New strategy takes shape

US TROOPS IN IRAQ : The US plan to send 450 troops to train Iraqi security forces is being billed not as a recognition of failure, but a continuatio

With the Obama administration deciding to send up to 450 military trainers to Iraq to help “train and advise” local forces fighting Islamic State (IS), the US is back in Iraq once again. President Barack Obama apparently made the decision following a request from Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi.

The US troops are likely to be deployed to the Taqaddum military base in Anbar province. The IS had seized Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, in May, and has since made gains across the region despite airstrikes by the US-led coalition forces.

This news of more American troops in Iraq comes as the IS militants in Mosul have been marking the first anniversary of their capture of Iraq’s second city with the group’s black banners flying from the top of every lamp post in one main street.The fall of Mosul last year had come as a shock to the world at large even as it prompted the jihadist group to launch an offensive that saw it seize swathes of Iraq.

Despite facing several months of airstrikes by a US-led international coalition and attacks on the ground by Iraqi forces, the IS continues to maintain its hold on the territory and has been free to impose its extreme interpretation of Islamic law. Mosul was expected to become the focus of a lengthy campaign after the Iraqi government recaptured the northern city of Tikrit in early April. But the fall of the western city of Ramadi to the IS last month meant that this campaign got delayed, possibly until 2016.

The US plan now to send more than 400 American troops to Iraq to train Iraqi security forces and Sunni tribal fighters is being billed not as a recognition of failure, but a continuation of success. The US Department of Defense is calling it a change in plans, not a change in strategy despite being a remarkable turnaround in Obama administration’s initial objections to such a policy posture.

The idea to rapidly train as many as 10,000 mostly Sunni fighters and 3,000 new Iraqi soldiers in the coming months comes as part of a bid to retake the city of Ramadi. The Shiite-led government in Baghdad has for years failed to nimbly to train and arm the Sunni tribesmen, and hundreds of American soldiers and Marines have been sitting idle at the al Asad training facility in western Iraq for weeks, waiting on more Iraqi recruits to train.

A total 8,920 Iraqi troops have received training at four different sites throughout Iraq. Several hundred US soldiers and Marines at the al Asad air base are standing by, ready to train the Iraq soldiers. But those Iraqi troops have stopped showing up, leaving the Americans all alone at the sprawling base. It has been reported that across Iraq, there seem to be more US trainers than recruits, with only 2,600 Iraqi soldiers currently receiving training from about 3,000 US military personnel.

The news of the impending shift in the US policy comes just days after President Obama controversially suggested at the G-7 summit in Germany last week that Washington didn’t have an overall strategy formulated to deal with the ‘train and advise’ mission in Iraq. The US is being widely blamed in the region for being slow in its response and failing to articulate a clear strategy to confront the IS and support Iraq.

While the Iraqi Army is licking its wounds and holding ground where it can with the help of thousands of Iranian-backed Shiite militia fighters, the Islamic State’s pool of recruits appears almost limitless. There are suggestions that the extremist group adds about 1,000 fighters to its ranks each month, and that doesn't even include the temporary alliances that it forces with local tribes, criminal gangs, and other jihadist groups who cling to the brand for a sense of purpose or importance.

Canada’s role

Other western nations are also playing their parts. Canada has announced that it has now flown over 1,000 sorties in Iraq and Syria, while topping 100 airstrikes against Islamic State targets. Back in October, Ottawa deployed six CF-18 Hornet jet fighters, one aerial refueller and two surveillance aircraft to support the US-led coalition. The fighter planes have flown 661 of the sorties.

Supporting those planes are 600 Canadian personnel on the ground, including 70 special operators who are in northern Iraq working with Kurdish fighters. Canada is also the only western country that has admitted getting into firefights with Islamic State trigger-pullers, and has also taken a casualty.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that the UK will be expanding its military training mission in Iraq to help train the Iraqi army deal with threats from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted by the IS. This latest commitment will bring the number of British personnel engaged in the fight against IS in Iraq and Syria up to about 900. The UK government had announced in March that it was sending 60 troops to train Kurdish forces fighting the IS. The country is the second largest contributor in terms of airstrikes in Iraq, and support for the Syrian opposition.

The US has asserted that more than 10,000 IS militants have been killed in Iraq and Syria since the US-led international coalition started airstrikes against them last year. But it remains far from clear if the present strategy being unveiled in fits and starts to tackle the IS in West Asia will work in an absence of a resolve in the West to take this campaign to its logical conclusion.

(The writer is Professor of International Relations, King’s College London)