moderate Syrian rebel groups to reclaim ground lost to ISIS, and enlist
friendly governments in the region to join the fight.
While the president’s aides maintained that he has not yet decided to authorize
airstrikes in Syria — which he has already done on a limited basis in Iraq — Mr.
Obama likened his developing strategy on ISIS to the American effort against Al
Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal regions, which has relied heavily on airstrikes.
The president commented on the battle against the Islamic State during a news
conference at the NATO summit in Wales.
Video Credit By Reuters on Publish Date September 5, 2014. Image CreditDoug
Mills/The New York Times
Mr. Obama has been under enormous pressure to articulate a way to counter ISIS,
which has proclaimed itself an Islamic caliphate that knows no borders and has
demonstrated ruthless behavior, including the videotaped beheadings of two
Americans. After creating a political tempest by saying last week that his
administration lacked a strategy, Mr. Obama sought on Friday to portray himself
as spearheading the effort.
But in so doing, the president risks further entangling the American military in
exactly the type of costly foreign conflict he has long sought to escape. And
his administration has been unable to explain how he can vanquish ISIS without
indirectly aiding President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, regarded by the
administration as an odious leader who must resign.
Nonetheless, Mr. Obama’s comments, made at the conclusion of a NATO summit
meeting here, were in effect a significant expansion of his earlier assessments
of the ISIS threat — simply by offering a direct comparison to the strategy
against Qaeda militants.
“You initially push them back, you systematically degrade their capabilities,
you narrow their scope of action, you slowly shrink the space, the territory
that they may control, you take out their leadership,” Mr. Obama said at a news
conference here. “And over time, they are not able to conduct the same kinds of
terrorist attacks as they once could.”
He said that “we are going to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL, the same way
that we have gone after Al Qaeda,” using an alternate acronym for ISIS. He drew
the analogy to Pakistan as an example of how the United States can go to war
against militants while limiting the number of American ground combat troops.
Mr. Obama spoke after aides had unveiled what Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel
called the “core coalition” to fight the ISIS militants, the outcome of a
hastily organized meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit talks. Diplomats
and defense officials from the United States, Britain, France, Australia,
Canada, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark huddled to devise a
two-pronged strategy: strengthening allies on the ground in Iraq and Syria,
while bombing Sunni militants from the air.
“There is no containment policy for ISIL,” Secretary of State John Kerry said at
the start of the meeting. “They’re an ambitious, avowed, genocidal,
territorial-grabbing, caliphate-desiring quasi state with an irregular army, and
leaving them in some capacity intact anywhere would leave a cancer in place that
will ultimately come back to haunt us.”
But he and other officials made clear that at the moment, any ground combat
troops would come from either Iraqi security forces and Kurdish pesh merga
fighters in Iraq, or the moderate Syrian rebels opposed to President Assad in
Syria. “Obviously I think that’s a red line for everybody here: no boots on the
ground,” Mr. Kerry said.
For Mr. Obama, assembling a coalition to fight ISIS is particularly important to
a president whose initial arrival on the global stage was centered around his
opposition to the war in Iraq. He is loath to be viewed as going it alone now
that he has been dragged back into a combat role in the same country.
“Getting sucked deeply back into another set of violent conflicts in the Middle
East runs against the grain and the very DNA of this administration,” said Brian
Katulis, a national security expert with the Center for American Progress, a
research organization with close ties to the Obama administration. “But the
stunning actions by ISIS this summer has been a wake-up call.”
Even as Mr. Obama is weighing airstrikes in Syria, he and his aides have been
questioning what to do afterward, especially since targeting ISIS in Syria will
help Mr. Assad.
An administration official said the reasons for assembling a coalition went
beyond any political cover that such an alliance might provide with a war-weary
American public. For one thing, the official said, certain countries bring
expertise, like Britain and Australia in special operations, Jordan in
intelligence and Saudi Arabia in financing.
American officials are hoping to expand the coalition to many countries,
particularly in the region. Obama administration officials said privately that
in addition to the participants at the meeting Friday, the United States was
hoping to get quiet intelligence help about the Sunni militants from Jordan. Its
leader, King Abdullah II, was attending the Wales summit meeting.
United States officials said they also expected Saudi Arabia to contribute to
funding moderate Syrian rebel groups. In addition, Yousef Al Otaiba, the United
Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States, said in a statement this week
that the Emirates stood ready to join the fight against ISIS. “No one has more
at stake than the U.A.E. and other moderate countries in the region that have
rejected the regressive Islamist creed and embraced a different, forward-looking
path,” the ambassador said.
Enlisting support from Sunni populations in Syria and Iraq is crucial, experts
said, because airstrikes alone will not suffice.
Matthew G. Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center in
Washington, sought to define more clearly what destroying ISIS would actually
mean on the ground.
"From a counterterrorism standpoint, understand that it doesn’t
mean eradicating every single person aligned with the group," Mr. Olsen said.
"We need to be realistic about that."
And like the comprehensive strategy to combat Al Qaeda that has taken years to
develop and carry out, Mr. Olsen and other counterterrorism officials said on
Friday that destroying the threat from ISIS could take a long time. Even if
successful, they said, such a strategy would require maintaining pressure on any
remnants of the group.
Administration officials said support for moderate rebels in Syria is critical.
This summer, President Obama set aside $500 million to train and support vetted
members of the moderate opposition to Mr. Assad. Officials say they expect
Congress to approve that request next month.
But even after that money is approved, American officials will face obstacles in
strengthening the Free Syrian Army, the moderates of choice for the United
States. “This is going to take months,” one Defense Department official said on
Friday.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
A version of this article appears in print on September 6, 2014, on page A1 of
the New York edition with the headline: Obama Recruits 9 Allied Nations to
Combat ISIS.
Obama Enlists 9 Allies to Help in the Battle
Against ISIS, NYT, 5.9.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/world/
middleeast/us-and-allies-form-coalition-against-isis.html
ISIS Says It Killed Steven Sotloff
After U.S. Strikes in Northern Iraq
SEPT. 2, 2014
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER
and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — An Islamic militant group released a video on
Tuesday showing the second beheading of an American hostage in two weeks and
blamed President Obama for the killing. The video raised the pressure on the
president to order military strikes on the group in its sanctuary in Syria.
The hostage, Steven J. Sotloff, is shown in the video kneeling like the previous
victim, James Foley, while a masked figure stands above, wielding a knife. Mr.
Sotloff addresses the camera and describes himself as “paying the price” for Mr.
Obama’s decision to strike the group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, in
northern Iraq.
The apparent murder of Mr. Sotloff, 31, came despite televised pleas from his
mother to the leader of ISIS seeking mercy for her son, a freelance journalist
who was captured in northern Syria a year ago. Although the administration said
it had not yet authenticated the video, members of Mr. Sotloff’s family issued a
statement saying they believed he had been killed.
The videotaped beheadings and threats by ISIS, which have followed its lightning
conquest of broad areas of Syria and Iraq, have transformed the group into one
of the most urgent threats facing a president who is also wrestling with crises
from Ukraine to Gaza.
The killing raises difficult questions for Mr. Obama, who last Friday said he
had not yet formulated a strategy for using military force against the militants
in Syria. As news of Mr. Sotloff’s death broke on Tuesday afternoon, just before
Mr. Obama left for a weeklong trip to Europe and a NATO summit meeting, the
White House struggled to deal with the implications for the president’s policy.
“If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American
journalist, and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends,” a
spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, said of the
video.
The exact timing of Mr. Sotloff’s killing was not clear. Many American
counterterrorism and intelligence officials had assumed that he died earlier —
probably killed, they said, at the same time that Mr. Foley was murdered two
weeks ago.
Yet the video, circulated by the SITE Intelligence Group, a research firm that
tracks jihadist online postings, showed Mr. Sotloff with a beard and thin hair
on his head. In the video of Mr. Foley’s death, Mr. Sotloff appeared almost
completely bald and had only stubble on his face.
This indicates that the videos were probably made at different times, as does an
apparent reference by the masked man to American airstrikes near the Iraqi town
of Amerli, which the military carried out last weekend. Mr. Obama did not
address the killing before leaving for Estonia, where he plans to reassure
Baltic NATO allies in the face of Russia’s incursions into Ukraine.
Administration officials said he did not want to speak before intelligence
agencies had authenticated the video.
White House officials said that Mr. Obama remained cautious about military
strikes in Syria and that he was focused for now on developing a strategy and
assembling a broad coalition of countries to deal with ISIS, one of several
combatants in Syria’s three-year-old civil war.
But the harrowing images of Americans with knives to their throats have given
the threat from ISIS an emotional resonance and stoked calls on Capitol Hill and
elsewhere for Mr. Obama to act more boldly. Some current and former
counterterrorism officials said that although Mr. Obama would be under
extraordinary pressure to retaliate, there were arguments against striking back.
“That pressure is often the enemy of good policy,” said Daniel J. Benjamin, a
former State Department counterterrorism coordinator and now a scholar at
Dartmouth College. “There will be a clamor for the president to take military
action, which may not be effective. If he conducts airstrikes and does not get
the desired effect, there’ll be pressure for more airstrikes, and then to put
boots on the ground.”
Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat and member of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, said he would introduce a bill giving Mr. Obama authority to order
airstrikes in Syria. Republicans and even some Democrats have criticized the
president’s admission last Friday that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for
combating ISIS there.
At the same time, some experts warned that it would be difficult to mount a
rescue mission like the one that Army Delta Force commandos tried in July, when
they raided an oil refinery near the Syrian city of Raqqa after receiving
information that American hostages, and possibly others, were being held there.
By the time the commandos arrived, the hostages were gone.
“The U.S. has been very successful on many occasions, but rescues, especially in
disputed areas like Syria, are not remotely a sure thing,” said Michael Leiter,
the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
As horrifying as this latest killing was, some former officials predicted that
it would have little effect on Mr. Obama’s deliberations.
“Steve Sotloff’s murder was anticipated,” said Steven Simon, a former director
on the National Security Council. “The unresolved issues relate to escalation
within Syria.” The farther west the United States strikes ISIS, he said, the
more it will be seen as intervening on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad in
the Syrian civil war.
On Tuesday evening, the White House announced that it had authorized a State
Department request for 350 additional troops in Iraq “to protect our diplomatic
facilities and personnel in Baghdad.” That would bring the number of American
armed forces in Iraq to more than 1,100.
“The additional joint forces will come from within the U.S. Central Command area
of operations and will include a headquarters element, medical personnel,
associated helicopters and an air liaison team,” the Pentagon said in a
statement.
The Sotloff video was staged much like the one with Mr. Foley. Mr. Sotloff,
wearing an orange jumpsuit, said: “Your foreign policy of intervention in Iraq
was supposed to be about the preservation of American lives and interests. So
why is it that I’m having to pay the price of your interference with my life?”
A masked fighter speaking in British-accented English — similar to the disguised
person in the Foley video — then declared, “I’m back, Obama, and I’m back
because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State.”
The video, titled “A Second Message to America,” ends with the masked figure
saying, “Just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will
continue to strike the necks of your people.”
The SITE group said ISIS was threatening to behead another captive, a Briton it
identified as David Cawthorne Haines. ISIS is currently holding two Americans
and three Britons, most of them aid workers.
Mr. Sotloff, a Florida native who wrote for Time magazine and other
publications, had reported on the convulsions of the Arab Spring for the last
few years. His capture by ISIS was largely kept a secret for months at the
request of his family.
Last Thursday, Mr. Sotloff’s mother, Shirley, appealed to the leader of ISIS,
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Muslim world, to grant
amnesty to her son. “I ask you to use your authority to spare his life,” she
said in videotaped remarks seen around the world.
A person close to the Sotloff family expressed outrage at what he viewed as a
pattern of deliberate leaks in Washington suggesting that Mr. Sotloff was killed
the same day as Mr. Foley — a strategy he said the family sees as an attempt to
absolve the administration of inaction.
“It was incredibly frustrating for us, because it was as if basically they were
saying, ‘Don’t hope for any positive outcome,’ ” said this person, who requested
anonymity because he did not have the family’s permission to speak publicly.
Rukmini Callimachi contributed reporting from Brussels, Rick Gladstone from New
York, and Julie Hirschfeld Davis from Tallinn, Estonia.
A version of this article appears in print on September 3, 2014, on page A1 of
the New York edition with the headline: ISIS Says It Killed Second American
Journalist After U.S. Strikes in Northern Iraq.
ISIS Says It Killed Steven Sotloff After U.S.
Strikes in Northern Iraq,
NYT, 2.9.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/world/middleeast/
steven-sotloff-isis-execution.html
Obama and the Warmongers
The Politics of the ISIS Threat
AUG. 31, 2014
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Columnist
We seem to be drifting inexorably toward escalating our fight
with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, as the Obama administration
mulls whether to extend its “limited” bombing campaign into Syria.
Part of the reasoning is alarm at the speed and efficiency with which ISIS — a
militant group President Obama described as “barbaric” — has made gains in
northern Iraq and has been able to wash back and forth across the Syrian border.
Part is because of the group’s ghastly beheading of the American journalist
James Foley — which Michael Morell, a former deputy director of the C.I.A.,
called “ISIS’s first terrorist attack against the United States” — and threats
to behead another.
But another part of the equation is the tremendous political pressure coming
from the screeching of war hawks and an anxious and frightened public, weighted
most heavily among Republicans and exacerbated by the right-wing media machine.
In fact, when the president tried to tamp down some of the momentum around more
swift and expansive military action by indicating that he had not decided how
best to move forward militarily in Syria, if at all, what Politico called an
“inartful phrase” caught fire in conservative circles. When responding to
questions, the president said, “We don’t have a strategy yet.”
His aide insisted that the phrase was only about how to move forward in Syria,
not against ISIS as a whole, but the latter was exactly the impression
conservatives moved quickly to portray.
It was a way of continuing to yoke Obama with the ill effects of a war started
by his predecessor and the chaos it created in that region of the world.
In fact, if you listen to Fox News you might even believe that Obama is
responsible for the creation of ISIS.
A few months ago, the Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro told her viewers that
“you need to be afraid” because of Obama’s fecklessness in dealing with ISIS,
adding this nugget:
“And the head of this band of savages is a man named Abu al-Baghdadi — the new
Osama bin Laden — a man released by Obama in 2009 who started ISIS a year
later.”
That would be extremely troubling, if true. But the fact-checking operation
PolitiFact rated it “false,” saying:
“The Defense Department said that the man now known as Baghdadi was released in
2004. The evidence that Baghdadi was still in custody in 2009 appears to be the
recollection of an Army colonel who said Baghdadi’s ‘face is very familiar.’
“Even if the colonel is right, Baghdadi was not set free; he was handed over to
the Iraqis who released him some time later. But, more important, the legal
contract between the United States and Iraq that guaranteed that the United
States would give up custody of virtually every detainee was signed during the
Bush administration.”
Fox, facts; oil, water.
But the disturbing reality is that the scare tactics are working. In July, a Pew
Research Center report found that most Americans thought the United States
didn’t have a responsibility to respond to the violence in Iraq.
According to a Pew Research Center report issued last week, however: “Following
the beheading of American journalist James Foley, two-thirds of the public (67
percent) cite ISIS as a major threat to the United States.”
The report said that 91 percent of Tea Party Republicans described ISIS as a
“major threat” as opposed to 65 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of
independents.
The report also said:
“Half of the sample was asked about ISIS and the other half was asked about the
broader threat of ‘Islamic extremist groups like Al Qaeda,’ which registered
similar concern (71 percent major threat, 19 percent minor threat, 6 percent not
a threat). Democrats were more likely to see global climate change than ISIS as
a major threat.
Americans were thrilled by our decision to exit Iraq when we did, but support
for that decision is dropping. In October 2011, Gallup asked poll respondents if
they approved or disapproved of Obama’s decision that year to “withdraw nearly
all United States troops from Iraq.” Seventy-five percent said they approved. In
June of this year, the approval rate had fallen to 61 percent.
Yet 57 percent still believe that it was a mistake to send troops to fight in
Iraq in the first place.
Now, Republicans are beginning to pull out the big gun — 9/11 — to further scare
the public into supporting more action. Senator Lindsey Graham has said on Fox
News that we must act to “stop another 9/11,” possibly a larger one, and
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has warned, “Sadly, we’re getting back to a
pre-9/11 mentality, and that’s very dangerous.”
Fear is in the air. The president is trying to take a deliberative approach, but
he may be drowned out by the drums of war and the chants for blood.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 1, 2014, on page A17 of
the New York edition with the headline:
Obama and the Warmongers.
Obama and the Warmongers, NYT, 31.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/opinion/
charles-blow-the-politics-of-the-isis-threat.html
U.S. and Iran
Unlikely Allies in Iraq Battle
AUG. 31, 2014
The New York Times
By TIM ARANGO
and AZAM AHMED
BAGHDAD — With American bombs raining down from the sky, Shiite
militia fighters aligned with Iran battled Sunni extremists over the weekend,
punching through their defenses to break the weekslong siege of Amerli, a
cluster of farming villages whose Shiite residents faced possible slaughter.
The fight in northern Iraq appeared to be the first time American warplanes and
militias backed by Iran had worked with a common purpose on a battlefield
against militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, even though the
Obama administration said there was no direct coordination with the militias.
Should such military actions continue, they could signal a dramatic shift for
the United States and Iran, which have long vied for control in Iraq. They could
also align the interests of the Americans with their longtime sworn enemies in
the Shiite militias, whose fighters killed many United States soldiers during
the long occupation of Iraq.
