WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama called on Middle East allies Monday to do more in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, signaling a growing frustration within the administration that Saudi Arabia and other allies in the
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama called on Middle East allies Monday to do more in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, signaling a growing frustration within the administration that Saudi Arabia and other allies in the region have yet to help the United States build up a Syrian Arab coalition of ground forces to push back the militant group in Syria.
While he maintained that Islamic State militants have lost around 40 percent of the populated areas they once controlled in Iraq, the president said that progress against the group by the U.S.-led coalition “needs to keep coming faster,” in a tacit acknowledgment that the U.S. public may not be up for the slow, painstaking approach the administration had initially envisioned.
In remarks to reporters after his national security team met Monday morning at the Pentagon, Obama, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Ash Carter, singled out allies in the region to do more.
“Just as the United States is doing more in this fight, just as our allies France, Germany and the United Kingdom, Australia and Italy are doing more, so must others,” he said, pointedly leaving out America’s Sunni Arab allies who are part of the coalition against the Islamic State. “And that is why I have asked Secretary Carter to go to the Middle East — he’ll depart right after this press briefing — to work with our coalition partners on securing more military contributions to this fight.”
Carter will fly to Turkey, which is serving as a platform for many of the U.S.-led strikes against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. It will be his first stop in a trip that is intended to take stock of recent moves to speed up the military campaign against the jihadi group and determine what additional steps might be needed.
Saudi Arabia on Monday announced the creation of a 34-nation Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism, which includes several countries that have been helping the Saudis fight rebels in Yemen.
Carter will fly to Turkey, which is serving as a platform for many of the U.S.-led strikes against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. It will be his first stop in a trip that is intended to take stock of recent moves to speed up the military campaign against the jihadi group and determine what additional steps might be needed.
No one in the Obama administration is suggesting that Saudi Arabia or other Gulf allies send ground troops into Syria, but administration officials want the Arab allies to help the United States recruit and put together a Syrian Arab force of ground troops willing to take on the Islamic State.
Carter’s trip comes amid an intensifying debate over whether the Obama administration is moving fast enough to dismantle the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate.
The president cited a short list of recent successes against the group, saying that besides losing its foothold in Iraq, the Islamic State “continues to lose territory in Syria.”
“We continue to step up our air support and supplies to local forces — Syrian-Kurds, Arabs, Christians and Turkmen — and they are having success,” he said. “After routing ISIL at Kobani and Tal Abyad, they have pushed ISIL back from almost across the entire border region with Turkey, and we are working with Turkey to seal the rest,” he said.
But administration officials say privately that they want to see more contributions from the Saudis — even though there is no expectation that they would send combat troops — as well as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and even Turkey. And some former officials and lawmakers say that the United States also needs to do more.
The rare national security meeting at the Pentagon, which included almost every top administration, military, intelligence and counterterrorism official, was intended to portray an all-hands-on-deck message in hopes that as Americans head into the holiday season, they will feel reassured that the government is working to keep them safe.
The meeting was also a quiet acknowledgment that Obama’s speech from the Oval Office last week was not well received, even by some Democrats.
Still, “The president’s words today are not necessarily new,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters after Obama’s meeting and remarks at the Pentagon.
Acknowledging that the United States may need to do more, some officials said the Pentagon may try to make tweaks. “Are there other changes? Are there other tweaks?” a senior Defense Department official asked reporters rhetorically on Friday. “We’re constantly thinking through what more we can do to tighten up the campaign.”
Amid mounting worries that the Islamic State is using its sanctuaries in Syria and Iraq to plan new attacks in the Middle East, Europe and perhaps the United States, critics assert that more than tweaks are needed.
“By any measure, our strategy in Iraq and Syria is not succeeding, or is not succeeding fast enough,” Michael G. Vickers, who managed intelligence programs at the Pentagon until his retirement in April, wrote recently in Politico. “We are playing a long game, when a more rapid and disruptive strategy is required.”
In the summer, Obama went to the Pentagon and asked for proposals to speed U.S. military efforts. There was ample reason for concern: With the Islamic State in control of two major Iraqi cities, Ramadi and Mosul, the situation on the battlefield was generally stalemated.
Pentagon officials provided the White House with a list of recommendations — calling them “accelerants” — to hasten the pace of the military campaign without overhauling the basic strategy. Some of the steps took a less ironclad interpretation of Obama’s repeated vow not to put combat “boots on the ground.”
Fifty Special Operations troops, the White House decided, would be sent to northern Syria to organize Arab and Kurdish fighters so they could put pressure on the Islamic State stronghold in Raqqa.
In October, a U.S. Special Operations force for the first time carried out a joint raid with Kurdish commandos to free prisoners from an Islamic State prison in Hawija, Iraq.
This month, Carter told Congress that the United States would build on that operation by sending a Special Operations task force to Iraq, one the defense secretary referred to euphemistically as a “specialized expeditionary targeting force.” Military officials later said that this unit would have fewer than 100 personnel.
Last week, Carter said that the administration was willing to go further by using Apache attack helicopters to support Iraqi forces that are pushing to retake Ramadi — a step administration officials had considered taking six months ago. Carter also said for the first time that the United States was prepared to have U.S. advisers accompany select Iraqi brigades.
The Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, has yet to agree to either measure, though some U.S. and Iraqi officials believe it is likely he will go along in the face of criticism from hard-line Shiites if the United States’ moves are not too heavily advertised in Iraq.
Last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris and bombing of a Russian plane over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt have prompted criticism that the White House is not moving quickly enough to deprive the Islamic State of the territory it is using to attract supporters and plan its attacks. That debate has only intensified with the disclosure that Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband carried out the massacre in San Bernardino, California, had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a Facebook post.
