President Barack Obama has played down the Islamic State capture of Ramadi, capital of Iraq’s largest province, as a “tactical setback” and insisted the US-led coalition’s campaign against the terror outfit is “not losing”.
“No, I don’t think we
are losing. There’s no doubt there was a tactical setback, although Ramadi had been vulnerable for a very long time, primarily because these are not Iraqi security forces that we have trained or reinforced,” Obama said in an interview with news magazine The Atlantic published on Thursday, days after the key Iraqi territory was stormed.
His comments also come just two days after the White House admitted the ISIS taking control of Anbar capital Ramadi was “indeed a setback” even as it vowed to help the Iraqi forces to reverse the outfit’s gains.
Since August last year, a US-led coalition has conducted over 6,000 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria to destroy the ISIS. Obama has not recalled US combat troops to Iraq, following a long brutal war after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
However, the defeat in Ramadi has forced the US to take a re-look at its strategy. It has also put a question mark on the credibility of Iraq’s government, with Obama blaming the rout on lack of training and reinforcement of Iraq’s own security forces. “...It is indicative that the training of Iraqi security forces, the fortifications, the command-and-control systems are not happening fast enough in Anbar, in the Sunni parts of the country,” he said.