The latest expansion of American military operations reflects how
seriously Iraq has deteriorated since the withdrawal of American forces in 2011.
But any decision to support the Shiite militias, who have proven more adept than
the American-trained Iraqi Army, would come with its own set of challenges.
The militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were able to storm into
Iraq in recent months in part because Sunnis felt so disenfranchised by the
Shiite-led government of former Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. If the
United States is seen to be strengthening the hand of militias that terrorized
Sunnis during the sectarian war of 2006 and 2007, the minority Sunnis might balk
at participating in America’s long-term goal of a unity government.
Or, in a worst-case scenario, more Sunnis could align with ISIS fighters.
David Petraeus, a former top American military commander in Iraq who led the
United States troop surge in 2007, months ago warned against such possibilities
as the Obama administration, reeling from the fall of Iraq’s second largest
city, Mosul, weighed military action against ISIS.
“This cannot be the United States being the air force for Shia militias or a
Shia-on-Sunni Arab fight,” he said at a security conference in London in June.
“It has to be a fight of all of Iraq against extremists, who do happen to be
Sunni Arabs.”
The United States was careful to note on Sunday that it was working on Amerli
with its allies: regular Iraqi Army units and Kurdish security forces, which the
United States has been supporting with air power since President Obama
authorized airstrikes several weeks ago.
“Any coordinating with the Shiite militias was not done by us — it would have
been done by the ISF,” a senior administration official said on Sunday,
referring to the Iraqi Security Forces. But it is well known that the Shiite
militias have been fighting alongside the army in recent months as the threat
from ISIS became clear.
A second administration official, meanwhile, said the United States is not
working directly with Tehran. “We are working with the Iraqi government and with
the Kurdish pesh merga in Iraq,” the official said. “That’s it.”
Security officials on Sunday said that Amerli, a town about 105 miles north of
Baghdad whose estimated 15,000 residents are mostly Shiite Turkmen considered
infidels by ISIS, was not fully liberated but that the combined forces had
cleared several villages from the militants.
Last year ISIS exploited the chaos of the Syrian civil war to take control of
large expanses of territory there, before sweeping into Iraq, its birthplace, as
a greater force and erasing the border between the two countries. Its explosion
onto a turbulent region has threatened the breakup of Iraq and forced a
reluctant President Obama to re-engage more fully in the Middle East.
For overwhelmingly Shiite Iran, the rise of ISIS — and its aim of creating a
Sunni caliphate in the region — was alarming because of the possible threat to
Iran itself. The militants’ sudden successes also posed a more immediate threat
of further destabilizing two countries — Iraq and Syria — that have been close
to Tehran and helped it extend its power in the region.
In a reflection of the region’s increasingly tangled politics, the Obama
administration is considering taking the fight against ISIS to Syria.
The United States and Iran have opposite goals there: Iran has been an important
supporter of President Bashar al-Assad, while the United States has sought his
ouster by supporting moderate rebels. But any American military action against
ISIS in Syria could end up bolstering Mr. Assad — and furthering Iran’s regional
agenda.
Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, at one point went so far as to suggest the
United States and Iran might work together to stem the chaos in Iraq, but Iran’s
supreme leader seemed unenthusiastic about the idea, and on Saturday, Mr.
Rouhani said it would not be possible to cooperate in the fight against regional
terror groups. It was unclear if his unexpectedly harsh criticism of the United
States on Saturday was a sign of a change in attitude, or a political maneuver
to either quiet domestic critics or to give Tehran wiggle room in negotiations
over Iran’s nuclear program.
When President Obama first authorized airstrikes in Iraq several weeks ago, the
justification was to protect American civilians in Erbil, the Kurdish capital,
which was being threatened by ISIS fighters, and to support humanitarian aid
drops on Mount Sinjar, where thousands of Yazidis, members of an ancient
minority sect, had sought refuge from the advancing militants.
More recently, pressure had increased to help the besieged residents of Amerli,
as officials worried that ISIS would carry out a mass killing of civilians.
Besides the airstrikes, the United States also provided airdrops of food and
water to the thousands of besieged civilians there.
The Obama administration has tried to avoid being seen as taking sides in a
sectarian war, because the Shiite militias are especially feared by Iraq’s
Sunnis.
But for the weekend at least, the realities on the ground appeared to override
any concerns of effectively supporting the militias.
ISIS has been rampaging through Iraq, beheading prisoners, carrying out
massacres of Shiites and expelling hundreds of thousands of residents. The
Shiite militias have been accused of some recent abuses against Sunnis, but so
far have avoided large-scale revenge killings.
Among the militias fighting for Amerli are Asaib Ahl al-Haq, considered the most
fearsome of Iraq’s Shiite militias, and a group linked to the Shiite cleric
Moktada al-Sadr, one of the Americans’ most unyielding enemies during the
occupation. Those groups are supported by Iran.
Asaib, a militia that was a particularly fierce opponent of the United States as
it was winding down its military role in Iraq, was said to have taken on the
most prominent role in the fighting for Amerli, in Salahuddin Province.
“I would like to thank the jihadists from Asaib Ahl al-Haq, as they are
sacrificing their lives to save Amerli,” said Mahdi Taqi, a member of the
provincial council in Salahuddin.
Naeem al-Aboudi, the spokesman for Asaib, said, “today is a great happiness and
victory for all Iraqis. Iraqi security forces, volunteers and resistance
brigades have proved their ability to defeat ISIS.”
He played down the American role and said, “We don’t trust Americans at all.
They had already let down the Iraqi Army.” He added, of the Americans, “We don’t
need them.”
As night fell Sunday, the fighting was still raging in Qaryat Salam, a village
to the north of Amerli. At a makeshift forward base, set up amid
half-constructed homes and the hulk of a new soccer stadium, Kurdish pesh merga
forces fired a barrage of artillery, mortars and rockets. A line of trucks
roared into the area, their headlights smeared with mud to dull the brightness.
An assortment of Kurdish fighters, Iraqi Army soldiers and Shiite militia
members, who seemed to be working together in a highly coordinated way, passed
by.
Several Iranian military advisers were also seen, according to a pesh merga
fighter.
“We are cooperating with the pesh merga and other military forces,” said Abd
Kadum al-Mousaw, a militia fighter. “From each force there is a commander who is
a member of a higher committee that makes decisions.”
Pesh merga commanders said they had cleared about half of the village, but were
facing stiff resistance from the militants, “who were fighting like madmen.”
Tim Arango reported from Baghdad, and Azam Ahmed from Qaryat Salam, Iraq.
Reporting was contributed by Ali Hamza and Omar al-Jawoshy from Baghdad; an
employee of The New York Times from Sulaiman Bek, Iraq; and Helene Cooper from
Washington.
A version of this article appears in print on September 1, 2014, on page A1 of
the New York edition with the headline: U.S. and Iran Unlikely Allies in Iraq
Battle.
U.S. and Iran Unlikely Allies in Iraq Battle,
NYT, 31.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/world/middleeast/iraq.html
U.S. Strikes Militants
Besieging Turkmen in Iraq
AUG. 30, 2014
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER
WASHINGTON — American warplanes launched airstrikes on Sunni
militants who have been besieging the town of Amerli in northern Iraq on
Saturday, in a broadening of the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria.
The Pentagon announced the expanded strikes Saturday night. Rear Adm. John
Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said that American planes also airdropped
food, water and humanitarian aid to the town of Amerli, home to members of
Iraq’s Turkmen minority. The town of 12,000 has been under siege by the
militants for more than two months.
Aircraft from Australia, France and the United Kingdom joined the United States
in dropping the supplies, Admiral Kirby said in a statement.
Administration officials had characterized the dangers facing the Turkmen, who
are Shiite Muslims considered infidels by ISIS, as similar to the threat faced
by thousands of Yazidis, who were driven to Mount Sinjar in Iraq after attacks
by the militants. The United Nations special representative for Iraq, Nickolay
Mladenov, said last week that the situation in Amerli demanded “immediate action
to prevent the possible massacre of its citizens.”
Admiral Kirby said that the American military would “assess the effectiveness”
of the airstrikes and airdrops and work with international organizations to
provide humanitarian aid as needed.
A version of this article appears in print on August 31, 2014,
on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline:
U.S. Strikes Militants Besieging Turkmen in Iraq.
U.S. Strikes Militants Besieging Turkmen in
Iraq, NYT, 30.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/world/
middleeast/us-strikes-militants-besieging-turkmen-in-iraq.html
The Making of a Disaster
AUG. 25, 2014
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Columnist
Roger Cohen
LONDON — Almost 13 years after 9/11, a jihadi organization with a
murderous anti-Western ideology controls territory in Iraq and Syria, which are
closer to Europe and the United States than Afghanistan is. It commands
resources and camps and even a Syrian military base. It spreads its propaganda
through social media. It has set the West on edge through the recorded beheading
of the American journalist James Foley — with the promise of more to come.
What went wrong? The United States and its allies did not go to war to eradicate
Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan only to face — after the expenditure of so much
blood and treasure — a more proximate terrorist threat with a Qaeda-like
ideology. The “war on terror,” it seems, produced only a metastasized variety of
terror.
More than 500, and perhaps as many as 800, British Muslims have headed for Syria
and Iraq to enlist in the jihadi ranks. In France, that number stands at about
900. Two adolescent girls, 15 and 17, were detained last week in Paris and face
charges of conspiring with a terrorist organization. The ideological appeal of
the likes of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is intact. It may be
increasing, despite efforts to build an interfaith dialogue, reach out to
moderate Islam, and pre-empt radicalization.
“One minute you are trying to pay bills, the next you’re running around Syria
with a machine gun,” said Ghaffar Hussain, the managing director of the Quilliam
Foundation, a British research group that seeks to tackle religious extremism.
“Many young British Muslims are confused about their identity, and they buy into
a narrow framework that can explain events. Jihadists hand them a simplistic
narrative of good versus evil. They give them camaraderie and certainty. ISIS
makes them feel part of a grand struggle.”
A large part of Western failure has been the inability to counter the attraction
of such extremism. Perhaps racked with historical guilt, European nations with
populations from former colonies often seem unable to celebrate their values of
freedom, democracy and the rule of law. Meanwhile, in the Arab world the central
hope of the Arab Spring has been dashed: that more open and representative
societies would reduce the frustration that leads to extremism.
President Obama shunned the phrase “war on terror” to distance himself from the
policies of President George W. Bush. But in reality he chose to pursue the
struggle by other military means. He stepped up drone attacks on several fronts.
His most conspicuous success was the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011.
The curtain, it seemed, had fallen on America’s post-9/11 trauma. Then, a little
over three years after Bin Laden’s death, ISIS overran the Iraqi city of Mosul
and the world woke up to the radicalization through the festering Syrian war of
another generation of Muslims; youths drawn to the slaughter of infidels (as
well as Shiite Muslims) and the far-fetched notion of recreating an Islamic
caliphate under Shariah law. When a hooded ISIS henchman with a British accent
beheaded Foley last week, the new threat acquired urgency at last.
The list of American errors is long: Bush’s ill-conceived and bungled war in
Iraq; a failure to deal with the fact that two allies, Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan, have been major sources and funders of violent Sunni extremism; an
inability to seize opportunity in Egypt, home to nearly a quarter of the world’s
Arabs, and so demonstrate that Arab societies can evolve out of the radicalizing
confrontation of dictatorship and Islamism; a prolonged spate of dithering over
the Syrian war during which Obama declared three years ago that “the time has
come for President Assad to step aside” without having any plan to achieve that;
a lack of resolve in Syria that saw Obama set a red line on the use of chemical
weapons only to back away from military force when chemical weapons were used;
an inability to see that no one loves an Arab vacuum like jihadi extremists, and
a bloody vacuum was precisely what Obama allowed Syria to become; and
inattention, until it was too late, to festering sectarian conflict in a broken
Iraqi society left to its fate by a complete American withdrawal.
The chicken that came home to roost from the Syrian debacle is called ISIS. It
is not Al Qaeda. But, as the journalist Patrick Cockburn has noted, Al Qaeda “is
an idea rather than an organization, and this has long been the case.”
ISIS grew through American weakness — the setting of objectives and red lines in
Syria that proved vacuous. But the deepest American and Western defeat has been
ideological. As Hussain said, “If you don’t have a concerted strategy to
undermine their narrative, their values, their worldview, you are not going to
succeed. Everyone in society has to take on the challenge.”
A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 26, 2014,
on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline:
The Making of a Disaster.
The Making of a Disaster, NYT, 25.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/opinion/
roger-cohen-the-making-of-a-disaster.html
Response to Attack
Reflects Iraq’s Sectarian Divide
AUG. 23, 2014
The New York Times
By BEN HUBBARD
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s politicians were struggling to meet the
constitutional deadline to form a new government when, in an isolated village,
two masked men stepped into a Sunni mosque and opened fire on Friday, killing
dozens of worshipers.
Within hours, Sunni leaders said they were pulling out of the negotiations, and
the political process was suddenly jammed again by the same sectarian rifts that
have long bedeviled this country.
The formation of a new, inclusive government that could command some support
from both Sunnis and Shiites is widely seen as a vital first step in confronting
jihadists from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, who have stormed into Iraq,
seizing territory and taking control of major cities in the north and west.
President Obama has hailed the appointment of a new prime minister, Haider
al-Abadi, and many observers hope that Mr. Abadi will undo the policies of his
predecessor, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has been accused of marginalizing Iraq’s
Sunni minority and, in effect, opening the way for the advance of the Sunni
militant group.
But only a new government can undo those policies, which included the
revitalization of Shiite militias, the arrests of many Sunni men, and military
strikes on Sunni areas in which civilians were killed.
The problem here now, highlighted by the swift fallout from the mosque attack,
is that sectarian polarization has grown so deep that it could prevent such a
government from being formed.
Sunnis and Shiites tend to view many of the country’s most pressing issues
through profoundly different lenses, making compromise difficult. Shiite leaders
speak of ISIS as a terrorist threat that must be battled with all available
means. Some have even accused Sunni leaders of providing political cover for the
extremists.
“Politicians are responsible for the security collapse in some provinces,” Qais
al-Khazali, the head of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, the Shiite militia that may be the
most feared by Sunnis, said in a statement. “They are still in the stage of
being loyal to their parties, not to Iraq,” he said.
Sunni leaders also condemn ISIS, but they say that the group exploited a vacuum
that the government created by marginalizing their regions and abusing their
people.
“The only way to fight ISIS is to support the citizens who lost their dignity
and their rights under the old government,” said Ahmed al-Dulaimi, the governor
of Anbar Province, which is now largely held by ISIS.
Similar rifts were clear on Saturday as political leaders responded to the
attack that killed dozens of Sunni worshipers in a mosque in Diyala Province.
Salim al-Jibouri, the Sunni speaker of Parliament, called for political unity
and said the attack sought to “foil all the efforts that have been made to form
a government.”
The two gunmen who carried out the attack melted into the countryside afterward,
and their identities were not clear. But Mr. Jibouri and others appeared to
assume that they were Shiite militiamen. Mr. Jibouri said a committee had been
sent to investigate the attack and would report within two days. “As we condemn
what ISIS does, we also have to denounce what the militias are doing,” Mr.
Jibouri said.
By contrast, Shiite leaders blamed ISIS for the mosque attack. The radical
Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr called it “a clear sectarian escalation” and said
it had the “explicit touch of ISIS.”
The negotiations to form a new government were already fraught before the
attack, as Sunni politicians pushed demands that they considered necessary but
had little chance of being accepted. They included a halt to government shelling
and airstrikes on Sunni areas where ISIS is present; the withdrawal of Shiite
militias from predominantly Sunni cities; the release of Sunni detainees who
have not been convicted of crimes; the dismissal of criminal charges against a
number of Sunni politicians, which they call politically motivated; and the
cancellation of the law banning former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime from
holding government posts.
Foreign diplomats in Baghdad were concerned that those demands would prevent a
deal, and urged Sunni leaders to be more flexible.
Zaid al-Ali, a former legal adviser to the United Nations in Iraq and the author
of a book on Iraq’s future, said the American insistence on inclusive politics
was misguided. Iraq’s recent governments have included representatives from all
the major sects, he noted, “But this is not a solution — it has never translated
into the trickle-down politics that everyone assumed it would.”
Western officials in Baghdad acknowledge that a new government would be only a
first, modest step in a long process of necessary reform.
Highlighting the amount of distrust, many Sunnis immediately blamed the mosque
attack on Shiite militias.
“What happened was a mass execution in cold blood,” said a Sunni resident who
lives near the attacked mosque, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because he feared retribution. “That was a message to tell us that our time on
this land has finished.”
Abdul-Salam Hashim, a 55-year-old Sunni shopkeeper in Baghdad, said, “I’m with
any kind of revenge against this cowardly crime.” He added, “This is what Maliki
has left to Iraq, and it will not end easily.”
The Shiite militias, many of them originally formed to fight American forces,
were supported by Mr. Maliki and called back into service to fight ISIS. But
Sunnis consider them little more than gangs operating outside the law, and human
rights groups have accused them of killing and detaining Sunni civilians.
Even so, in many areas they have been the factor that halted ISIS’ advance, and
they are so embedded in the current political reality that even the
transportation minister, Hadi al-Amari, heads a powerful militia.
The leader of a local Shiite militia in the area near the mosque, Sheikh
Abdel-Samad al-Zarkoushi, struck out at those who want to disband his group,
saying it is necessary to fight ISIS.
“How can the politicians tell us what to do, when they don’t know what is
happening in our region?” said Sheikh Zarkoushi. “If I withdrew from the area,
that would be goodbye for everyone. ISIS would take it over in a few hours.”
