US troops are trickling back into Iraq in a bid to help destroying the Islamic State (IS) terrorists, but some experts doubt the American deployment will make a significant difference in the fight against the militants.
The radicals have in recent months overrun vast swaths of territory in northern Iraq and Syria in a bid to establish a state based on their skewed interpretation of Islam. The group has decapitated two US journalists and posted videos of the horrid slayings on social media to be viewed worldwide. The rapid advancement of the Islamic State has alarmed the US, as Washington’s worst nightmare is another attack on the homeland like the Sept. 11, 2001 strikes. The Islamic State has threatened to “fly the flag of Allah in the White House,” and the US has in recent months launched an air bombardment campaign against the militants, albeit one that some have blasted as weak.
President Barack Obama announced last week to have authorized the deployment of additional 1,500 US troops in Iraq as advisers but experts are wary over whether the move will have any impact at all.
Former senior adviser to US military leadership in Iraq Rick Brennan said the deployment was not enough to push back or destroy Islamic State terrorists. “The boots on the ground that we’re putting there are only trainers and advisers. And at this point, Iraqi security forces are incapable of doing any kind of large-scale offensive operations,” he said, adding that the current US troop deployment and Iraqi troop training would take several months. “So you’re really talking about at least a year before the Iraqi security forces can make any real offensive push against IS.”
Wayne White, former deputy director of the State Department’s Middle East Intelligence Office, said that IS will have to be confronted with plenty of capable, hard-fighting combat troops. However, if the US sends them, the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Kurds, for example, will tend to step back instead of preparing themselves for the fight. Just as important as solid anti-IS ground troops is political outreach to the many non-extremist Sunni Arab tribes, former soldiers and others who need to be convinced to break with IS, he said. Moreover, if few or none of IS Sunni Arab allies are won over, it will take tens of thousands of US troops to destroy IS in Iraq alone. And the fight would involve bitter street-to-street urban warfare in cities such as Mosul and Fallujah with heavy US and civilian collateral casualties, White said.
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Courtesy: XINHUA
