Rattled by the fast-escalating challenge of Islamic State militants, the United States on Friday announced the formation of a broad coalition with nine friendly nations as a first step in the effort to “degrade” and “ultimately destroy” the threat posed by ISIS.
Besides the US, the coalition for now includes Britain, France, Australia, Canada, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark.
The precise military strategy to achieve that goal has not been worked out, but it has been made clear that the operation would not include putting boots on the ground. There was also no immediate word about expanding the US airstrikes to Syria.
“Over the coming days, we will continue the discussion with our partners in the region, who have an important role to play across these lines of effort,” US Secretary of State John Kerry and Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a joint statement issued here after the talks they held with America’s allies and key partners on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Wales.
The US is also talking in terms of a “truly global coalition” against ISIS and sees it as a focus of the upcoming UN General Assembly session as part of the effort to “ensure that it can no longer threaten Iraq, the region, and the world”.
Identifying the formation of a new and inclusive Government in Iraq as a critical step in this effort, the US statement said the international coalition must coordinate across multiple lines of effort, including military support to Iraq, stopping the flow of foreign fighters, countering ISIS’s financing and funding, addressing humanitarian crises, and de-legitimising ISIS’s ideology.
The only reference to the Syrian dimension in the US statement was that a multinational task force would be formed to “share more information about the flow of foreign fighters into Syria and from Syria into Iraq”.
“These foreign fighters represent an acute threat to our NATO allies,” Kerry and Hagel said, adding: “We also agreed to work in concert to stifle ISIl’s sources of revenue, including any trade in petroleum products, and hold accountable those who violate international prohibitions on such trade.”
The US for now is continuing with air strikes against ISIS in Iraq and indications are that this operation would go on for now, leaving the ground combat operation to Iraqi security forces and Kurdish pesh merga fighters.
“Obviously I think that’s a red line for everybody here: no boots on the ground,” Kerry told reporters in Newport, Wales. “We have the technology, we have the know-how. What we need is obviously the willpower to make sure that we are steady and stay at this,” he said.
Putting together a coalition is being viewed as an encouraging development for Obama, who has been averse to the idea of going it alone in a new military operation in Iraq which in due course would need to be expanded to Syria.
In the midst of the coalition-building exercise, the United States is trying to grapple with the problem posed by home-grown jehadi cells. On Friday, the FBI was said to be looking for Ahmad Abousamra, a 32-year-old Syrian-American educated in Boston, who is now suspected of running the ISIS’ campaign on the social media.
The tech-savvy Abousamra, who graduated with honors from Northeastern University, is said to be a dual American-Syrian citizen who had been charged with terrorism-related offenses in 2009. He has been on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list ever since.
Abousamra, according to US media accounts, was born in France, but grew up in an upscale Boston suburb, with his father as a prominent endocrinologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Al-Qaeda wants to portray Modi as enemy of Islam: US analyst
Al-Qaeda, which has announced the creation of a separate wing for India, wants to portray Prime Minister Narendra Modi as an enemy of Islam and as such India should take its threat “very seriously”, a well-known American counter-terror expert said on Friday. “This video, the first from (al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-) Zawahiri this year, should be taken very seriously. Al-Qaeda wants to portray Prime Minister Modi as an enemy of Islam,” ex-CIA analyst Bruce Riedel, who is considered to be one of the US’ top experts on counter-terrorism, told PTI. “From its base in Pakistan and with its close links to leT, al-Qaeda is a dangerous menace to India,” Riedel said when asked about the latest video of Zawahiri announcing al-Qaeda’s creation of a new branch for the Indian subcontinent to wage jehad in India, including in Kashmir, Gujarat and Assam with the goal of establishing a caliphate and impose sharia ranging from Afghanistan to Myanmar.