The violence in Iraq continued on Saturday, with three car bombs exploding in
the northern city of Kirkuk, killing 21 people and wounding 100, security
officials said. Several more attacks were reported in other areas.
The American air campaign against ISIS targets in the north continued as well. A
vehicle operated by militants was destroyed near the Mosul Dam, according to the
American military’s Central Command. The newest attack brings to 94 the number
of American airstrikes since President Obama approved the mission; 61 have been
aimed at pushing back ISIS fighters near the dam.
While many Iraqis now expect little from the political process, they nonetheless
see it as the only avenue to fix the country.
Hamid al-Mutlaq, a Sunni member of Parliament from Anbar Province, compared
politicians like himself to a man drowning in the ocean who spots a piece of
wood.
“It might not save him, but he still tries to save himself,” Mr. Mutlaq said.
“That is what we are doing.”
A version of this article appears in print on August 24, 2014,
on page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Response to Attack
Reflects Iraq’s Sectarian Divide.
Response to Attack Reflects Iraq’s Sectarian
Divide, NYT, 23.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/world/middleeast/
response-to-attack-reflects-iraqs-sectarian-divide.html
Saudis Must Stop Exporting Extremism
ISIS Atrocities Started With Saudi Support for Salafi Hate
AUG. 22, 2014
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor
By ED HUSAIN
ALONG with a billion Muslims across the globe, I turn to Mecca in
Saudi Arabia every day to say my prayers. But when I visit the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina, the resting place of the Prophet Muhammad, I am forced to
leave overwhelmed with anguish at the power of extremism running amok in Islam’s
birthplace. Non-Muslims are forbidden to enter this part of the kingdom, so
there is no international scrutiny of the ideas and practices that affect the 13
million Muslims who visit each year.
Last week, Saudi Arabia donated $100 million to the United Nations to fund a
counterterrorism agency. This was a welcome contribution, but last year, Saudi
Arabia rejected a rotating seat on the United Nations Security Council. This
half-in, half-out posture of the Saudi kingdom is a reflection of its inner
paralysis in dealing with Sunni Islamist radicalism: It wants to stop violence,
but will not address the Salafism that helps justify it.
Let’s be clear: Al Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram, the
Shabab and others are all violent Sunni Salafi groupings. For five decades,
Saudi Arabia has been the official sponsor of Sunni Salafism across the globe.
Most Sunni Muslims around the world, approximately 90 percent of the Muslim
population, are not Salafis. Salafism is seen as too rigid, too literalist, too
detached from mainstream Islam. While Shiite and other denominations account for
10 percent of the total, Salafi adherents and other fundamentalists represent 3
percent of the world’s Muslims.
Unlike a majority of Sunnis, Salafis are evangelicals who wish to convert
Muslims and others to their “purer” form of Islam — unpolluted, as they see it,
by modernity. In this effort, they have been lavishly supported by the Saudi
government, which has appointed emissaries to its embassies in Muslim countries
who proselytize for Salafism. The kingdom also grants compliant imams V.I.P.
access for the annual hajj, and bankrolls ultraconservative Islamic
organizations like the Muslim World League and World Assembly of Muslim Youth.
After 9/11, under American pressure, much of this global financial support dried
up, but the bastion of Salafism remains strong in the kingdom, enforcing the
hard-line application of outdated Shariah punishments long abandoned by a
majority of Muslims. Just since Aug. 4, 19 people have been beheaded in Saudi
Arabia, nearly half for nonviolent crimes.
We are rightly outraged at the beheading of James Foley by Islamist militants,
and by ISIS’ other atrocities, but we overlook the public executions by
beheading permitted by Saudi Arabia. By licensing such barbarity, the kingdom
normalizes and indirectly encourages such punishments elsewhere. When the
country that does so is the birthplace of Islam, that message resonates.
I lived in Saudi Arabia’s most liberal city, Jidda, in 2005. That year, in an
effort to open closed Saudi Salafi minds, King Abdullah supported dialogue with
people of other religions. In my mosque, the cleric used his Friday Prayer
sermon to prohibit such dialogue on grounds that it put Islam on a par with
“false religions.” It was a slippery slope to freedom, democracy and gender
equality, he argued — corrupt practices of the infidel West.
This tension between the king and Salafi clerics is at the heart of Saudi
Arabia’s inability to reform. The king is a modernizer, but he and his advisers
do not wish to disturb the 270-year-old tribal pact between the House of Saud
and the founder of Wahhabism (an austere form of Islam close to Salafism). That
1744 desert treaty must now be nullified.
The influence that clerics wield is unrivaled. Even Saudis’ Twitter heroes are
religious figures: An extremist cleric like Muhammad al-Arifi, who was banned
last year from the European Union for advocating wife-beating and hatred of
Jews, commands a following of 9. 4 million. The kingdom is also patrolled by a
religious police force that enforces the veil for women, prohibits young lovers
from meeting and ensures that shops do not display “indecent” magazine covers.
In the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the religious police beat women with
sticks if they stray into male-only areas, or if their dress is considered
immodest by Salafi standards. This is not an Islam that the Prophet Muhammad
would recognize.
Salafi intolerance has led to the destruction of Islamic heritage in Mecca and
Medina. If ISIS is detonating shrines, it learned to do so from the precedent
set in 1925 by the House of Saud with the Wahhabi-inspired demolition of
1,400-year-old tombs in the Jannat Al Baqi cemetery in Medina. In the last two
years, violent Salafis have carried out similar sectarian vandalism, blowing up
shrines from Libya to Pakistan, from Mali to Iraq. Fighters from Hezbollah have
even entered Syria to protect holy sites.
Textbooks in Saudi Arabia’s schools and universities teach this brand of Islam.
The University of Medina recruits students from around the world, trains them in
the bigotry of Salafism and sends them to Muslim communities in places like the
Balkans, Africa, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Egypt, where these Saudi-trained
hard-liners work to eradicate the local, harmonious forms of Islam.
What is religious extremism but this aim to apply Shariah as state law? This is
exactly what ISIS (Islamic State) is attempting do with its caliphate. Unless we
challenge this un-Islamic, impractical and flawed concept of trying to govern by
a rigid interpretation of Shariah, no amount of work by a United Nations agency
can unravel Islamist terrorism.
Saudi Arabia created the monster that is Salafi terrorism. It cannot now
outsource the slaying of this beast to the United Nations. It must address the
theological and ideological roots of extremism at home, starting in Mecca and
Medina. Reforming the home of Islam would be a giant step toward winning against
extremism in this global battle of ideas.
Ed Husain is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council
on Foreign Relations and a senior adviser to the Tony Blair Faith
Foundation.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 23, 2014,
on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline:
Saudis Must Stop Exporting Extremism.
Saudis Must Stop Exporting Extremism, NYT,
22.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/opinion/
isis-atrocities-started-with-saudi-support-for-salafi-hate.html
U.S. Weighs Direct Military Action
Against ISIS in Syria
AUG. 22, 2014
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER
and MICHAEL D. SHEAR
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is debating a more robust
intervention in Syria, including possible American airstrikes, in a significant
escalation of its weeks-long military assault on the Islamic extremist group
that has destabilized neighboring Iraq and killed an American journalist,
officials said Friday.
While President Obama has long resisted being drawn into Syria’s bloody civil
war, officials said recent advances by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria had
made clear that it represents a threat to the interests of the United States and
its allies. The beheading of James Foley, the American journalist, has
contributed to what officials called a “new context” for a challenge that has
long divided the president’s team.
Officials said the options include speeding up and intensifying limited American
efforts to train and arm moderate Syrian rebel forces that have been fighting
both ISIS as well as the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Another option
would be to bolster other partners on the ground to take on ISIS, including the
Syrian Kurds.
But American officials said they would also take a look at airstrikes by fighter
jets and bombers as well as potentially sending Special Operations forces into
Syria, like those who tried to rescue Mr. Foley and other hostages on a mission
in July. One possibility officials have discussed for Iraq that could be
translated to Syria would be a series of unmanned drone strikes targeting ISIS
leaders, much like those conducted in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
Whether Mr. Obama would actually authorize a new strategy remained unclear and
aides said he has not yet been presented with recommendations. The president has
long expressed skepticism that more assertive action by the United States,
including arming Syrian rebels as urged in 2011 by Hillary Rodham Clinton, then
the secretary of state, would change the course of the civil war there. But he
sent out a top adviser on Friday to publicly hint at the possibility a day after
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said ISIS could not be defeated
without going after it in Syria.
“If you come after Americans, we’re going to come after you, wherever you are,”
Benjamin J. Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser, told
reporters in Martha’s Vineyard, where Mr. Obama is on a much-interrupted
vacation. “We’re actively considering what’s going to be necessary to deal with
that threat and we’re not going to be restricted by borders.”
American operations against ISIS in Syria would expand the scope and goals of
the military intervention Mr. Obama ordered in Iraq two weeks ago. At the time,
the president said he authorized airstrikes to defend American personnel and
prevent the genocide of religious minorities threatened by ISIS.
But he has also ordered strikes to help Iraq’s government reclaim control of the
vital Mosul Dam from ISIS. Sending American warplanes or drones to cross the
border into Syria would mean that he was now taking on the mission of degrading
or even crippling ISIS, which has established what it calls an Islamic caliphate
on a wide band of territory across the two countries.
“Common sense suggests you need to hit them in Syria,” said Steven Simon, a
former White House adviser to Mr. Obama on the Middle East. “Everyone
understands well enough that you can’t defeat an insurgency that has a
cross-border safe haven, so you have to do something.”
Critics of the original Iraq intervention said escalating into Syria would
represent exactly the kind of mission creep they warned against.
“We’ve seen this movie before and we know how it ends,” said Stephen Miles,
advocacy director of Win Without War, a national coalition formed to oppose the
2003 invasion of Iraq ordered by President George W. Bush. “Unfortunately, we
see at the end of the day it’s almost always the case that the extremists are
emboldened. We play into their hands by giving them what they want, which is a
battle with the West.”
An expanded intervention into Syria would represent a striking turnaround for a
president who has opposed such a move before, and some administration officials
therefore doubt that he will agree. From the start of the Syrian civil war, Mr.
Obama’s response has been marked by a pattern of heightened public statements
and indications of stepped-up involvement, followed by far less action than
suggested.
At one point, Mr. Obama declared Mr. Assad had to “step aside” and at another he
laid down a “red line” against any use of chemical weapons. But the president
rejected the 2011 proposal backed by Mrs. Clinton to arm and train small groups
of vetted rebels, fearful that the weapons could fall into the wrong hands.
Just a year ago, he vowed to retaliate against Syria for using
chemical weapons on civilians, only to abruptly reverse himself and ask Congress
to decide whether to go forward. He then pivoted again to embrace a Russian plan
to remove Syria’s chemical weapons without taking military action. The episode
was widely seen as damaging Mr. Obama’s credibility, but the joint
Russian-American initiative recently finished destroying all of Syria’s
chemicals, achieving the goal the president set.
Mr. Obama eventually approved a limited effort to arm and train vetted rebels
and this summer asked Congress for another $500 million to help, but lawmakers
are unlikely to act until next year and the flow of current aid has been so
tightly controlled that some rebel leaders have said it seemed designed less to
turn the tide of war than to keep them alive — while creating an impression that
the United States is helping.
As recently as two weeks ago, Mr. Obama rejected the notion that arming the
rebels earlier would have made a difference, saying that has “always been a
fantasy.” He said the administration had difficulty finding, training and arming
a sufficient cadre of secular Syrians. “There’s not as much capacity as you
would hope,” he said.
What is now under consideration would be a different goal: not to punish Mr.
Assad’s government or to further his ouster but to cripple ISIS. As it happens,
that would actually work in Mr. Assad’s favor, since ISIS has been one of the
most effective of the various factions fighting Syrian government forces. But it
might be more directly in the interest of the United States, given the threat
posed by an ISIS caliphate whose brutality was captured in the video image of a
masked man beheading Mr. Foley.
“Given what’s happened to Jim Foley, given the public profile that this ISIS
bunch has taken, I think it’s easier for the president, and for that matter for
members of Congress, to make the case to the public that the United States
really ought to be operating in the skies over Syria against this particular
group,” said Frederic Hof, a former Syria adviser in Mr. Obama’s State
Department.
American officials had long worried about the dangers from Westerners fighting
in Syria, including about 100 Americans, returning home to carry out attacks
here. As of this spring, ISIS was viewed as an immediate threat to the region
and a potential threat to the continental United States. But the intelligence
community concluded that ISIS did not yet have the capability to strike here.
In recent months, however, concerns over ISIS’s capability to attack American
personnel and interests in the region have increased as the group swept into
northern Iraq. Fears of threats to the United States itself have also increased,
mainly because of reports of growing collaboration between ISIS and Al Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula, which has the most sophisticated bombmaker in the
militant world and a demonstrated willingness to attack the United States.
Peter Baker reported from Washington and Michael D. Shear from Edgartown, Mass.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Williamsburg, Va., and Mark Landler from
Washington.
A version of this article appears in print on August 23, 2014,
on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline:
Officials Say U.S. Is Considering Action in Syria.
U.S. Weighs Direct Military Action Against
ISIS in Syria, NYT, 22.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/world/middleeast/
obama-adviser-says-military-action-possible-against-isis.html
Death by Terror
James Foley’s Execution
and the Question of Ransom
AUG. 21, 2014
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Editorial
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The reaction to the terrible death of James Foley, the freelance
journalist kidnapped and executed by Islamist extremists, comes in stages. First
and foremost is the grief at the cruel death of a brave reporter who knowingly
risked his life to tell a critical story.
Then comes horror at the sadism of the executioner, whose accent spoke of years
spent in London. Could he be one of the many young foreigners who have joined
the ranks of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, attracted by the perverse
romance of “holy war?”
Finally there’s the chilling knowledge that this is neither the first nor the
last time we must witness the horror of a hostage kneeling before masked
executioners. Seizing hostages for revenge, to terrorize, to make a political
statement or to exact ransom has become a standard weapon in the arsenal of
terrorists, leaving no journalist, humanitarian worker or traveler in a conflict
zone immune.
All these motives appear to have figured in the fate of Mr. Foley. He was
captured in Syria in November 2012, and before he was killed ISIS reportedly
demanded 100 million euros ($132 million) in ransom, following Al Qaeda’s
practice in recent years of raising funds by abducting foreigners. But no money
was paid for Mr. Foley, and a special operation failed to find him.
After the United States began airstrikes against ISIS forces in Iraq earlier
this month, the group shifted to the infamous practices of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, who was known as “Sheikh of the Slaughterers”
for the many foreign captives he decapitated. The masked man with the British
accent who killed Mr. Foley said he was doing it in retaliation for the American
airstrikes; at the end of the video that was released, he is shown holding
another captive American freelance journalist, Steven Sotloff, as he says, “The
life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision.”
There will be those who argue that the United States is somehow responsible for
Mr. Foley’s death, either by refusing to pay a ransom or by bombing ISIS. But
the history of political kidnapping suggests this is too simple. Kidnappings
have been a staple of guerrilla warfare since they were popularized by Latin
American revolutionaries in the 1970s, as has been the debate over whether to
pay ransom. The United Nations estimated that about $30 million was paid out in
ransom for political kidnappings in Latin America in 1973 alone.
The practice was exported around the world and especially to the Middle East,
where many hostages, including journalists, were seized over the past decades.
More recently, ransom income has played a major role in financing the Qaeda
network — a recent report by Rukmini Callimachi in The Times found that more
than 50 hostages have been seized by Al Qaeda over the past five years, and many
have been ransomed for substantial sums paid by European governments.
Still, there have been changes in recent years. First is the cruelty of
kidnapping foreigners purely to post their executions online. The beheading of
Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, by a top Qaeda operative in 2002
revealed the viciousness of the Islamic fanatics, a cruelty raised to new levels
by ISIS. Second, while journalists are by no means the only victims — many more
humanitarian and government workers have been seized — the death of Mr. Foley
and the threat to Mr. Sotloff point to the special danger faced by the freelance
reporters who have become more numerous in war zones with the proliferation of
Internet news sites. Without the resources, credentials or experience of
established news organizations, freelancers are often at greater risk in
conflict zones.
There is no simple answer on whether to submit to terrorist extortion. The
United States and Britain refuse to pay ransoms, and there is evidence that
hostage takers target victims based on the potential for a payout. If everyone
refused to pay, terrorists might not have had the incentive to turn kidnapping
into an industry. At a Group of 8 summit meeting last year, Western countries
agreed not to make ransom payments, but some European governments continue the
practice.
In the meantime, we can honor the many brave journalists, aid workers and civil
servants who risk their lives in conflict zones, and grieve for Mr. Foley and
the many others who have lost their freedom or their lives.
A version of this editorial appears in print on August 22, 2014, on page A22 of
the New York edition with the headline:
Death by Terror.
Death by Terror, NYT, 21.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/22/opinion/
james-foleys-execution-and-the-question-of-ransom.html
ISIS Pressed for Ransom
Before Killing Journalist
AUG. 20, 2014
The New York Times
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Kneeling in the dirt in a desert somewhere in the Middle East,
James Foley lost his life this week at the hands of the Islamic State in Iraq
and Syria. Before pulling out the knife used to decapitate him, his masked
executioner explained that he was killing the 40-year-old American journalist in
retaliation for the recent United States’ airstrikes against the terror group in
Iraq.
In fact, until recently, ISIS had a very different list of demands for Mr.
