U.S. Lines up Allies to Confront ISIS
September 8, 2014
U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking yesterday on the Sunday morning television news program “Meet the Press,” declared, “What I want people to understand is that over the course of months, we are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum of [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)]. We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities; we’re going to shrink the territory that they control; and, ultimately, we’re going to defeat them. On Friday, at a press conference to mark the end of a two-day summit of NATO member-state leaders, the president declared that he found “conviction” among U.S. allies that the international community must “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS. “What we can accomplish is to dismantle this network, this force that has claimed to control this much territory, so that they can’t do us harm and that is going to be our objective.”
In recent months, ISIS has taken control over great swathes of northern and western Iraq and eastern Syria. In late June, ISIS declared that it was establishing a caliphate on the territories it controls to be known simply as “the Islamic State,” which will extend from Aleppo in northern Syria to Diyala province in eastern Iraq.
President Obama is scheduled to give a speech on September 10 in which he will reveal his full strategy to combat the radical Sunni jihadists. A chief element of that strategy is to line up a coalition of Arab nations to help in the fight, and yesterday at a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, the League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi urged member nations to confront ISIS on all possible levels. What is required is a “clear and firm decision for a comprehensive confrontation” with “cancerous and terrorist” groups, al-Arabi told the meeting of foreign ministers.
On September 5, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States has formed a coalition with nine allies–largely European members of NATO–to carry out both a military and political campaign against ISIS. Secretary Kerry stated that the multinational alliance has “the ability to destroy” the militants using tactics beyond the battlefield, including disrupting recruiting and fund-raising networks. “It may take a year, it may take two years, it may take three years. But we’re determined. It has to happen,” stated Secretary Kerry.
Also on September 5, the BBC reported that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, approved co-operation with the United States as part of an international response to ISIS. The ayatollah has authorized his top army commander to co-ordinate operations in Iraq with the U.S. military. Although the Iranian government has long been antagonistic toward the United States, Iran considers ISIS a grave threat. The extremist Sunni group considers all Shi`ite Mulims as heretics, and Iran, a theocracy, is governed by Shi`ite clerics.
Additional World Book articles:
- Umayyad caliphate
- Iraq War
- Iraq 2012 (a Back in Time article)
- Iraq 2013 (a Back in Time article)
- Syria 2013 (a Back in Time article)
- Syria: The Roots of a Rebellion (a special report)
