[Mr. Obama will use a speech to the nation on Wednesday
to make his case for launching a United States-led offensive against Sunni
militants gaining ground in the Middle
East , seeking to rally support
for a broad military mission while reassuring the public that he is not
plunging American forces into another Iraq
WASHINGTON — The
Obama administration is preparing to carry out a campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that may take three years to complete,
requiring a sustained effort that could last until afterPresident
Obama has left office,
according to senior administration officials.
The first phase, an air campaign with nearly 145
airstrikes in the past month, is already underway to protect ethnic and
religious minorities and American diplomatic, intelligence and military
personnel, and their facilities, as well as to begin rolling back ISIS
gains in northern and westernIraq.
The next phase, which would begin sometime after Iraq
The final, toughest and most politically controversial
phase of the operation — destroying the terrorist army in its sanctuary inside Syria — might not be completed until the next administration.
Indeed, some Pentagon planners envision a military campaign lasting at least 36
months.
Mr. Obama will use a speech to the nation on Wednesday to
make his case for launching a United States-led offensive against Sunni
militants gaining ground in the Middle
East , seeking to rally support
for a broad military mission while reassuring the public that he is not
plunging American forces into another Iraq war.
“What I want people to understand,” Mr. Obama said in an
interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that was broadcast Sunday, “is that over
the course of months, we are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum”
of the militants. “We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities;
we’re going to shrink the territory that they control; and, ultimately, we’re
going to defeat them,” he added.
The military campaign Mr. Obama is preparing has no
obvious precedent. Unlike American counterterrorism operations in Yemen and Pakistan , it is not expected to be limited to drone strikes
against militant leaders. Unlike the war in Afghanistan , it will not include the use of ground troops, which Mr.
Obama has ruled out.
Unlike the Kosovo war that
President Bill Clinton and NATO nations waged in 1999, it will not be
compressed into an intensive 78-day tactical and strategic air campaign. And
unlike during the air campaign that toppled the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar
el-Qaddafi, in 2011, the Obama administration is no longer “leading from
behind,” but plans to play the central role in building a coalition to counter
ISIS.
“We have the ability to destroy ISIL ,”
Secretary of State John Kerry said last week at the NATO summit
meeting in Wales , using an alternative name for the militant group. “It
may take a year, it may take two years, it may take three years. But we’re
determined it has to happen.”
Antony J. Blinken, Mr. Obama’s
deputy national security adviser, has suggested that the United States is undertaking a prolonged mission. “It’s going to take
time, and it will probably go beyond even this administration to get to the
point of defeat,” Mr. Blinken said last week on CNN.
Mr. Kerry is scheduled to head
for the Middle East soon to solidify the anti-ISIS coalition. And Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel is traveling to Ankara , Turkey
Although details of how the emerging coalition would
counter ISIS remain undecided, several American officials said that
they believe the list of allies so far includes Jordan , offering intelligence help, and Saudi Arabia , which has influence with Sunni tribes in Iraq and Syria and which has been funding moderate Syrian rebels.
The United Arab Emirates , officials said, has also indicated a willingness to
consider airstrikes in Iraq . Germany has said it would send arms to pesh merga fighters in Kurdistan .
And rising concern over foreign fighters returning home from Syria and Iraq may also have spurred Australia , Britain , Denmark and France to join the alliance.
Administration officials acknowledged, however, that
getting those same countries to agree to airstrikes in Syria was proving harder.
“Everybody is on board Iraq ,” an administration official said, speaking on condition
of anonymity because the policy is still being developed. “But when it comes to
Syria , there’s more concern” about where airstrikes could
lead. The official nonetheless expressed confidence that the countries would
eventually come around to taking the fight into Syria , in part, he said, because “there’s really no other
alternative.”
The talks between Mr. Hagel and the Turkish leadership
may be crucial in determining whether the United States will be able to count
on Ankara on a number of fronts, including closing the Turkish border to
foreign fighters who have been using Turkey as a transit point from which to go
to Syria and Iraq to join militant organizations and allowing the American
military to carry out operations from bases in Turkey.
But Turkish officials have
been wary of attracting notice from ISIS , given that the group holds the fate of 49 kidnapped
Turkish diplomats in its hands. In June, Sunni militants with ISIS
stormed the Turkish Consulate in Mosul , Iraq
Mr. Obama’s planned speech suggests he may be moving
closer to a decision on many remaining questions, including whether and at what
point the White House might widen the air campaign to include targets across
the border in Syria , possibly to include ISIS
leadership and its equipment, supply depots and command centers. The time of
the speech on Wednesday has not been announced.
Senior officials have repeatedly ruled out sending ground
combat troops, a vow Mr. Obama reaffirmed in his appearance on “Meet the
Press.”
“This is not going to be an announcement about U.S. ground troops,” he said. “This is not the equivalent of
the Iraq war.”
But it is not clear if that declaration would preclude
the eventual deployment of small numbers of American Special Operations forces
or C.I.A. operatives to call in airstrikes on behalf of Kurdish fighters, Iraqi
forces or Sunni tribes, a procedure that makes it much easier to distinguish
between ISIS militants, civilians and counter ISIS
fighters.
During the recent operation to
retake the Mosul Dam, Kurdish soldiers, using a more roundabout procedure,
provided the coordinates of ISIS fighters to the joint United States-Kurdish command
center in Erbil , which in turn passed them to American aircraft, Masrour
Barzani, the head of Kurdish intelligence, said in a recent interview.
The White House is counting on an effort by American,
Iraqi and Gulf Arab officials to persuade Sunni tribesman in western Iraq , now aligned with ISIS , to
break their ties after chafing under the harsh Shariah law the group has imposed.
Unless the new Iraqi government is substantially more inclusive, American encouragement and support for these groups to turn on ISIS may be far less effective than it was in 2007, when many tribes fought the forerunner of ISIS, Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Some Sunni tribal leaders are still bitter at the treatment under former Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite.
“Even if they try we will not accept it,” said Sheikh Ali Hatem Suleimani, a tribal leader in Anbar who lives in Erbil. “In the past, we fought against Al Qaeda and we cleaned the area of them. But the Americans gave control of Iraq to Maliki, who started to arrest, kill, and exile most of the tribal commanders who led the fight against Al Qaeda.”
Eric Schmitt
and Michael R. Gordon reported from Washington, and Helene Cooper from Tbilisi ,
Georgia Erbil ,
Iraq