Foley: The group pressed the United States to provide a multimillion-dollar
ransom for his release, according to a representative of his family and a former
hostage held alongside him. The United States — unlike several European
countries that have funneled millions to the terror group to spare the lives of
their citizens — refused to pay.
The issue of how to deal with ISIS, which like many terror groups now routinely
trades captives for large cash payments, is acute for the Obama administration
because Mr. Foley was not the lone American in its custody. ISIS is threatening
to kill at least three others it holds if its demands remain unmet, The New York
Times has confirmed through interviews with recently released prisoners, family
members of the victims and mediators attempting to win their freedom.
Sensitive to growing criticism that it had not done enough, the
White House on Wednesday revealed that a United States Special Operations team
tried and failed to rescue Mr. Foley — a New Hampshire native who disappeared in
Syria on Nov. 22, 2012 — as well as the other American hostages during a secret
mission this summer. Mr. Obama said the United States would not retreat until it
had eliminated the “cancer” of ISIS from the Middle East.
ISIS also appears determined to increase the pressure on Washington. It has now
threatened to kill a second of its hostages, Steven J. Sotloff, a freelance
journalist for Time magazine who was being held alongside Mr. Foley.
In the video uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday, the screen goes dark after Mr.
Foley is decapitated. Then the ISIS fighter is seen holding Mr. Sotloff in the
same landscape of barren dunes, wearing an orange jumpsuit and his hands cuffed
behind his back. “The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next
decision.”
Along with the three Americans, ISIS is holding citizens of Britain, which like
the United States has declined to pay ransoms, former hostages confirmed. The
terror group has sent a laundry list of demands for the release of the
foreigners, starting with money but also prisoner swaps, including the
liberation of Aafia Siddiqui, an M.I.T.-trained Pakistani neuroscientist with
ties to Al Qaeda currently incarcerated in a prison in Texas. The policy of not
making concessions to terrorists and not paying ransoms has put the United
States and Britain at odds with other European allies, who have routinely paid
significant sums to win the release of their nationals — including four French
and three Spanish hostages who were released this year after money was delivered
through an intermediary, according to two of the victims and their colleagues.
Kidnapping Europeans has become the main source of revenue for Al Qaeda and its
affiliates, which have earned at least $125 million in ransom payments in the
past five years alone, according to an investigation by The Times. Although ISIS
was recently expelled from Al Qaeda and abides by different rules, recently
freed prisoners said that their captors were well aware of what ransoms had been
paid on behalf of European nationals held by Qaeda affiliates as far afield as
Africa, indicating that they were hoping to abide by the same business plan.
While government and counterterrorism officials insist that paying ransoms only
perpetuates the problem, the policy has meant that captured Americans have
little chance of being released. A handful succeeded in running away, and even
fewer were rescued in special operations. The rest are either held indefinitely
— or else killed.
In an opinion article for Reuters, David Rohde, a columnist for the news service
and a former foreign correspondent for The Times who was kidnapped by the
Taliban, said that the uneven approach to ransoms may have cost Mr. Foley his
life.
“The payment of ransoms and abduction of foreigners must emerge from the
shadows. It must be publicly debated,” wrote Mr. Rohde, who escaped his yearlong
custody of the Taliban only when he climbed out a window and freed himself.
“American and European policy makers should be forced to answer for their
actions.”
Mr. Foley, a freelance videographer and reporter for GlobalPost and Agence
France-Presse, went missing 21 months ago in a town 25 miles south of the
Turkish border. According to Nicole Tung, a close friend and fellow
photojournalist, who gave an account of Mr. Foley’s activities before his
capture, he had spent weeks in Syria documenting the country’s spiral into civil
war, narrowly avoiding a falling tank shell. The normally calm reporter — who
had come under fire in Afghanistan and had been kidnapped a year earlier in
Libya — was rattled.
As the Thanksgiving holiday approached in 2012, he contacted Ms. Tung, and they
made plans to meet for a few days across the border in Turkey. When Mr. Foley
did not show up at the hotel at 5 p.m. as planned, Ms. Tung began calling his
cellphone, finally reaching his translator.
The man explained that Mr. Foley had stopped at an Internet cafe to file his
last images in Binesh, Syria. Soon after, armed men sped up behind his car and
forced Mr. Foley out at gunpoint.
“I was sitting on the bed, in this depressing, dark hotel; the fact that the
fixer answered the phone — when Jim was not answering his — was the cue that
something had gone terribly wrong,” said Ms. Tung, who immediately contacted Mr.
Foley’s family and editors.
Across the ocean at his home in Cambridge, Mass., the chief executive and
co-founder of GlobalPost, Philip Balboni, reached for his Blackberry and had a
terrible sense of foreboding: The email informing him of Mr. Foley’s abduction
was almost an exact replay of the horror his staff had endured a year earlier,
when Mr. Foley was kidnapped with three others by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s
forces in Libya.
“We had joked that we needed to take away his passport,” Mr. Balboni said
Wednesday. “I don’t want to say it was déjà vu, but in a way, it was,” he added.
“It just turns your life upside down — in one way, I knew what was coming, but I
did not know the fullness of it.”
When he was executed this week, Mr. Foley became the second Western reporter to
be killed by Islamic extremists since 2002, when Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street
Journal reporter, was beheaded by a top Qaeda operative. Mr. Pearl’s murder was
praised by a leading ideologue in a how-to manual that promoted the tactic of
kidnapping foreigners. Since then, the terror network has turned to abducting
Westerners to finance itself — seizing more than 50 foreigners in the past five
years, almost all of whom were released after their governments paid sizable
ransoms, according to a review of the known cases by The Times.
However, in Iraq, where ISIS was founded, commanders grabbed foreigners for the
sole purpose of killing them. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in
Iraq, became known as the “Sheikh of the Slaughterers” because he personally
decapitated his foreign captives.
He created his own execution style, forcing his victims to don orange jumpsuits
— a mocking reference to prisoners held at the United States’ detention center
in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. So brutal, frequent and graphic were the killings that
the then-No. 2 of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, wrote to Mr. Zarqawi advising him
to quit the graphic executions and just shoot the prisoners instead.
Mr. Zarqawi’s Iraq-based fighters regrouped in Syria in 2011, where they
eventually rebranded themselves as ISIS. Their tactics proved so brutal that Al
Qaeda formally expelled them from the terror network this year.
However, in regard to kidnapping, ISIS’s tactics initially appeared to be in
line with that of other Qaeda branches.
Before Mr. Foley was killed, his ISIS captors asked for a $100 million ransom,
according to a representative of the family and a man held alongside Mr. Foley.
(The Foley family has not responded to requests for comment.)
Once the United States authorized airstrikes in Iraq this month, it appears that
ISIS took a leaf out of the book of its founding father: They forced Mr. Foley
to wear the telltale orange jumpsuit, and beheaded him on camera — a horrifying
ode to the “Sheikh of the Slaughterers,” who himself was killed by United States
forces in Iraq in 2006.
The eldest of five children from Rochester, N.H., Mr. Foley graduated from
Marquette University in 1996 with a history degree. He joined Teach for America
that year, working at an elementary school in Phoenix, officials with the
organization said. In 2008, he earned a master’s degree from the Medill School
of Journalism at Northwestern University.
“He was so clear on what he wanted to do,” said Ellen Shearer, a professor who
taught Mr. Foley at Medill.
Unlike most freelancers who often take sizable risks without the safety net of
an established news organization, Mr. Foley found a second family at GlobalPost,
which paid a security firm millions of dollars to try to find him, Mr. Balboni
said.
After his fortuitous release in Libya, GlobalPost brought him back to Boston,
where he spent a stint as an editor, but it did not last long.
“When you are touched by being in a war, you can’t get rid of it,” said Mr.
Balboni, a veteran reporter as well as a former Vietnam War Army officer.
Mr. Foley was remembered by colleagues for his courage — to some a bravery that
he took to its extreme. Yet at the time of his capture, Ms. Tung said, the tank
shell explosion in Syria had spooked him, and he was looking for some time off.
“It landed close enough to feel like it was time to get out,” she said.
His colleagues point to the remarkable bravery he displays in his final moments
as a testament to the man he was: Looking straight at the camera, Mr. Foley’s
face is concentrated. When the jihadist lifts the knife to his throat, and pulls
his head back, he does not try to pull away.
Mitch Smith contributed reporting from Chicago,
Michael D. Shear from Edgartown, Mass., and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
A version of this article appears in print on August 21, 2014,
on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline:
ISIS Pressed for Ransom Before Killing Journalist.
ISIS Pressed for Ransom Before Killing
Journalist, NYT, 20.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/world/middleeast/
isis-pressed-for-ransom-before-killing-journalist.html
Capitalizing on U.S. Bombing,
Kurds Retake Iraqi Towns
AUG. 10, 2014
The New York Times
By ROD NORDLAND
and HELENE COOPER
GWER, Iraq — With American strikes beginning to show clear
effects on the battlefield, Kurdish forces counterattacked Sunni militants in
northern Iraq on Sunday, regaining control of two strategic towns with aid from
the air.
The American airstrikes, carried out by drones and fighter jets, were intended
to support the Kurdish forces fighting to defend Erbil, the capital of the Iraqi
Kurdistan region, according to a statement by the United States Central Command.
They destroyed three military vehicles being used by the militant group, the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and damaged others, the statement said, adding
that the warplanes also destroyed a mortar position.
The wreckage of three heavily armed trucks lay twisted and scorched in Gwer, one
of the recaptured towns, a few hours after the strikes, and body parts from at
least three militants were scattered nearby. Kurdish militiamen, known as pesh
merga, confirmed seeing the airstrikes, and celebrated Sunday afternoon near the
still-smoldering wrecks.
The American air support encouraged the Kurdish militiamen to reverse the
momentum of the recent fighting and retake Gwer and the other town, Mahmour,
both within a half-hour’s drive of Erbil, according to Gen. Helgurd Hikmet, head
of the pesh merga’s media office. General Hikmet said some pesh merga fighters
had pushed on beyond the two towns, which lie on the frontier between the Arab
and Kurdish areas of Iraq.
The developments came as political tensions mounted in Baghdad. Prime Minister
Nuri Kamal al-Maliki went on state television early Monday and redoubled his
demands for a new term.
American air power in the north also appeared to alter the situation at Mount
Sinjar, where members of the Yazidi ethnic and religious minority have been
driven into rough country by an ISIS dragnet. Four American airstrikes on the
extremists surrounding the mountain on Saturday, along with airdrops of food,
water and supplies, helped Yazidi and Kurdish fighters beat back militants and
open a path for thousands of Yazidis to escape the siege. The escapees made
their way on Sunday through Syrian territory to Fishkhabour, an Iraqi border
town under Kurdish control.
Tens of thousands more Yazidis remain trapped on the mountain, and American
officials cautioned that the limited airstrikes alone could not open a corridor
to safety for them. Neither, they said, would the American airstrikes be the
decisive factor in the fight to stop ISIS.
“This is a focused effort, not a wider air campaign,” said Col. Ed Thomas,
spokesman for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey.
“It’s important to understand that our military objectives are limited in
purpose.”
President Obama and other American officials have said that more ambitious
American support would be predicated on the Iraqi political leadership breaking
a long deadlock and appointing a new prime minister, one who would head a more
inclusive government than the Shiite-dominated administration of Mr. Maliki, and
who could reach a political settlement with Iraq’s disaffected Sunni population.
But the political crisis deepened at midnight Sunday as a deadline expired for
President Fouad Massoum to choose a nominee for prime minister. Mr. Maliki
angrily accused Mr. Massoum of violating the Constitution by not choosing him.
“I will complain to the federal court,” Mr. Maliki said.
One senior Iraqi official said that overnight Mr. Maliki had also positioned
more tanks and extra units of special forces soldiers loyal to him in the
fortified Green Zone of government buildings in Baghdad. The official said Mr.
Maliki had “gone out of his mind, and lives on a different planet — he doesn’t
appreciate the mess he has created.” A Kurdish news agency reported that
presidential guards were “on high alert to protect the presidential palace,” and
the capital swirled with rumors about what might happen next.
In Washington late Sunday, a senior administration official said that the United
States had not confirmed reports of abrupt military movements in Baghdad,
including rumors that tanks had surrounded the presidential palace, but that it
would monitor the situation closely.
Though the American airstrikes have been narrow in scope, their effects were on
clear display Sunday. “For sure, the airstrikes have buoyed the spirits of the
fighters and the civilians, and they’re all very happy,” said Dick Naab, a
retired American colonel who acts as an informal adviser to the pesh merga.
Pesh merga forces retook Gwer around midday, pushing through the center and
methodically searching for snipers, stragglers and booby traps that ISIS might
have left behind. The main threat turned out to be north of the town. In three
spots a mile apart, ISIS had concealed trucks of a type used by the Iraqi Army,
mounted with machine guns.
According to pesh merga accounts, when those trucks emerged around 3 p.m. from
hiding places in farmhouses and barns near the highway in an apparent attempt to
attack the Kurds from the rear, American jet fighter-bombers streaked in and
blew up the trucks with cannon fire and bombs.
“With the support of the Air Force of the United States, we are winning now,”
said Taha Ahmed, a Kurdish volunteer fighter and an activist with the Kurdish
Democratic Party.
Both Gwer and Mahmour are about 20 miles from Erbil, and advances by the
militants last week briefly panicked residents in Erbil, which had been regarded
as a safe haven. The American airstrikes seemed to have quickly restored
confidence, with international flights into Erbil resuming after a pause, and
business returning to normal.
Still, a State Department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said Sunday that some staff
members from the consulate in Erbil had been relocated to Basra, in southern
Iraq, and Amman, Jordan, because of the security situation.
Mr. Maliki once enjoyed American support, becoming prime minister in 2006
largely because of its backing. Now, though, his government is buckling under
the assault from ISIS, and much of his support among the parties representing
Iraq’s Shiite majority has turned away, including some members of his own bloc,
State of Law. American officials have been working behind the scenes to oust
him.
Brett McGurk, the senior State Department official on Iraq policy, posted on
Twitter: “Fully support President of #Iraq Fuad Masum as guarantor of the
Constitution and a PM nominee who can build a national consensus.”
The political machinations in Baghdad mattered little in the north, where the
Kurdish region is largely autonomous. Truckloads of cheering pesh merga fighters
cruised the highway between Erbil and the battle front on Sunday, and when word
spread in Gwer about the airstrikes here, fighters and civilians gathered, many
of them taking celebratory photographs in front of the smoldering trucks.
“Your country has saved the Kurds twice,” said Yassin Mustafa Ahmed, a farmer
from Gwer who had fled the militant takeover, referring to the no-fly zone
imposed in 1991 and the American invasion in 2003. “Now you have to save us
again.”
American military officials were uncomfortable with that view, and cautioned on
Sunday that there were no plans to expand the air campaign.
At Mount Sinjar, Pentagon officials said, breaking the siege would require a
longer ground campaign by the Yazidis, Kurds and others fighting ISIS, and the
strikes were only a start. Establishing a corridor to get the Yazidi civilians
to safety could take days or weeks, they said.
A senior Obama administration official said Sunday that the escape of some
Yazidis through Syria was an “ad hoc” effort by the refugees, and that the
American military had not directly helped clear the way. The official said it
was not seen as a significant part of a solution for rescuing the Yazidis on the
mountain; rather, Iraqi and Kurdish forces would have to get them to safety.
Rod Nordland reported from Gwer, Iraq, and Helene Cooper from Washington.
Reporting was contributed by Alissa J. Rubin from Dohuk, Iraq; Tim Arango and
Omar Al-Jawoshy from Baghdad; Michael D. Shear from Edgartown, Mass.; Michael R.
Gordon from Darwin, Australia; and Thom Shanker and Elena Schneider from
Washington.
A version of this article appears in print on August 11, 2014,
on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Kurds Capitalize on U.S.
Bombing, Retaking Towns.
Capitalizing on U.S. Bombing, Kurds Retake
Iraqi Towns, NYT, 10.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/11/world/middleeast/iraq.html
U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of a Rebel
Baghdadi of ISIS Pushes an Islamist Crusade
AUG. 10, 2014
The New York Times
By TIM ARANGO and ERIC SCHMITT
BAGHDAD — When American forces raided a home near Falluja during
the turbulent 2004 offensive against the Iraqi Sunni insurgency, they got the
hard-core militants they had been looking for. They also picked up an apparent
hanger-on, an Iraqi man in his early 30s whom they knew nothing about.
The Americans duly registered his name as they processed him and the others at
the Camp Bucca detention center: Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry.
That once-peripheral figure has become known to the world now as Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi, the self-appointed caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
and the architect of its violent campaign to redraw the map of the Middle East.
“He was a street thug when we picked him up in 2004,” said a Pentagon official
who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. “It’s
hard to imagine we could have had a crystal ball then that would tell us he’d
become head of ISIS.”
At every turn, Mr. Baghdadi’s rise has been shaped by the United States’
involvement in Iraq — most of the political changes that fueled his fight, or
led to his promotion, were born directly from some American action. And now he
has forced a new chapter of that intervention, after ISIS’ military successes
and brutal massacres of minorities in its advance prompted President Obama to
order airstrikes in Iraq.
Mr. Baghdadi has seemed to revel in the fight, promising that ISIS would soon be
in “direct confrontation” with the United States.
Still, when he first latched on to Al Qaeda, in the early years of the American
occupation, it was not as a fighter, but rather as a religious figure. He has
since declared himself caliph of the Islamic world, and pressed a violent
campaign to root out religious minorities, like Shiites and Yazidis, that has
brought condemnation even from Qaeda leaders.
