Dr Abdullah Al Shayji
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By Dr Abdullah Al Shayji
ISIS completed the first year after its occupation of the city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, from which ISIS was launched, as it was the case in Raqqa in Syria, to broaden the scope of this alleged state, reaching Diyala province at the Iranian border.
Today, ISIS occupies half the territory of Syria, and one-third of Iraq. It defeated the Iraqi and Syrian armies, those who were for a long time a symbol of oppression and the defence fronts of the Baathist regimes in the two countries. These two armies were a symbol of power in the Arab Orient, but suddenly they were harshly defeated at the hands of an armed organisation and not a state army.
According to a statement by US Vice-Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken, at the recent conference of coalition countries’ foreign ministers in Paris, after the killing of more than 10,000 ISIS fighters, based on statistics from the US intelligence, it is still believed that ISIS has about 30,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria.
Despite these large losses suffered by the terrorist organisation and after hitting 6,200 targeted ISIS locations in the two countries, ISIS neither backs down nor shrinks. On the contrary, ISIS’ moves are expended and its danger and brutality are growing. ISIS is less than 100km from Baghdad, and continues to recruit more volunteer fighters from around the world, especially deceived youth.
Despite the large expenditure in the continuing war against ISIS, which cost the US administration so far about $2.5bn according to the Pentagon, ISIS has recently dominated the city of Ramadi, the capital of Al Anbar province, the largest in Iraq.
After Ramadi, ISIS took control of the historic city of Palmyra in the Syrian desert, which brings back the debate again, after a year of ISIS’ occupation of Mosul, about the efficacy of the fight against the organisation and the reasons behind the failure to stop it so far, despite all the exerted efforts!
It is defective for the Iraqi army and government – and even for the United States – to participate with the Shia militia, the People’s Mobilisation. As the state army sought support of this sectarian militia, Washington asked for using the US Air Force in targeting ISIS fighters in Tikrit. After Iran, Iraqi forces and the People’s Mobilisation militia failed to defeat ISIS.
The People’s Mobilisation was pulled out before launching devastating raids against ISIS’ sites in Tikrit to expel the group.
Today, the United States ignores the participation of The People’s Mobilisation in the battle of Al Anbar, which was initially called “At your command, O Hussein”, after taking criticism and pressure from Washington and even from Muqtada Al Sadr.
Today, there is a war of wills. US Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter criticises the defeat of the Iraqi army in Ramadi, describing his soldiers as lacking the will to fight. The issue that annoyed the Iraqi government, and later US Vice-President Biden, tried to calm it down.
In an exchange of accusations, the Americans responded to Qasem Soleimani, commander of the “Quds Force” of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, when he said that America, the “Great Satan”, has done nothing to fight ISIS and does not have the will to face this terrorist organisation.
It is clear that there is an urgent need to change the failed strategy in fighting ISIS, which did not succeed in breaking gravity since the start of the international coalition led by Washington in August 2014.
After 10 months of daily clashes and shelling, which exceeded thousands of raids on locations in Syria and Iraq, to achieve Obama’s aim of weakening and defeating ISIS.
The solution, which is rejected by Obama personally and his administration, is to involve American ground troops to confront ISIS, otherwise Washington and its reluctant allies will paying the bill of a strategy to fight ISIS, which has proven to fail.
The Peninsula
