MESOP : KURDISH TROOPS FRUSTRATED BY COALITION / Coalition Frets Over Lack of Progress in Their Fight Against ISIS

By Sam Jones and Erika Solomon – Financial Times – 10 Sept 2015 – As Major General Eizza Zawir, commander of the Kurdish Peshmerga’s fourth division, gazed out over the flat plain from his position on the hills overlooking the Iraq-Syria border, he could see the busy supply lines of Isis less than 3km away. They would have been easy to hit — but Maj Gen Zawir’s hands were tied. “We’ve spoken to the American team here, the British team, the French team. They see it every day. They can see with their aircraft very clearly. Why don’t they do anything? I don’t know,” he says.The Kurdish troops are not alone in their frustration.

The military fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, known as Isis, is now locked in a stalemate, and criticism is mounting across the 60-nation coalition pledged to combat the group that Washington’s strategy to defeat the jihadis is failing.

The chorus of dissent is being heard outside military circles: the Atlantic intelligence community has in recent weeks begun to significantly change its assessment of Isis’ resilience and the magnitude of the struggle against it, three senior intelligence officials told the Financial Times.One year since US President Barack Obama declared a campaign to “degrade and ultimately destroy” Isis, evidence of the effort’s shortcomings is clear enough: 6,800 air strikes have shrunk the size of the self-declared caliphate by 25 per cent, according to the Pentagon, but almost all of that area is sparsely populated and strategically unimportant.

Successes, such as the recapture of Tikrit, have been overshadowed by losses, including the fall of Ramadi. About 400 Isis vehicles and tanks have been destroyed, but Isis has captured well over 2,000, if not considerably more, analysts estimate.

In Syria, as General Lloyd Austin, commander of the US Central Command, revealed on Wednesday, the programme to train moderate rebels has produced about 50 graduates, of which just “four or five” were fighting. The US has always cast its fight as a “multiyear” campaign. But officials say the phrase masks a serious shortfall in timing. One senior European diplomat within the coalition said they had expected Isis to be “suffering serious problems” by now. A senior US military official characterises progress as “very slow”. In some key areas, they both admitted, it was failing altogether. “I would say five or 10 years is the timescale we are now looking at,” says Harleen Gambhir, a counter terrorism analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. “In Syria, the situation is in stalemate and the Iraq theatre is moving incredibly slowly?.?.?.?It might be the right approach in principle, but during this time, Isis is digging itself in. They are adapting.”

Isis, says Ms Gambhir, “remains a militarily capable organisation that can co-ordinate phased, sophisticated campaigns and it has scaled up its strategy to act regionally”.

That virulence, and Washington’s hesitance, is making the caliphate’s near neighbours restless.

Jordan is itching to intervene. Echoing the concerns of the Peshmerga, one senior Jordanian military officer describes seeing Isis convoys and military formations crossing between Iraq and southern Syria on an almost daily basis. “But we’re not allowed to hit them,” he says. Amman drew up plans to create a safe zone in southern Syria this summer. Jordan aimed to prevent Isis’ advance south of Palmyra and help secure the north-eastern border crossings to Iraq. It even proposed setting up a forward base deep in the desert to directly take the fight to the caliphate. The White House withheld its backing. Others have already acted. Turkey’s new safe zone in northern Syria was grudgingly accepted by the US in exchange for use of the air base at Incirlik. Washington still fears clashes between Turkey and pro-Assad and Kurdish forces.Russia’s move this month to send significant amounts of military material and personnel to fortify Latakia, north of its naval base in Tartus, Syria, has meanwhile prompted the greatest concern in Washington. Any move to help entrench the regime in Damascus will only strengthen Isis’ cause, European and US diplomats believe.

The coalition’s caution, though, is not without reason.

First, Washington and its European allies are wary of becoming identified by civilians in Syria and Iraq as a foreign aggressor. Winning the support of the local population is an absolute prerequisite to success, they believe.

Second, regardless of the boost an immediate military escalation might achieve, there is not yet a cogent long-term military plan.

“By design the current military strategy was only going to be so successful,” notes Hayder al-Khoei, associate fellow at Chatham House. “This was about stopping Isis’ forward momentum but nothing more. The Iraqis have done a very good job in carving out terrain and drawing lines of defence — but they are absolutely not capable of moving forward yet. There is no plan for Fallujah or Mosul.”

Third, and most important, Washington is worried that pushing back Isis may fan instability, rather than fight it. Without having moderate forces on the ground, a territorial vacuum left by Isis could mean more sectarian violence.Isis may lose ground, they reason, but its roots in a brutalised and factionalised local population may only deepen. “Before anything we need a political solution,” says Afzal Ashraf, consultant fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. “But that needs international agreement — the coalition needs to agree on prioritising dealing with Isis or Assad.”