Despite his reach for global stature, Mr. Baghdadi, in his early 40s, in many
ways has remained more mysterious than any of the major jihadi figures who
preceded him.
American and Iraqi officials have teams of intelligence analysts and operatives
dedicated to stalking him, but have had little success in piecing together the
arc of his life. And his recent appearance at a mosque in Mosul to deliver a
sermon, a video of which was distributed online, was the first time many of his
followers had ever seen him.
Mr. Baghdadi is said to have a doctorate in Islamic studies from a university in
Baghdad, and was a mosque preacher in his hometown, Samarra. He also has an
attractive pedigree, claiming to trace his ancestry to the Quraysh Tribe of the
Prophet Muhammad.
Beyond that, almost every biographical point about Mr. Baghdadi is occluded by
some confusion or another.
The Pentagon says that Mr. Baghdadi, after being arrested in Falluja in early
2004, was released that December with a large group of other prisoners deemed
low level. But Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi scholar who has researched Mr.
Baghdadi’s life, sometimes on behalf of Iraqi intelligence, said that Mr.
Baghdadi had spent five years in an American detention facility where, like many
ISIS fighters now on the battlefield, he became more radicalized.
Mr. Hashimi said that Mr. Baghdadi had grown up in a poor family in a farming
village near Samarra, and that his family was Sufi — a strain of Islam known for
its tolerance. He said Mr. Baghdadi had come to Baghdad in the early 1990s, and
over time became more radical.
Early in the insurgency, he gravitated toward a new jihadi group led by the
flamboyant Jordanian militant operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Though Mr.
Zarqawi’s group, Al Qaeda in Iraq, began as a mostly Iraqi insurgent
organization, it claimed allegiance to the global Qaeda leadership, and over the
years brought in more and more foreign leadership figures.
It is unclear how much prominence Mr. Baghdadi enjoyed under Mr. Zarqawi. Bruce
Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer now at the Brookings
Institution, recently wrote that Mr. Baghdadi had spent several years in
Afghanistan, working alongside Mr. Zarqawi. But some officials say the American
intelligence community does not believe Mr. Baghdadi has ever set foot outside
the conflict zones of Iraq and Syria, and that he was never particularly close
to Mr. Zarqawi.
The American operation that killed Mr. Zarqawi in 2006 was a huge blow to the
organization’s leadership. But it was years later that Mr. Baghdadi got his
chance to take the reins.
As the Americans were winding down their war in Iraq, they focused on trying to
wipe out Al Qaeda in Iraq’s remaining leadership. In April 2010, a joint
operation by Iraqi and American forces made the biggest strike against the group
in years, killing its top two figures near Tikrit.
A month later, the group issued a statement announcing new leadership, and Mr.
Baghdadi was at the top of the list. The Western intelligence community
scrambled for information.
“Any idea who these guys are?” an analyst at Stratfor, a private intelligence
company that then worked for the American government in Iraq, wrote in an email
that has since been released by WikiLeaks. “These are likely nom de guerres, but
are they associated with anyone we know?”
In June 2010, Stratfor published a report on the group that considered its
prospects in the wake of the killings of the top leadership. The report stated,
“the militant organization’s future for success looks bleak.”
Still, the report said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq, then an
alternative name for Al Qaeda in Iraq, “I.S.I.’s intent to establish an Islamic
caliphate in Iraq has not diminished.”
The Sunni tribes of eastern Syria and Iraq’s Anbar and Nineveh Provinces have
long had ties that run deeper than national boundaries, and ISIS was built on
those relationships. Accordingly, as the group’s fortunes waned in Iraq, it
found a new opportunity in the fight against Bashar al-Assad’s government in
Syria.
As more moderate Syrian rebel groups were beaten down by the Syrian security
forces and their allies, ISIS increasingly took control of the fight, in part on
the strength of weapons and funding from its operations in Iraq and from
jihadist supporters in the Arab world.
That fact has led American lawmakers and political figures, including former
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to accuse President Obama of aiding
ISIS’ rise in two ways: first by completely withdrawing American troops from
Iraq in 2011, then by hesitating to arm more moderate Syrian opposition groups
early in that conflict.
“I cannot help but wonder what would have happened if we had committed to
empowering the moderate Syrian opposition last year,” Representative Eliot L.
Engel, the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said during a
recent hearing on the crisis in Iraq. “Would ISIS have grown as it did?”
But well before then, American actions were critical to Mr. Baghdadi’s rise in
more direct ways. He is Iraqi to the core, and his extremist ideology was
sharpened and refined in the crucible of the American occupation.
The American invasion presented Mr. Baghdadi and his allies with a ready-made
enemy and recruiting draw. And the American ouster of Saddam Hussein, whose
brutal dictatorship had kept a lid on extremist Islamist movements, gave Mr.
Baghdadi the freedom for his radical views to flourish.
In contrast to Mr. Zarqawi, who increasingly looked outside Iraq for leadership
help, Mr. Baghdadi has surrounded himself by a tight clique of former Baath
Party military and intelligence officers from the Hussein regime who know how to
fight.
Analysts and Iraqi intelligence officers believe that after Mr. Baghdadi took
over the organization he appointed a Hussein-era officer, a man known as Hajji
Bakr, as his military commander, overseeing operations and a military council
that included three other officers of the former regime’s security forces.
Hajji Bakr was believed to have been killed last year in Syria. Analysts believe
that he and at least two of the three other men on the military council were
held at various times by the Americans at Camp Bucca.
“He has credibility because he runs half of Iraq and half of Syria,” said Brian
Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New American Foundation.
Syria may have been a temporary refuge and proving ground, but Iraq has always
been his stronghold and his most important source of financing. Now, it has
become the main venue for Mr. Baghdadi’s state-building exercise, as well.
Although the group’s capture of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, appeared to
catch the American intelligence community and the Iraqi government by surprise,
Mr. Baghdadi’s mafia-like operations in the city had long been crucial to his
strategy of establishing the Islamic caliphate.
His group earned an estimated $12 million a month, according to American
officials, from extortion schemes in Mosul, which it used to finance operations
in Syria. Before June, ISIS controlled neighborhoods of the city by night,
collecting money and slipping in to the countryside by day.
The United Nations Security Council is considering new measures aimed at
crippling the group’s finances, according to Reuters, by threatening sanctions
on supporters. Such action is likely to have little effect because, by now, the
group is almost entirely self-financing, through its seizing oil fields,
extortion and tax collection in the territories it controls. As it gains
territory in Iraq, it has found new ways to generate revenue. For instance,
recently in Hawija, a village near Kirkuk, the group demanded that all former
soldiers or police officers pay an $850 “repentance fine.”
Though he has captured territory through brutal means, Mr. Baghdadi has also
taken practical steps at state-building, and even shown a lighter side. In
Mosul, ISIS has held a “fun day” for kids, distributed gifts and food during Eid
al-Fitr, held Quran recitation competitions, started bus services and opened
schools.
Mr. Baghdadi appears to be drawing on a famous jihadi text that has long
inspired Al Qaeda: “The Management of Savagery,” written by a Saudi named Abu
Bakr Naji.
Mr. Fishman called the text, “Che Guevara warmed over for jihadis.” William
McCants, an analyst at the Brookings Institution who in 2005, as a fellow at
West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, translated the book in to English, once
described it as “the seven highly effective habits of jihadi leaders.”
American officials say Mr. Baghdadi runs a more efficient organization than Mr.
Zarqawi did, and has unchallenged control over the organization, with authority
delegated to his lieutenants. “He doesn’t have to sign off on every detail,”
said one senior United States counterterrorism official. “He gives them more
discretion and flexibility.”
A senior Pentagon official said of Mr. Baghdadi, with grudging admiration: “He’s
done a good job of rallying and organizing a beaten-down organization. But he
may now be overreaching.”
But even before the civil war in Syria presented him with a growth opportunity,
Mr. Baghdadi had been taking steps in Iraq — something akin to a corporate
restructuring — that laid the foundation for the group’s resurgence, just as the
Americans were leaving. He picked off rivals through assassinations,
orchestrated prison breaks to replenish his ranks of fighters and diversified
his sources of funding through extortion, to wean the group off outside funding
from Al Qaeda’s central authorities.
“He was preparing to split from Al Qaeda,” Mr. Hashimi said.
Now Mr. Baghdadi commands not just a terrorist organization, but, according to
Brett McGurk, the top State Department official on Iraq policy, “a full blown
army.”
Speaking at a recent congressional hearing, Mr. McGurk said, “it is worse than
Al Qaeda.”
Tim Arango reported from Baghdad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Omar
al-Jawoshy contributed reporting from Baghdad; Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon;
and Karam Shoumali from Istanbul.
A version of this article appears in print on August 11, 2014,
on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline:
U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of a Rebel.
U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of a Rebel,
NYT, 10.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/11/world/
middleeast/us-actions-in-iraq-fueled-rise-of-a-rebel.html
Obama Says Iraq Airstrike Effort
Could Be ‘Long-Term’
AUG. 9, 2014
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
WASHINGTON — President Obama sought to prepare Americans for an
extended presence in the skies over Iraq, telling reporters on Saturday that the
airstrikes he ordered this week could go on for months as Iraqis try to build a
new government.
“I don’t think we’re going to solve this problem in weeks,” Mr. Obama said
before leaving for a two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. “This is going to
be a long-term project.”
The president repeated his insistence that the United States would not send
ground combat troops back to Iraq. But he pledged that it and other countries
would stand with the Iraqi leaders against militants if they built an inclusive
government in the months ahead.
Mr. Obama said that the “initial goal” of the military intervention was to
protect Americans in the country and to help the Iraqi minorities stranded on
Sinjar Mountain. “We’re not moving our embassy anytime soon,” he said. “We are
going to maintain vigilance and ensure that our people are safe.”
But he said the broader effort was intended to help Iraqis meet the threat from
the militants over the long term. “The most important time table that I’m
focused on right now is the Iraqi government getting formed and finalized,” the
president said before boarding Marine One.
Mr. Obama described for the first time a more complicated effort to rescue
Iraqis stranded on Sinjar Mountain, saying that the American military and others
might have to create a safe corridor down the mountain. “The next step, which is
going to be complicated logistically, is how can we give people safe passage,”
Mr. Obama said.
He suggested that helping those people make it to safety would take time. He
also said that getting an inclusive Iraqi government formed, and giving all
Iraqis a reason to believe that they are represented by that government, would
help give Iraqi military forces a reason to fight back against the militants.
“There has to be a rebuilding and an understanding of who it is the Iraqi
security forces are reporting to, what they are fighting for,” he added.
Once that happens, Mr. Obama suggested, the American military, working with the
Iraqi and Kurdish fighters, can “engage in some offense.”
The president said the military did not immediately required additional funding
from Congress to conduct the airstrikes and humanitarian assistance that he had
ordered. But he said that could change.
“If and when we need additional dollars,” he said, “then we will certainly make
that request.”
Obama Says Iraq Airstrike Effort Could Be
‘Long-Term’, NYT, 9.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/world/middleeast/
us-airstrikes-on-militants-in-iraq.html
A World Desperate for a Little Good News
AUG. 8, 2014
The New York Times
SundayReview | Quick History
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
“The world is too much with us,” wrote the poet, a sentiment
President Obama most likely shared this past week as he reluctantly ordered
warplanes back over Iraq. As he did so, another Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire
ended in resumed bombardment, Vladimir V. Putin defiantly ordered his own
sanctions against the West and a terrible virus spread farther through West
Africa.
A president who has taken great pains to pull the United States out of the
world’s squabbles, Mr. Obama made no effort to conceal his distress at being
pulled back in, for even a limited mission to protect minorities. “I will not
allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq,” Mr.
Obama said on Thursday night. But the old “slippery slope” cliché figured in
more than one analysis of his decision.
Still, the markets somehow managed to find a hopeful note in a world that seemed
totally out of tune. Though Russia was reported to be massing troops on the
Ukrainian border, and the government imposed a ban on most food imports from the
United States and its allies, American stocks rallied on Friday when the
secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai P. Patrushev, said in an
interview that “Russia will continue to make all efforts for a very fast
de-escalation of tensions.”
That “continue” carried the dubious suggestion that Russia had been making such
efforts all along, but the fact that the markets latched on to the secretary’s
statement testified 1) to the predominance of the Ukraine crisis over the Middle
East in the minds of market strategists, and 2) that “the market is really tired
of receiving one negative news item after another, and so is on the lookout for
something positive,” as the Citigroup economist Ivan Tchakarov told Bloomberg.
Dragged Back Into Iraq
Following Mr. Obama’s authorization of the first significant military operation
in Iraq since he pulled American ground troops out in 2011, the Air Force
reported on Friday that two United States F-18 fighter jets had dropped
500-pound laser-guided bombs onto an artillery target near Erbil, the Kurdish
capital.
Mr. Obama’s hand in Iraq was forced by ISIS, the fanatical Islamic State in Iraq
and Syria, and its advance in northern Iraq against the Kurds, reliable American
allies who have maintained a modicum of order in their semiautonomous region.
Thousands of Yazidis — an oft-persecuted religious minority — fled to remote
Mount Sinjar, where they were stranded without food or water.
ISIS was left in control of a two-mile-wide hydroelectric dam on the Tigris
River notorious for its structural instability. Even if ISIS did nothing,
officials said, leaving the dam unattended could lead to its collapse, sending a
65-foot-high wall of water through Mosul.
Though Mr. Obama said he had ordered the strikes to protect American personnel,
the fact that he did so only when the Kurds became threatened — and not earlier
in the year when ISIS seized FallujaH? and marched through Mosul and on toward
Baghdad — was bound to raise questions. One explanation was in Baghdad’s Green
Zone, where Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki continued to resist all demands
that he go away. The failure of Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, to include Sunnis, Kurds
and others in a government of national unity is widely blamed for the disarray
that made it possible for ISIS to rout the Iraqi Army. Even his lieutenants have
urged Mr. Maliki to step down. But having made innumerable enemies, he is said
to be demanding immunity and a security detail paid for by the state.
Mr. Obama has insisted that there is “no American military solution” to the
mess, and he no doubt hoped that limited strikes would enable Iraqis to turn the
tables on ISIS. But what if they fail? Will he be forced to further action?
Israeli Fire, Russian Threat
Faith in military solutions, however, seemed to prevail in the fight between
Israel and Hamas. No sooner had a 72-hour truce expired than rockets began to
rain on southern Israel, and Israeli warplanes and naval vessels opened up on
targets in Gaza. The pause in hostilities had been the longest since they broke
out on July 8.
The Palestinians insist that the blockade of Gaza be lifted, and about 100
prisoners held by Israel be freed, if there is to be a truce. The Israelis
insist that Hamas disarm. The Egyptians have been trying to get both sides to
lower their demands, and to leave more complex issues for subsequent talks.
In the meantime, the Palestinian death toll stands at almost 1,900, mostly
civilians, while Israel has lost 64 soldiers and three civilians.
On the Ukrainian front, forces loyal to Kiev continued tightening their ring
around Donetsk, the seat of secessionists armed by Russia.
There was no evidence that Mr. Putin was prepared to back down. On the contrary,
his prime minister, Dmitri A. Medvedev, announced on Thursday, in retaliation
against Western sanctions, a one-year ban on many food imports from the United
States, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Norway — a move that is likely
to reduce food supplies and raise inflation in Russia. So far, his efforts to
“de-escalate tensions,” to use Mr. Patrushev’s words, have consisted of
insisting that Kiev stop attacking the rebels and that the West stop helping
Kiev. And there remains the chilling possibility that Mr. Putin could send
troops into eastern Ukraine on a “humanitarian mission” to the besieged denizens
of Donetsk.
Ebola Spreads in Africa
Wars were not the only scourge making the news last week. With the death toll
from an outbreak of the Ebola virus approaching 1,000 in West Africa, the World
Health Organization on Friday declared an international public health emergency.
And Doctors Without Borders called for a “massive deployment” of medical workers
to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the countries hit worst by the outbreak.
The Ebola virus causes a severe and often fatal illness, and while some drugs
are being tested, there is no vaccine or treatment yet available to prevent or
cure the disease. The virus is caught through close contact with the bodily
fluids of infected people or animals.
Because it is not “spread through the air,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the W.H.O.’s
head of health security, it can be contained.
Serge Schmemann is a member of the editorial board of The New York Times.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 10, 2014,
on page SR2 of the National edition with the headline:
A World Desperate for a Little Good News.
A World Desperate for a Little Good News, NYT,
8.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/
a-world-desperate-for-a-little-good-news.html
Obama on the World
President Obama Talks to Thomas L. Friedman
About Iraq, Putin and Israel
AUG. 8, 2014
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Columnist
President Obama’s hair is definitely grayer these days, and no
doubt trying to manage foreign policy in a world of increasing disorder accounts
for at least half of those gray hairs. (The Tea Party can claim the other half.)
But having had a chance to spend an hour touring the horizon with him in the
White House Map Room late Friday afternoon, it’s clear that the president has a
take on the world, born of many lessons over the last six years, and he has
feisty answers for all his foreign policy critics.
Obama made clear that he is only going to involve America more deeply in places
like the Middle East to the extent that the different communities there agree to
an inclusive politics of no victor/no vanquished. The United States is not going
to be the air force of Iraqi Shiites or any other faction. Despite Western
sanctions, he cautioned, President Vladimir Putin of Russia “could invade”
Ukraine at any time, and, if he does, “trying to find our way back to a
cooperative functioning relationship with Russia during the remainder of my term
will be much more difficult.” Intervening in Libya to prevent a massacre was the
right thing to do, Obama argued, but doing it without sufficient follow-up on
the ground to manage Libya’s transition to more democratic politics is probably
his biggest foreign policy regret.
