Anti-IS campaign enters third year

Washington / AFP

The US-led military effort against the IS group started exactly two years ago, aimed at halting the extremists as they swept across Iraq, leaving a trail of human butchery and destruction in their wake.
It was supposed to have been a swift and narrow campaign that would help local forces deal a “lasting defeat” to IS extremists.
But billions of dollars and more than 14,000 air strikes later, such assertions are buckling, and the campaign highlights the limits of fighting a war mainly from the skies.
“I think we are looking at decades of effort,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
“We are fighting a losing battle if we expect to completely
destroy (IS) altogether.”
Nearly half of the territory once held by the IS group in Iraq has been liberated, as well as about 20 percent of its claim in neighboring Syria.

US boots on the ground
When President Barack Obama launched air strikes in Iraq in August 2014, officials stressed US involvement would not be sustained for the long term.
And Obama, elected on a promise of ending America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, vowed ground troops would not be dragged back into another conflict.
He has repeatedly insisted that while the United States can provide support and air strikes, the war has to be won by local forces — not Americans.
Still, about 6,500 coalition troops — mostly American — have deployed in the anti-IS fight.
Most are in Iraq, though some special operations forces are working with Kurdish and Arab fighters in war-torn Syria, where a civil war and Russian strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad have further complicated the picture.
“The few people of us who were watching this group develop from 2010 to 2014 knew very well that this was going to be a very long-term battle, and the idea that no US troops were going to be involved was just a fantasy,” Lister said.
Though the United States claims more than 60 countries are part of its coalition, in reality America and just a few stalwart partners are carrying out almost all the work. Within weeks of the first strikes in Iraq, the coalition campaign spread to Syria.
The fight later expanded to Afghanistan and, last week, the Pentagon quietly started an air campaign in the IS group’s Libyan stronghold of Sirte.
That campaign is supposed to last “weeks, not months,” according to the Pentagon.

Civilian deaths
In total, the US-led coalition had conducted 14,301 strikes in Iraq and Syria as of August 6. A total of 9,514 of the strikes were in Iraq and 4,787 in Syria.
The daily cost for such operations is about $11.9 million — around $8 billion so far.
Coalition strikes have targeted extremist leaders, foot soldiers, tanks and fighting positions.
Fuel trucks and well heads that supply illicit oil for the IS group have been blown up too, along with hoards of cash worth millions of dollars.
But such reliance on air strikes has created new problems, with the campaign’s quickening pace leading to increasing numbers of civilians being killed.
As of July 28, the Pentagon had confirmed 55 civilians killed in coalition strikes in Iraq and Syria. Critics say that is an underestimate.
Other incidents are under investigation, including a July strike near the Syrian city of Manbij in which dozens more civilians were allegedly killed.
Though the United States goes to great lengths to avoid such deaths, they have disastrous repercussions for the wider fight against IS jihadists, observers note.
“With the bombing campaigns, you are going to kill innocents, you are going to drive more recruits and you are going to drive more sympathy,” said Howard Gambrill Clark, a Marine veteran and former senior intelligence analyst who now heads the Washington-based Stability Institute.
“I don’t know any serious (counterterrorism) analyst that believes that the US is doing anything but creating more violent extremists,” he said.

2 million at risk of siege in Aleppo: UN

Damascus / AFP

More than two million people in Syria’s Aleppo are in danger of coming under total siege, the United Nations has warned, calling for immediate access to the heavily bombed city.
Ferocious fighting has rocked divided Aleppo in recent weeks, with rebels and regime forces seizing rival access routes and cutting off residents.
In a statement, the UN’s top humanitarian official in Syria, Yacoub El Hillo, and regional coordinator Kevin Kennedy called for a “humanitarian pause” in the hostilities.
Two million people in the city are living in fear of besiegement, including up to 275,000 people trapped in east Aleppo, the statement said.
The fighting in Aleppo is reported to have killed at least 130 civilians since the end of July, and has damaged hospitals, clinics, and the city’s power and water networks.
“The UN stands ready to assist the civilian population of Aleppo, a city now united in its suffering,” the statement read.
“At a minimum, the UN requires a full-fledged ceasefire or weekly 48-hour humanitarian pauses to reach the millions of people in need throughout Aleppo and replenish the food and medicine stocks, which are running dangerously low.”
Fighting in Aleppo, Syria’s former economic powerhouse, flared in late June when government forces closed in on the Castello Road, the last route into rebel-held parts of the city.
The road was severed in mid-July, sparking food shortages and skyrocketing prices in the eastern districts.
In a major push last week, a coalition of rebels, Islamists, and jihadists cut off the regime’s own main access road on the southern edges of the city.
Each side has used their newly acquired territory to bring food and other supplies into neighbourhoods of the city they control, but the roads are still not safe for civilians to use.
“When used to intentionally deprive people of food and other items essential to their survival, siege tactics constitute a war crime,” the UN statement said.
More than 290,000 people have been killed since Syria’s conflict erupted in March 2011.