The Obama administration appears to be building a “paper coalition” that seems willing to do little more than cheer the U.S. on in the quest to destroy the terrorist army known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but a leading terrorism expert also says we should be willing to try arming moderate Syrian rebels in the effort if they can be identified.
President Obama has stated repeatedly that the U.S. will lead a “broad coalition” in the fight against ISIS, and the administration now says 40 nations have promised assistance of some kind. However, in testimony Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State John Kerry says no nations have been asked to provide ground troops and no nations have volunteered for the job.
“It troubles me. It is a paper coalition to date. I’m not sure, other than rhetorical support, what we’re actually going to get. I actually thought money would be a help from places like Saudi Arabia. I think we should look into some financing for this effort,” said Foundation for the Defense of Democracies President Clifford May.
“We also know, most distressingly, that certain of the most important actors in that region, say Turkey, a NATO ally, is refusing to help,” he said.
Turkey, long a secular Islamic state, is growing increasingly radical., most recently with it’s rhetoric towards Israel in the battle against Hamas in Gaza. May says Turkey is refusing the U.S. to use our own air base on Turkish soil to launch any sort of air strikes against ISIS. The Turkish government is also refusing to take any action to stop illicit oil sales by ISIS.
“It’s a very shaky coalition at best. We don’t want (Syrian President Bashar) Assad in it. He is a client of Iran. We don’t want Iran in it, though Iran is fighting the Islamic State. This is why we need a complex strategy. This is why it’s tough. This is why the idea of the coalition is sort of fanciful at this moment,” said May.
President Obama is asking Congress to authorize spending for the arming and training of moderate Syrian rebels, such as the Free Syrian Army, in an effort to have local forces carry out the ground combat against ISIS. Critics assert that there may be no trustworthy elements of the moderate rebels and that rebels are more concerned with deposing Assad than fighting ISIS.
May says this is a very thorny aspect of the U.S. approach to ISIS.
“This is why this game has to be seen not as checkers but as chess and maybe three-dimensional chess. It is not as simple as saying the enemy of my enemy is my friend. In most cases in the Middle East, and certainly in this case, the enemy of my enemy remains our enemy,” said May.
“We need more than tactics, more than giving weapons. We need a strategy and that strategy should be to weaken or, to use Obama’s phrase, to degrade and ultimately destroy all our enemies in this region, all of the various rival jihadi forces . The last thing we would want, for example, would be to be fighting the Islamic State as the air force of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said.
Nonetheless, May believes if there are some rebels we can trust, it makes sense to have them carry a share of the load.
“I would hope that in these past three-and-a-half years (since the Syrian revolution began) the CIA has done a lot of vetting and knows who our real friends are. If they have some, sure, give them some weapons. Be careful which weapons and monitor carefully how they utilize them,” said May.