At the end of the day, the president mused, the biggest threat to America — the
only force that can really weaken us — is us. We have so many things going for
us right now as a country — from new energy resources to innovation to a growing
economy — but, he said, we will never realize our full potential unless our two
parties adopt the same outlook that we’re asking of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds or
Israelis and Palestinians: No victor, no vanquished and work together.
“Our politics are dysfunctional,” said the president, and we should heed the
terrible divisions in the Middle East as a “warning to us: societies don’t work
if political factions take maximalist positions. And the more diverse the
country is, the less it can afford to take maximalist positions.”
While he blamed the rise of the Republican far right for extinguishing so many
potential compromises, Obama also acknowledged that gerrymandering, the
Balkanization of the news media and uncontrolled money in politics — the guts of
our political system today — are sapping our ability to face big challenges
together, more than any foreign enemy. “Increasingly politicians are rewarded
for taking the most extreme maximalist positions,” he said, “and sooner or
later, that catches up with you.”
I began by asking whether if former Secretary of State Dean Acheson was “present
at the creation” of the post-World War II order, as he once wrote, did Obama
feel present at the “disintegration?”
“First of all, I think you can’t generalize across the globe because there are a
bunch of places where good news keeps coming.” Look at Asia, he said, countries
like Indonesia, and many countries in Latin America, like Chile. “But I do
believe,” he added, “that what we’re seeing in the Middle East and parts of
North Africa is an order that dates back to World War I starting to buckle.”
But wouldn’t things be better had we armed the secular Syrian rebels early or
kept U.S. troops in Iraq? The fact is, said the president, in Iraq a residual
U.S. troop presence would never have been needed had the Shiite majority there
not “squandered an opportunity” to share power with Sunnis and Kurds. “Had the
Shia majority seized the opportunity to reach out to the Sunnis and the Kurds in
a more effective way, [and not] passed legislation like de-Baathification,” no
outside troops would have been necessary. Absent their will to do that, our
troops sooner or later would have been caught in the crossfire, he argued.
With “respect to Syria,” said the president, the notion that arming the rebels
would have made a difference has “always been a fantasy. This idea that we could
provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially
an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and
that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a
well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah,
that was never in the cards.”
Even now, the president said, the administration has difficulty finding,
training and arming a sufficient cadre of secular Syrian rebels: “There’s not as
much capacity as you would hope.”
The “broader point we need to stay focused on,” he added, “is what we have is a
disaffected Sunni minority in the case of Iraq, a majority in the case of Syria,
stretching from essentially Baghdad to Damascus. ... Unless we can give them a
formula that speaks to the aspirations of that population, we are inevitably
going to have problems. ... Unfortunately, there was a period of time where the
Shia majority in Iraq didn’t fully understand that. They’re starting to
understand it now. Unfortunately, we still have ISIL [the Islamic State in Iraq
and the Levant], which has, I think, very little appeal to ordinary Sunnis.” But
“they’re filling a vacuum, and the question for us has to be not simply how we
counteract them militarily but how are we going to speak to a Sunni majority in
that area ... that, right now, is detached from the global economy.”
Is Iran being helpful? “I think what the Iranians have done,” said the
president, “is to finally realize that a maximalist position by the Shias inside
of Iraq is, over the long term, going to fail. And that’s, by the way, a broader
lesson for every country: You want 100 percent, and the notion that the winner
really does take all, all the spoils. Sooner or later that government’s going to
break down.”
The only states doing well, like Tunisia, I’ve argued, have done so because
their factions adopted the principle of no victor, no vanquished. Once they did,
they didn’t need outside help.
“We cannot do for them what they are unwilling to do for themselves,” said the
president of the factions in Iraq. “Our military is so capable, that if we put
everything we have into it, we can keep a lid on a problem for a time. But for a
society to function long term, the people themselves have to make decisions
about how they are going to live together, how they are going to accommodate
each other’s interests, how they are going to compromise. When it comes to
things like corruption, the people and their leaders have to hold themselves
accountable for changing those cultures.... ... We can help them and partner
with them every step of the way. But we can’t do it for them.”
So, I asked, explain your decision to use military force to protect the refugees
from ISIL (which is also known as ISIS) and Kurdistan, which is an island of
real decency in Iraq?
“When you have a unique circumstance in which genocide is threatened, and a
country is willing to have us in there, you have a strong international
consensus that these people need to be protected and we have a capacity to do
so, then we have an obligation to do so,” said the president. But given the
island of decency the Kurds have built, we also have to ask, he added, not just
“how do we push back on ISIL, but also how do we preserve the space for the best
impulses inside of Iraq, that very much is on my mind, that has been on my mind
throughout.
“I do think the Kurds used that time that was given by our troop sacrifices in
Iraq,” Obama added. “They used that time well, and the Kurdish region is
functional the way we would like to see. It is tolerant of other sects and other
religions in a way that we would like to see elsewhere. So we do think it’s
important to make sure that that space is protected, but, more broadly, what
I’ve indicated is that I don’t want to be in the business of being the Iraqi air
force. I don’t want to get in the business for that matter of being the Kurdish
air force, in the absence of a commitment of the people on the ground to get
their act together and do what’s necessary politically to start protecting
themselves and to push back against ISIL.”
The reason, the president added, “that we did not just start taking a bunch of
airstrikes all across Iraq as soon as ISIL came in was because that would have
taken the pressure off of [Prime Minister Nuri Kamal] al-Maliki.” That only
would have encouraged, he said, Maliki and other Shiites to think: " ‘We don’t
actually have to make compromises. We don’t have to make any decisions. We don’t
have to go through the difficult process of figuring out what we’ve done wrong
in the past. All we have to do is let the Americans bail us out again. And we
can go about business as usual.’ ”
The president said that what he is telling every faction in Iraq is: “We will be
your partners, but we are not going to do it for you. We’re not sending a bunch
of U.S. troops back on the ground to keep a lid on things. You’re going to have
to show us that you are willing and ready to try and maintain a unified Iraqi
government that is based on compromise. That you are willing to continue to
build a nonsectarian, functional security force that is answerable to a civilian
government. ... We do have a strategic interest in pushing back ISIL. We’re not
going to let them create some caliphate through Syria and Iraq, but we can only
do that if we know that we’ve got partners on the ground who are capable of
filling the void. So if we’re going to reach out to Sunni tribes, if we’re going
to reach out to local governors and leaders, they’ve got to have some sense that
they’re fighting for something.” Otherwise, Obama said, “We can run [ISIL] off
for a certain period of time, but as soon as our planes are gone, they’re coming
right back in.”
“It is amazing to see what Israel has become over the last several decades,” he
answered. “To have scratched out of rock this incredibly vibrant, incredibly
successful, wealthy and powerful country is a testament to the ingenuity, energy
and vision of the Jewish people. And because Israel is so capable militarily, I
don’t worry about Israel’s survival. ... I think the question really is how does
Israel survive. And how can you create a State of Israel that maintains its
democratic and civic traditions. How can you preserve a Jewish state that is
also reflective of the best values of those who founded Israel. And, in order to
do that, it has consistently been my belief that you have to find a way to live
side by side in peace with Palestinians. ... You have to recognize that they
have legitimate claims, and this is their land and neighborhood as well.”
Asked whether he should be more vigorous in pressing Israel’s prime minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas,
also known as Abu Mazen, to reach a land-for-peace deal, the president said, it
has to start with them. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “poll numbers are a lot
higher than mine” and “were greatly boosted by the war in Gaza,” Obama said.
“And so if he doesn’t feel some internal pressure, then it’s hard to see him
being able to make some very difficult compromises, including taking on the
settler movement. That’s a tough thing to do. With respect to Abu Mazen, it’s a
slightly different problem. In some ways, Bibi is too strong [and] in some ways
Abu Mazen is too weak to bring them together and make the kinds of bold
decisions that Sadat or Begin or Rabin were willing to make. It’s going to
require leadership among both the Palestinians and the Israelis to look beyond
tomorrow. ... And that’s the hardest thing for politicians to do is to take the
long view on things.”
Clearly, a lot of the president’s attitudes on Iraq grow out the turmoil
unleashed in Libya by NATO’s decision to topple Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, but not
organize any sufficient international follow-on assistance on the ground to help
them build institutions. Whether it is getting back into Iraq or newly into
Syria, the question that Obama keeps coming back to is: Do I have the partners —
local and/or international — to make any improvements we engineer
self-sustaining?
“I’ll give you an example of a lesson I had to learn that still has
ramifications to this day,” said Obama. “And that is our participation in the
coalition that overthrew Qaddafi in Libya. I absolutely believed that it was the
right thing to do. ... Had we not intervened, it’s likely that Libya would be
Syria. ... And so there would be more death, more disruption, more destruction.
But what is also true is that I think we [and] our European partners
underestimated the need to come in full force if you’re going to do this. Then
it’s the day after Qaddafi is gone, when everybody is feeling good and everybody
is holding up posters saying, ‘Thank you, America.’ At that moment, there has to
be a much more aggressive effort to rebuild societies that didn’t have any civic
traditions. ... So that’s a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the
question, ‘Should we intervene, militarily? Do we have an answer [for] the day
after?’ ”
A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 9, 2014,
on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline:
Obama on the World.
Obama on the World, NYT, 8.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/
opinion/president-obama-thomas-l-friedman-iraq-and-world-affairs.html
While Offering Support,
Obama Warns That U.S.
Won’t Be ‘Iraqi Air Force’
AUG. 8, 2014
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
and JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
WASHINGTON — President Obama said Friday that he was open to
supporting a sustained effort to drive Sunni militants out of Iraq if Iraqi
leaders form a more inclusive government, even as he vowed that the United
States had no intention of “being the Iraqi air force.”
Mr. Obama spoke as he ordered American fighter pilots back into the skies over
Iraq, a decision that he said he reached after concluding that the United States
needed to protect the Kurdish regions in the north and “bolster” an Iraqi
leadership that was panicked in the face of advances by the Islamic State in
Iraq and Syria.
The president said he was confident that the Iraqi leaders understand that “the
cavalry is not coming to the rescue” with ground forces. But he insisted that
the United States has a “strategic interest in pushing back” ISIS, suggesting a
potentially broader mission than the one he described in Thursday’s White House
address: to protect American personnel and prevent mass killings of religious
minorities.
“We’re not going to let them create some caliphate through Syria and Iraq,” the
president said in an hourlong interview with Thomas L. Friedman, a New York
Times columnist, as American planes and drones began dropping bombs in Iraq.
“But we can only do that if we know that we have got partners on the ground who
are capable of filling the void.”
Lawmakers offered tempered support for the president’s actions in Iraq, but he
also drew criticism from Republicans and Democrats for a mission that some
called too limited and others worried would draw the United States more deeply
back into Iraq.
Mr. Obama offered his justifications for his latest use of military force in
Iraq while lamenting the outcome of a similar decision he made to intervene
militarily in Libya in 2011. He defended the desire to help oust the Libyan
dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, with American air power, but he acknowledged
that he had “underestimated” the chaos that would follow after American forces
left.
“So that’s a lesson that I now apply every time I ask the question, ‘Should we
intervene militarily?’ ” Mr. Obama said. “Do we have an answer the day after?”
In the case of the current fighting in Iraq, he suggested that the outcome would
be different than chaos in Libya because efforts to form a government that could
help rebuild Iraqi society are moving forward, albeit haltingly.
“They’ve now elected a president, they’ve elected a speaker of the house,” Mr.
Obama said. “The final step is to elect a prime minister and to allow that prime
minister to form a government.” He added that Iraqis are “recognizing that they
have to make accommodations in order to hold the country together.”
A day before leaving for a two-week vacation with his family on Martha’s
Vineyard, Mr. Obama discussed many of the most vexing problems that his
administration is confronting on the world stage.
In the Middle East, where fighting began Friday morning as a 72-hour cease-fire
between Israel and Hamas expired, Mr. Obama said that neither Israel’s prime
minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, known as Bibi, nor the Palestinian Authority’s
president, Mahmoud Abbas, have the political will to come to terms on a lasting
peace agreement.
“In some ways Bibi’s too strong, in some ways Abbas is too weak to bring them
together and make the kind of bold decisions that a Sadat or a Begin or a Rabin
were willing to make,” Mr. Obama said, referring to Anwar el-Sadat, the former
president of Egypt, and Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin, two previous Israeli
prime ministers.
The president said his own ability to broker a peace deal was limited by the
lack of desire on the part of Israeli and Palestinian leaders. “You can lead
folks to water, they’ve got to drink,” Mr. Obama said. “And so far at least,
they haven’t been willing.”
The president rejected criticism that the military advances by ISIS in Iraq
could have been prevented if he had been willing months ago to provide heavy
armaments to the Syrian rebels who were fighting against ISIS and the forces of
President Bashar al-Assad in that country.
“It’s always been a fantasy,” he said, “this idea that we could provide some
light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition
made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.”
Mr. Obama, hinting at some strain from the summer’s international crises, said
the prospects for a diplomatic agreement that would prevent President Vladimir
V. Putin of Russia from invading Ukraine were real, but dimming.
“A deal should be possible,” Mr. Obama said. However, he added, “we are at a
dangerous time, in part because the position of the separatists has weakened. I
think Putin does not want to lose face, and so the window for arriving at that
compromise continues to narrow.”
On Iran, the president said the chance that American efforts to strike a deal on
nuclear weapons is “a little less than 50-50,” in part because some Islamic
leaders may fear such a pact would loosen their grip on power.
“That may prevent us from getting a deal done,” Mr. Obama said. “It is there to
be had. Whether ultimately Iran can seize that opportunity — we will have to
wait and see, but it is not for lack of trying on our part.”
Some of the criticism of Mr. Obama’s Iraq announcement came from his own party.
Democrats and the antiwar groups that make up a crucial part of their political
base said they were concerned about “mission creep,” cautioning that their
opposition to committing ground forces in Iraq was resolute.
“I hope and I have to believe the president when he said that it is limited and
strictly for the purpose of protecting U.S. personnel and a humanitarian mission
to prevent genocide,” Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat who is
one of the party’s leading antiwar voices on Capitol Hill, said in an interview.
“My concern is for mission creep and escalation into a larger military conflict.
The American people don’t have the appetite for sending combat troops and
engaging in another war in Iraq.”
At the same time, some Republicans suggested that the president had acted too
slowly and timidly to confront ISIS, and now was moving too cautiously against
the group.
“If this is the beginning of a real effort to push back ISIS and destroy them,
then I definitely support that,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican
of Illinois, an Air Force veteran and Air National Guardsman who sits on the
Foreign Affairs Committee. “Unfortunately, he did not have the intensity to come
out and say that we have to destroy them. I think the president is frightened of
re-engaging in Iraq, and I don’t think he really knows how to sell the reality
of re-engaging to the American people.”
Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican on the Armed Services and
Intelligence Committees, said he told Mr. Obama last week that he did not
believe he was acting aggressively enough to counter the threat from ISIS.
“It’s important that we do carry out some strong military missions inside of
Iraq,” he said. He added that it was important to let ISIS “know we’re here in
support of our people, and we are not Maliki’s air force, but we are going to
protect the Iraqi people,” referring to Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the prime minister
of Iraq. “His advisers were glad to know that there are some of us out there who
are willing to stand behind the president.”
A version of this article appears in print on August 9, 2014,
on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline:
While Offering Support, Obama Warns That U.S. Won’t Be ‘Iraqi Air Force’.
While Offering Support, Obama Warns That U.S.
Won’t Be ‘Iraqi Air Force’,
NYT, 8.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/world/middleeast/
while-offering-support-obama-warns-that-us-wont-be-iraqi-air-force.html
Fear of ‘Another Benghazi’
Drove White House to Airstrikes in Iraq
By MARK LANDLER,
ALISSA J. RUBIN,
MARK MAZZETTI
and HELENE COOPER
AUG. 8, 2014
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — On Wednesday evening, moments after finishing a
summit meeting with African leaders at the State Department, the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff delivered a stark message to President Obama as they rode
back to the White House in Mr. Obama’s limousine.
The Kurdish capital, Erbil, once an island of pro-American tranquillity, was in
the path of rampaging Sunni militants, the chairman, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey,
told the president. And to the west, the militants had trapped thousands of
members of Iraqi minority groups on a barren mountaintop, with dwindling
supplies, raising concerns about a potential genocide.
With American diplomats and business people in Erbil suddenly at risk, at the
American Consulate and elsewhere, Mr. Obama began a series of intensive
deliberations that resulted, only a day later, in his authorizing airstrikes on
the militants, as well as humanitarian airdrops of food and water to the
besieged Iraqis.
Looming over that discussion, and the decision to return the United States to a
war Mr. Obama had built his political career disparaging, was the specter of an
earlier tragedy: the September 2012 attack on the diplomatic mission in
Benghazi, Libya, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador J.
Christopher Stevens, and has become a potent symbol of weakness for critics of
the president.
President Obama spoke about actions taken by his administration in Iraq,
including airdrops of humanitarian supplies and the authorization of airstrikes
against ISIS forces.
Video Credit By whitehouse.gov on Publish Date August 7, 2014. Image CreditDoug
Mills/The New York Times
As the tension mounted in Washington, a parallel drama was playing out in Erbil.
Kurdish forces who had been fighting the militants in three nearby Christian
villages abruptly fell back toward the gates of the city, fanning fears that the
city might soon fall. By Thursday morning, people were thronging the airport,
desperate for flights out of town.
“The situation near Erbil was becoming more dire than anyone expected,” said a
senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to
describe the White House’s internal deliberations. “We didn’t want another
Benghazi.”
For weeks, intelligence officials had been watching the militant group, the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, gain in strength, replenishing its arsenals
with weapons captured both in Syria and in Iraq. But interviews with multiple
officials at the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and other
agencies paint a portrait of a president forced by the unexpectedly rapid
deterioration of security in Iraq to abandon his longstanding reluctance to use
military force.
Mr. Obama, in a speech late Thursday announcing his decision, insisted this was
not a return to war — that Iraq’s fate still ultimately rested in the hands of
its three main groups, the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. But he made clear that he
would take action to protect Americans in Erbil and Baghdad.
“We have an embassy in Baghdad, we have a consulate in Erbil, and we have to
make sure that they are not threatened,” Mr. Obama said in an interview on
Friday with Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times. “Part of the rationale for
the announcement yesterday was an encroachment close enough to Erbil that it
would justify us taking shots.”
Still, his decision to order F-18 fighter jets from the aircraft carrier George
H. W. Bush to carry out bombing raids on militants dramatically raises the risks
for Mr. Obama. Unlike other times when he has made the decision to commit
American forces — the 2009 troop surge in Afghanistan, for example — Mr. Obama
acted within hours.
With nearly 50 African leaders converging on Washington, the president was fully
occupied with a week of diplomacy and salesmanship on behalf of American
companies — not to mention a White House dinner featuring entertainment by
Lionel Richie. On Saturday, he and his wife, Michelle, were to leave town for
two weeks of vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.
While Mr. Obama discussed security and governance with the leaders, his national
security aides were huddling in the Situation Room, getting increasingly dire
briefings from embassy officials in Baghdad and the Pentagon’s Central Command,
which oversees Iraq.
“Things reached a tipping point on Wednesday,” said a senior official. “We saw
that on the mountain, the Iraqis were not able to resupply and provide food and
water.”
Back at the White House that evening, Mr. Obama and General Dempsey continued
talking in the Oval Office, joined by the chief of staff, Denis McDonough; the
national security adviser, Susan E. Rice; and other officials. The discussion
moved toward military action, one official said, though Mr. Obama had not yet
decided on anything, beyond airdrops.
About 8 p.m., the meeting broke up and Mr. Obama again left the White House, an
hour late, for a dinner date with his wife and a close confidante, Valerie
Jarrett, at an Italian restaurant in Georgetown.
Six thousand miles away, in Erbil, Thursday morning broke with news that two
towns just 27 miles west of the Kurdish capital, Mahmour and Gwer, had fallen to
the militants, and that Kurdish fighters, known as pesh merga, had withdrawn.
“That was a real problem,” said a former Kurdish official who closely tracks
security issues.
In villages and small towns outside the city, even places well north of Erbil
and farther from the militant forces, people were frantically piling into cars
to flee. The pesh merga were helping to evacuate hundreds of people in large
flatbed trucks. When people heard a gunshot, rumors would spread of an ISIS
advance.
Americans officials on the ground said they feared that if Erbil emptied, the
city would be vulnerable to a militant attack. And if it fell, they feared, not
only would Americans be at risk, but it would be a second seismic event for the
region — after the June 10 fall of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city — with
dangerous consequences for Turkey and a potential for enormous loss of life in
Kurdistan.
A look at who the pesh merga are, their history as Iraq’s most formidable force,
and why President Obama has now authorized airstrikes against ISIS to support
them.
Video Credit By Quynhanh Do and Emily B. Hager on Publish Date August 8, 2014.
Image CreditSafin Hamed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
As if that were not enough, the militants had seized a critical dam in Mosul,
which controls water levels on the Tigris River as far south as Baghdad. The
capture of the dam shook Kurdish officials and fueled the sense of crisis during
Thursday’s meetings, with officials worried that the militants could either blow
it up or use it to cut off water supplies or as a bargaining chip in negotiating
anything they wanted.
Continue reading the main story
“That was one of the trip wires we looked at,” said another senior official. “We
look at that dam as a potential threat to our embassy in Baghdad.”
At a 90-minute meeting in the Situation Room on Thursday morning, Mr. Obama was
briefed again about the plight of the Iraqis stranded on Mount Sinjar. Members
of an ancient religious sect known as Yazidi, they were branded as devil
worshipers by the militants. The women were to be enslaved; the men were to be
slaughtered.
Officials told Mr. Obama there was a real danger of genocide, under the legal
definition of the term. “While we have faced difficult humanitarian challenges,
this was in a different category,” said an official. “That kind of shakes you
up, gets your attention.”
At 11:20 a.m., Mr. Obama left the meeting to travel to Fort Belvoir, Va., where
he signed a bill expanding health care for veterans. He had all but made up his
mind to authorize airstrikes, officials said, and while he was away, his team
drafted specific military options.
When the president returned to the White House barely an hour later, he went
back into meetings with his staff. By then, there were news reports of airdrops
and possible strikes. But the White House “hunkered down,” an official said,
refusing to comment on the reports for fear of endangering a nighttime airdrop
over Mount Sinjar.
Mr. Obama did not announce the operations until dawn had broken in Iraq, a delay
of several hours that added to the panic in Erbil. Reports of explosions near
the city at dusk on Thursday night sowed confusion after Kurdish officials said
the United States had begun airstrikes on the militants. The Pentagon flatly
denied the reports.
American officials said the United States was closely coordinating with the
Iraqi Air Force, which has been carrying out its own strikes on the militants,
though officials did not confirm that the explosions reported on Thursday
evening were from Iraqi raids. On Friday, an administration official said there
had been no airstrikes the previous evening.
Struggling to stanch the fear, keep the fighters at their posts and slow the
exodus out of the city, Kurdish officials put out a series of brave-sounding but
misleading statements.
The Kurdish prime minister, Necherven Barrzani, sent a letter to Kurdish
citizens, posted on a government website, saying: “The pesh merga are going
ahead and terrorists are being beaten. Don’t be skeptical.”
Also writing a letter to the Kurdish people was Kosrat Rassoul, deputy to
President Massoud Barzani, who said: “There are rumors among the people, which
make citizens feel skeptical. Here I want to reassure everyone we in Erbil are
ready in the best way to defend the Kurdish territory.”
What they did not say was that the pesh merga were demoralized, uncertain,
underequipped and facing a formidable foe along several hundred miles of border
between the Kurdistan region and Iraq’s Nineveh and Kirkuk Provinces, where the
militants are now the dominant force.
Several fighters who had fought ISIS said they were daunted when they discovered
the militants were traveling in bulletproof vehicles that left the pesh merga’s
bullets doing little more than pockmarking the metal.
“It’s our business to see the faces of the soldiers and know how they feel,”
said Halgurd Hekmat, the head of media for the pesh merga fighters. “I wouldn’t
say they were afraid, but they were a bit nervous,” he admitted. Since the fall
of Mosul, the pesh merga leadership had warned the Americans and the Iraqi
government that they were ill equipped to hold the militants at the border
separating Nineveh Province from Kurdistan.
“We told them: ‘We cannot hold it for very long. We are not a country; we don’t
have an army; we don’t have aircraft,’ ” said Lt. Gen. Jaber Yawer Manda, the
secretary general of the pesh merga ministry. “I said: ‘We are fighting in the
front lines now. You have to help us.’ ”
On Thursday evening, after a long day in the West Wing, Mr. Obama had a message
for Iraqis: “Today, America is coming to help.”
A version of this article appears in print on August 9, 2014,
on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: White House Saw ‘Another
Benghazi’ Looming.
Fear of ‘Another Benghazi’ Drove White House
to Airstrikes in Iraq,
NYT, 8.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/world/middleeast/
fear-of-another-benghazi-drove-white-house-to-airstrikes-in-iraq.html
U.S. Jets and Drones Attack Militants
in Iraq, Hoping to Stop Advance
AUG. 8, 2014
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN,
TIM ARANGO and HELENE COOPER
DOHUK, Iraq — The United States launched a series of airstrikes
against Sunni militants in northern Iraq on Friday, using Predator drones and
Navy F-18 fighter jets to destroy rebel positions around the city of Erbil, the
American military said Friday.
The strikes were aimed at halting the advance of militants with the Islamic
State in Iraq and Syria toward Erbil, the Kurdish capital, which is home to a
United States Consulate and thousands of Americans.
The action marked the return of the United States to a direct combat role in a
country it left in 2011. Warplanes dropped 500-pound laser-guided bombs on a
number of targets: a mobile artillery piece that was being towed from a truck
and had begun shelling Erbil, a stationary convoy of seven vehicles, and a
mortar position.
The military also used a remotely piloted drone to strike another mortar
position on Friday afternoon. After the first strike, it said in a statement,
ISIS militants “returned to the site moments later” and “were attacked again and
successfully eliminated.”
Defense officials expressed confidence that they could achieve within a few days
one of President Obama’s stated goals: stopping the advance of the militants on
Erbil.
Less certain was whether the other objectives Mr. Obama had announced — breaking
the siege on tens of thousands of refugees stranded on Sinjar Mountain and
protecting Americans in Baghdad — could be achieved as quickly, given the
instability of Iraq’s internal politics and the difficulty of protecting and
eventually evacuating the stranded people.
While Mr. Obama said Thursday night that he had authorized military strikes, if
necessary, to help liberate the refugees on Sinjar Mountain, all of the military
attacks on Friday were directed toward stopping the ISIS militants’ advance on
Erbil.
The leader of ISIS sent a defiant message to the Americans in an audio statement
posted on YouTube in June and recirculated on Twitter on Friday.
“This is the message of the leader of the faithful,” the leader, known as Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi, wrote in a message addressed to “America, the defender of the
cross.”
“You should know, you defender of the cross, that getting others to fight on
your behalf will not do for you in Syria as it will not do for you in Iraq,” he
said. “And soon enough, you will be in direct confrontation — forced to do so,
God willing. And the sons of Islam have prepared themselves for this day. So
wait, and we will be waiting, too.”
ISIS fighters had come within 25 miles of Erbil in a rapid advance that took
American military planners by surprise.
Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement that ISIS
fighters near the mortar positions had been “successfully eliminated,” although
he did not say exactly how many had been killed. Another Defense Department
official said that the precision of the laser-guided bombs dropped was such that
in the case of the strike on the stationary convoy, “you know that vehicle and
the people in it don’t exist anymore.”
The Navy fighters launched from the aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush, which
has been deployed in the Arabian Sea.
Kurdish officials said the first round of American bombs struck on Friday
afternoon in and around Mahmour, a town near Erbil. They reported an airstrike
in the same location on Thursday, before Mr. Obama’s announcement; the Pentagon
denied that American warplanes carried out that earlier attack.
Kurdish fighters, known as pesh merga, have been pressed hard in recent days by
the militants, who have seized several towns near Erbil from the Kurds and taken
the Mosul Dam, one of the most important installations in the country.
“The airstrikes are being led by the U.S.A., and pesh merga are attacking with
Katyusha,” said Halgurd Hekmat, a spokesman for the Kurdish fighters, referring
to a type of Russian-made tactical rocket.
Many members of religious minorities in northern Iraq, including Christians,
have fled to Kurdish territory to escape the advancing militants, who have
imposed harsh fundamentalist rule in areas they control. Others — including tens
of thousands of Yazidis, who follow an ancient faith linked to Zoroastrianism
and are stranded in a mountainous area to the west — have been trapped and
besieged by the militants. Delivering humanitarian aid to that group is one of
the purposes of the American operations in Iraq, Mr. Obama said.
Britain, a close ally and coalition partner of the United States in the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, said Friday that it would not take part in the current
military action but would provide humanitarian aid and technical help.
“What we have decided today is to assist the United States in the humanitarian
operations that started yesterday,” the British defense secretary, Michael
Fallon, said in London on Friday.
Turkey, a NATO ally that borders northern Iraq, said on Friday that it, too,
would increase humanitarian aid to the region, news agencies reported.
Nikolay Mladenov, the United Nations’ top envoy in Iraq, said airdrops of aid on
Friday had reached a fraction of the 100,000 people trapped on Sinjar Mountain.
Mr. Mladenov has proposed a humanitarian corridor that would allow civilians to
travel from the mountain to a safe zone in a Kurdish-controlled area. Late
Friday, the United States military said it had made a second round of airdrops
of food and water.
But the civilians are currently trapped between front lines. The fighting would
have to stop to open such a corridor, or the warring parties would have to agree
to let people pass into safety. Mr. Mladenov said negotiations were underway.
“It’s a matter of days,” he said. “It depends on two things. First, how
successful the airdrops can be — they’ve been there for a few days; there’s no
access to water, food, medicine. Secondly, it depends on the security situation
on the ground.”
While Kurds welcomed Mr. Obama’s announcement of American assistance, the
reaction in Baghdad was mixed.
“Obama’s speech did not delight Iraqis,” said Hakim al-Zamili, a leader of a
main Shiite bloc in Parliament, the Sadr faction, who were among the strongest
opponents of American involvement in Iraq. “They are looking out for their own
interests, not for ours.”
“They should have provided Iraq with weapons,” Mr. Zamili added, possibly
alluding to the United States’ suspension of deliveries of F-16 fighter jets and
combat aircraft to Iraq.
Another Shiite leader, Sami al-Askari, who is close to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki, said Mr. Obama’s call for airstrikes had come “too late.”
“They should have made this decision when hundreds of Shiites and Sunnis were
being killed every day,” Mr. Askari said.
Mr. Askari accused the Obama administration of being interested only in
“protecting the Kurdish regional government and Christians, not the rest of
Iraq.”
“Iraqis must rely on themselves and their genuine friends, like Iran and Russia,
who have supported Iraq in its battle against ISIS,” he said. Russia has sent
Sukhoi aircraft to the Iraqi forces, and Iran has trained and financed militia
forces and sent advisers.
The decision to announce American air operations on Thursday appeared to reflect
a view among American, Kurdish and Iraqi military leaders that a crippling
attack by the militants was more imminent than had been widely recognized. The
militants’ seizure of two towns within 20 miles of Erbil stoked panic and the
beginnings of an exodus of residents to Sulaimaniya, the largest city to the
southeast.
Military leaders believed that if the city emptied, it would be more vulnerable
to a militant attack, officials said privately, asking not to be quoted because
they did not want to shake morale.
The airstrikes appeared to improve the mood in Erbil on Friday, at least
temporarily, according to people there. Fewer cars were at the city gates trying
to leave, they said.
“The bombing changed the mood of the people,” a pesh merga officer said.
Correction: August 8, 2014
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated when
Turkey said it would step up humanitarian aid to northern Iraq. The announcement
was made Friday, not Thursday.
Alissa J. Rubin reported from Dohuk, Iraq, Tim Arango from
Baghdad and Helene Cooper from Washington. Omar Al-Jawoshy contributed reporting
from Baghdad, Somini Sengupta from the United Nations and Kimiko De
Freytas-Tamura from London.
A version of this article appears in print on August 9, 2014,
on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline:
U.S. Jets and Drones Attack Militants in Iraq.
U.S. Jets and Drones Attack Militants in Iraq,
Hoping to Stop Advance,
NYT, 8.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/world/middleeast/iraq.html
U.S. Warplanes Strike Militants in Iraq
AUG. 8, 2014
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN,
TIM ARANGO and HELENE COOPER
DOHUK, Iraq — American warplanes struck Sunni militant positions
in northern Iraq on Friday, the Pentagon and Kurdish officials said. The action
returned United States forces to a direct combat role in a country it withdrew
from in 2011.
Two F-18 fighters dropped 500-pound laser-guided bombs on a mobile artillery
target near Erbil, according to a statement by Rear Adm. John Kirby, the
Pentagon press secretary. Militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were
using the artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending Erbil, “near U.S.
personnel,” Admiral Kirby said.
The strike followed President Obama’s announcement Thursday night that he had
authorized limited airstrikes to protect American citizens in Erbil and Baghdad,
and, if necessary, to break the siege of tens of thousand of refugees who are
stranded on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq.
“As the president made clear, the United States military will continue to take
direct action against ISIL when they threaten our personnel and facilities,”
Admiral Kirby said, referring to the Islamic militants by another translation of
their Arabic name.
Kurdish officials said the American bombs struck on Friday afternoon in and
around Makhmour, a town near Erbil. They reported an airstrike in the same
location on Thursday, before the president’s announcement; the Pentagon denied
that American warplanes carried out that earlier attack.
Kurdish fighters, known as pesh merga, have been hard pressed in recent days by
the militant fighters, who have seized several towns near Erbil from the Kurds
and took the Mosul Dam, one of the most important installations in the country.
The airstrike appeared intended to help stem the tide.
“The airstrikes are being led by the U.S.A., and pesh merga are attacking with
Katyusha,” said Halgurd Hekmat, a spokesman for the Kurdish fighters, referring
to a type of Russian-made tactical rocket.
Many members of religious minorities in northern Iraq, including Christians,
have fled to Kurdish territory to escape the advancing militants, who have
imposed harsh fundamentalist rule in areas they control. Others have been
trapped and besieged by the militants, including tens of thousands of Yezidis,
who follow an ancient faith linked to Zoroastrianism and are stranded in a
mountainous area to the west. Delivering humanitarian aid to that group is one
of the purposes of the American operations in Iraq, Mr. Obama said.
Britain, a close ally and coalition partner of the United States in the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, said Friday that it would not take part in military action
there now but would provide humanitarian aid and technical assistance.
“What we have decided today is to assist the United States in the humanitarian
operations that started yesterday,” the British defense secretary, Michael
Fallon, said in London on Friday. “We are offering technical assistance in that,
in terms of refueling and surveillance. We are offering aid of our own, which we
hope to drop over the next couple of days in support of the American relief
effort, particularly to help the plight of those who are trapped on the
mountain.”
Turkey, a NATO ally that borders northern Iraq, said on Thursday that it, too,
would step up humanitarian aid to the region, news agencies reported.
The Federal Aviation Administration, citing “the hazardous situation created by
armed conflict,” instructed American air carriers on Thursday not to fly in
Iraqi airspace until further notice. Turkish Airlines said it had suspended
service to and from Erbil indefinitely.
The leader of the militant group sent a defiant message to the Americans in an
audio statement posted on Twitter.
“I address this message to America, the holder of the Cross,” wrote the leader,
known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“Listen up, those who fight on your behalf will not give you any gains in Iraq
and Syria. Soon enough, you will find yourself in a direct confrontation with
the sons of Islam, who have prepared themselves well for the day we will fight
you.”
While Kurds welcomed Mr. Obama’s announcement of American assistance, the
reaction in Baghdad was mixed.
“Obama’s speech did not delight Iraqis,” said Hakim al-Zamili, a leader of a
main Shiite bloc in Parliament, the Sadr faction, who were among the strongest
opponents of American involvement in Iraq. “They are looking out for their own
interests, not for ours,” he said.
“They should have made this decision when hundreds of Shiites and Sunnis were
being killed every day,” he said.
Mr. Askeri accused the Obama administration of being interested only in
“protecting the Kurdish regional government and Christians, not the rest of
Iraq.”
“Iraqis must rely on themselves and their genuine friends like Iran and Russia,
who have supported Iraq in its battle against ISIS,” he said. Russia has sent
Sukhoi helicopters to the Iraqi forces, and Iran has trained and financed
militia forces and sent advisers.
The decision to announce American air operations on Thursday appeared to reflect
a view among Kurdish, Iraqi and American military leaders that a crippling
attack by the militants was more imminent than was widely recognized. The
militants’ seizure of two towns within 20 miles of Erbil, which serves as the
Kurdish capital, precipitated panic in the capital and the beginnings of an
exodus of residents to Sulaimaniya, the largest city to the north.
Military leaders believed that if the city emptied, it would be much more
vulnerable to an militant attack, officials said privately, asking not to be
quoted because they did not want to shake morale.
The bombing appeared to bolster morale in Erbil on Friday, at least temporarily,
according to people there. Fewer cars could be seen at the city gates attempting
to leave, they said.
“The bombing changed the mood of the people,” said a pesh merga officer.
Alissa J. Rubin reported from Dohuk, Iraq, Tim Arango from Baghdad and Helene
Cooper from Washington. Omar Al-Jawoshy contributed reporting from Baghdad, and
Kimiko De Freytas-Tamura from London.
U.S. Warplanes Strike Militants in Iraq, NYT,
8.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/world/middleeast/iraq.html
Preventing a Slaughter in Iraq
AUG. 7, 2014
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Editorial
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The catastrophe of Iraq has been growing steadily worse for
weeks, but by Thursday, it became impossible for the United States and other
civilized nations to ignore it. Iraq’s bloodthirsty Sunni extremists were
threatening the extermination of tens of thousands of members of religious
minorities who have refused to join the fundamentalist Islamic state the
terrorist forces want to create.
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, known as ISIS, drove Christians, Yazidis
and other minorities from their homes by giving them a choice between religious
conversion or slaughter. There have been reports of scores of civilians being
killed. Many of these frightened and desperate people have surged toward the
Turkish border and some 40,000 are estimated to be suffering from heat and
thirst on Mount Sinjar in northeast Iraq.
So it was not surprising to hear President Obama announce Thursday night that
the United States was dropping food and water supplies in northeast Iraq and
that he had authorized targeted airstrikes against ISIS, if needed. Mr. Obama
made a wise policy call, and showed proper caution, by keeping his commitment
not to reintroduce American ground troops in Iraq, but humanitarian assistance
for the imperiled civilians was necessary.
Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said his government had begun
providing aid to these Iraqis, including dropping supplies at Sinjar from Iraqi
helicopters. Turkey, already inundated with refugees from the Syrian civil war,
is building a refugee camp in northern Iraq. An American official told The Times
that fear of a “humanitarian catastrophe” had prompted Mr. Obama to consider the
airdrops of emergency supplies and airstrikes against militants besieging the
mountain.
From a political viewpoint, Mr. Obama created credibility problems for himself
last year when he raised the strong possibility of military retaliation against
Syria for using chemical weapons in the civil war there, then reneged in favor
of a diplomatic deal with Russia that forced Syria to give up its stocks of
chemical weapons. He ran the danger of compounding that problem if he did not
act now.
Mr. Obama shaped the issue in terms of a humanitarian crisis — he said ISIS had
talked of the destruction of the Yazidis, an ancient sect, and said that would
be genocide. He voiced alarm over the rapid gains of ISIS, a brutal former
affiliate of Al Qaeda that aims to establish a caliphate across Syria and Iraq
that would be governed by a harsh interpretation of Islamic law, and he showed
determination to protect American diplomats and other personnel at the consulate
in Erbil and at the embassy in Baghdad.
The militant forces, battle-hardened, flush with money and weapons, have racked
up stunning victories against the well-trained and highly motivated Kurdish pesh
merga forces. They were reported to be controlling a checkpoint at the border of
the semiautonomous Kurdish region, which is only 30 miles from the government
headquarters in Erbil. ISIS also appeared to have captured the Mosul dam, the
largest in Iraq, which provides electricity for Mosul and controls the water
supply for a large territory. Should that structure fail, or be damaged in the
conflict, it could flood with catastrophic consequences.
Iraqi Kurds were vital allies in the American-led war that toppled Saddam
Hussein and continue to have close ties to the American government. Their
semiautonomous region — peaceful, prosperous, reasonably well governed and an
oil producer — has been the consistent bright spot in Iraq’s tumultuous
postinvasion history. It would be a huge blow for the Kurds, Iraq and Turkey, a
NATO ally, if ISIS took over the region.
Speaking at the White House, President Obama again pressed Iraqi politicians to
resolve their differences. A move by Iraq’s government to appoint a prime
minister who could credibly unify the country and lead the counterattack against
the extremists has stalled. That division, Mr. Obama said, plays into the
terrorists’ hands.
After so many years in Iraq, Americans are justifiably skeptical about what
military involvement can accomplish anywhere — and the Middle East is so
complicated that even seemingly benign decisions can have unintended
consequences.
The United States, Turkey and other allies should move quickly to meet the
Kurds’ needs for ammunition and weapons as well as advice on more effectively
deploying the pesh merga and integrating Kurdish operations with Iraqi security
forces. Under pressure from the United States, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki of Iraq finally agreed this week to cooperate with the Kurds and to
provide air support, and should continue to do so.
That will still leave Mr. Obama with the task of framing a broader strategy that
involves Saudi Arabia, the Arab League and the United Nations, just to start.
A version of this editorial appears in print on August 8, 2014, on page A22 of
the New York edition with the headline: Preventing a Slaughter in Iraq.
Preventing a Slaughter in Iraq, NYT, 7.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/opinion/preventing-a-slaughter-in-iraq.html
Obama Allows Limited Airstrikes on ISIS
AUG. 7, 2014
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER,
MARK LANDLER and ALISSA J. RUBIN
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Thursday announced he had
authorized limited airstrikes against Islamic militants in Iraq, scrambling to
avert the fall of the Kurdish capital, Erbil, and returning the United States to
a significant battlefield role in Iraq for the first time since the last
American soldier left the country at the end of 2011.
Speaking at the White House on Thursday night, Mr. Obama also said that American
military aircraft had dropped food and water to tens of thousands of Iraqis
trapped on a barren mountain range in northwestern Iraq, having fled the
militants, from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, who threaten them with what
Mr. Obama called “genocide.”
“Earlier this week, one Iraqi cried that there is no one coming to help,” Mr.
Obama said in a somber statement delivered from the State Dining Room. “Well,
today America is coming to help.”
The president insisted that these military operations did not amount to a
full-scale re-engagement in Iraq. But the relentless advance of the militants,
whom he described as “barbaric,” has put them within a 30-minute drive of Erbil,
raising an immediate danger for the American diplomats, military advisers and
other citizens who are based there.
“As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into
another war in Iraq,” said Mr. Obama, who built his run for the White House in
part around his opposition to the war in Iraq.
While Mr. Obama has authorized airstrikes, American officials said there had not
yet been any as of late Thursday. In addition to protecting Americans in Erbil
and Baghdad, the president said he had authorized airstrikes, if necessary, to
break the siege on Mount Sinjar, where tens of thousands of Yazidis, a religious
minority group closely allied with the Kurds, have sought refuge.
The aircraft assigned to dropping food and water over the mountainside were a
single C-17 and two C-130 aircraft. They were escorted by a pair of F-18 jet
fighters, the administration official said. The planes were over the drop zone
for about 15 minutes, and flew at a relatively low altitude. They flew over the
Mount Sinjar area for less than 15 minutes, Pentagon officials said, and dropped
a total of 5,300 gallons of fresh drinking water and 8,000 meals ready to eat.
Mr. Obama, officials said, delayed announcing the steps he intended to take in
Iraq until the planes had safely cleared the area.
A senior administration official said that the humanitarian effort would
continue as needed, and that he expected further airdrops. “We expect that need
to continue,” he said.
The official said that as conditions in Iraq deteriorated in recent days, the
United States had worked with Iraqi security forces and Kurdish fighters to
coordinate the response to militant advances. The official said the cooperation
had included airstrikes by Iraqi forces against militant targets in the north.
Kurdish and Iraqi officials said that airstrikes were carried out Thursday night
on two towns in northern Iraq seized by ISIS — Gwer and Mahmour, near Erbil.
Earlier on Thursday, The New York Times quoted Kurdish and Iraqi officials as
saying that the strikes were carried out by American planes.
While the militants are not believed to have surface-to-air missiles, they do
have machine guns that could hit planes flying at a low altitude, said James M.
Dubik, a retired Army lieutenant general who oversaw the training of the Iraqi
Army in 2007 and 2008.
“These are low and slow aircraft,” General Dubik said. At a minimum, he said,
the United States must be prepared for “some defensive use of air power to
prevent” the militants from attacking American planes, or going after the
humanitarian supplies.
For Mr. Obama, who has steadfastly avoided being drawn into the sectarian furies
of the Middle East, the decision raises a host of difficult questions, injecting
the American military into Iraq’s broader political struggle — something Mr.
Obama said he would not agree to unless Iraq’s three main ethnic groups agreed
on a national unity government.
The decision could also open Mr. Obama to charges that he is willing to use
American military might to protect Iraqi Christians and other religious
minorities but not to prevent the slaughter of Muslims by other Muslims, either
in Iraq or neighboring Syria.
Will Parks, the United Nations Children’s Fund chief field officer in the
northern Kurdish region of Iraq, discussed the crisis in Sinjar, where 40,000
people are still stuck in the mountains.
But the president said the imminent threat to Erbil and the dire situation
unfolding on Mount Sinjar met both his criteria for deploying American force:
protecting American lives and assets, and averting a humanitarian disaster.
“When we have the unique capacity to avert a massacre, the United States cannot
turn a blind eye,” he said.
Mr. Obama has been reluctant to order direct military action in Iraq while Prime
Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki remains in office, but in recent weeks there have
been repeated pleas from the Kurdish officials for weapons and assistance as
ISIS militants have swept across northwestern Iraq. The militants, an offshoot
of Al Qaeda, view Iraq’s majority Shiite and minority Christians and Yazidis as
infidels.
Deliberations at the White House went on all day Thursday as reports surfaced
that administration officials were considering either humanitarian flights,
airstrikes or both.
Shortly after 6 p.m., the White House posted a photo of Mr. Obama consulting his
national security team in the Situation Room. To his right was the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey. Watching from across the
table were Susan E. Rice, the national security adviser, and her principal
deputy, Antony J. Blinken. On the wall behind them, the clock recorded the time:
10:37 a.m.
Mr. Obama made only one public appearance, a rushed visit to Fort Belvoir, Va.,
where he signed into law a bill expanding access to health care for veterans.
But aides suggested he might make a statement Thursday night. Before getting
into his limousine, Mr. Obama was observed holding an intense conversation with
his chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, stabbing his finger several times for
emphasis.
Later, Mr. McDonough telephoned the House speaker, John A. Boehner, to inform
him of the president’s plans, and other White House officials spoke with
lawmakers — all in an effort to avoid bruised feelings like those that followed
the prisoner swap for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
Administration officials said on Thursday that the crisis on Mount Sinjar in
northwestern Iraq had forced their hand. Some 40 children have already died from
the heat and dehydration, according to Unicef, while as many as 40,000 people
have been sheltering in the bare mountains without food, water or access to
supplies.
Still, offensive strikes on militant targets around Erbil and Baghdad would take
American involvement in the conflict to a new level — in effect, turning the
American Air Force into the Iraqi Air Force.
“The White House is going to recognize that the need to commit air power to
Iraq, even for a purely humanitarian mission, is going to open them up to
greater criticism for their disengagement from Iraq,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, a
senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “So they will do their damnedest not
to get further involved in Iraq because that would just further validate those
criticisms.”
Ever since Sunni militants with ISIS took over Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest
city, on June 10, Iraqis have feared that Baghdad, to the south, was the
insurgents’ ultimate goal. But in recent weeks, the militant group has
concentrated on trying to push the Kurds back from areas where Sunnis also live
along the border between Kurdistan and Nineveh Province.
It has taken on the powerful Kurdish militias, which were thought to be a
bulwark against the advance, and which control huge oil reserves in Kurdistan
and broader parts of northern Iraq. An administration official said the United
States would expedite the delivery of weapons to the Kurds.
For Mr. Obama, the suffering of the refugees on the mountainside appeared to be
a tipping point. He spoke in harrowing terms about their dire circumstances,
saying thousands of people were “hiding high up on the mountain, with little but
the clothes on their backs.”
“They’re without food, they’re without water,” he said. “People are starving.
And children are dying of thirst. These innocent families are faced with a
horrible choice: descend the mountain and be slaughtered, or stay and slowly die
of thirst and hunger.”
Helene Cooper and Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Alissa J. Rubin
from Dohuk, Iraq. Thom Shanker, Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis
contributed reporting from Washington.
A version of this article appears in print on August 8, 2014,
on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline:
Obama Allows Airstrikes Against Iraq Rebels.
Obama Allows Limited Airstrikes on ISIS,
7.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/world/middleeast/
obama-weighs-military-strikes-to-aid-trapped-iraqis-officials-say.html
Obama Weighs Airstrikes or Aid
to Help Trapped Iraqis, Officials Say
AUG. 7, 2014
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER
WASHINGTON — President Obama is considering airstrikes or
airdrops of food and medicine to address a humanitarian crisis among as many as
40,000 religious minorities in Iraq who have been dying of heat and thirst on a
mountaintop after death threats from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,
administration officials said on Thursday.
The president, in meetings with his national security team at the White House on
Thursday morning, has been weighing a series of options ranging from dropping
humanitarian supplies on Mount Sinjar to military strikes on the fighters from
ISIS now at the base of the mountain, a senior administration official said.
“There could be a humanitarian catastrophe there,” a second administration
official said, adding that a decision from Mr. Obama was expected “imminently —
this could be a fast-moving train.”
The White House declined to say whether Mr. Obama was weighing airstrikes or
airdrops in Iraq, but the press secretary, Josh Earnest, said the United States
was disturbed by what he described as “cold and calculated” attacks by ISIS on
religious minorities in Iraq.
“These actions have exacerbated an already dire crisis, and the situation is
nearing a humanitarian catastrophe,” Mr. Earnest told reporters. The campaign of
attacks by ISIS, he said, “demonstrates a callous disregard for human rights and
is deeply disturbing.”
Asked specifically about military options, Mr. Earnest said, “I’m not in a
position to rule things on the table or off the table.” But he reiterated that
there would be no American combat troops in Iraq and that any military action
would be extremely limited.
“There are many problems in Iraq,” he said. “This one is a particularly acute
one, because we’re seeing people persecuted because of their ethnic or religious
identities.”
Mr. Earnest added: “There are no American military solutions to the problems in
Iraq. These problems can only be solved with Iraqi political solutions.”
Mr. Obama made no mention of imminent military action as he traveled to Fort
Belvoir in the Virginia suburbs on Thursday to sign legislation to overhaul the
troubled Department of Veterans Affairs. Top officials were in the meantime
gathering at the White House to discuss the possible Iraq action.
The administration had been delaying taking any military action against ISIS
until there is a new Iraqi government. Both White House and Pentagon officials
have said privately that the United States would not intervene militarily until
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki stepped down.
But administration officials said on Thursday that the crisis on Mount Sinjar
may be forcing their hand. About 40 children have already died from the heat and
dehydration, according to Unicef, while as many as 40,000 people have been
sheltering in the bare mountains without food, water or access to supplies.
The administration officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they
were not authorized to speak publicly. One official said that any military
action would be “limited, specific and achievable,” noting that Mr. Maliki’s
political party was supposed to announce a new candidate for prime minister on
Thursday, but had not yet.
Mark Landler and Peter Baker contributed reporting.
Obama Weighs Airstrikes or Aid to Help Trapped
Iraqis, Officials Say,
NYT, 7.8.2014,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/world/middleeast/
obama-weighs-military-strikes-to-aid-trapped-iraqis-officials-say.html
|
