US Plan to Destroy Islamic State Could Stretch Past 2016

The Obama administration is preparing to carry out a phased campaign against the Islamic State that may take three years to eventually destroy the terrorist army - requiring a sustained effort that could last until after President Barack Obama has left office, according to senior administration officials.

The first phase, an air campaign with nearly 145 airstrikes in the past month, is already underway to protect ethnic and religious minorities and US diplomatic, intelligence and military personnel, and their facilities, as well as to begin rolling back Islamic State gains in northern and western Iraq.

The next phase, which would begin sometime after Iraq forms a more inclusive government, scheduled this week, is expected to involve an intensified effort to train, advise or equip the Iraqi military, Kurdish fighters and possibly members of Sunni tribes.

The final, toughest and most politically controversial phase of the operation - destroying the Islamic State in its sanctuary inside Syria - might not be completed until the next administration. Indeed, some Pentagon planners envision a military campaign lasting at least 36 months.

Obama will use a speech to the nation Wednesday to make his case for launching a US-led offensive against Sunni militants gaining ground in the Middle East, seeking to rally support for a broad military mission while reassuring the public he is not plunging US forces into another Iraq War.

"What I want people to understand," Obama said in an interview broadcast Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," "is that over the course of months, we are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum" of the militants. "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," he added.

The military campaign Obama is preparing has no obvious precedent. Unlike US counterterrorism operations in Yemen and Pakistan, it is not expected to be limited to drone strikes against militant leaders. Unlike the war in Afghanistan, Obama has ruled out the use of ground combat troops. Unlike the Kosovo war that President Bill Clinton and NATO nations waged in 1999, it will not be compressed into an intensive 78-day tactical and strategic air campaign. And unlike the air campaign that toppled the Libyan leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, in 2011, the Obama administration is no longer "leading from behind," but plans to play the central role in building a coalition to counter the Islamic State.

"We have the ability to destroy ISIL," Secretary of State John Kerry said last week at the NATO summit meeting in Wales, using an alternative name for the militant group. "It may take a year, it may take two years, it may take three years. But we're determined it has to happen."

Antony Blinken, Obama's deputy national security adviser, has suggested that the United States is undertaking a prolonged mission. "It's going to take time, and it will probably go beyond even this administration to get to the point of defeat," Blinken said last week on CNN.
Kerry is scheduled to head for the Middle East soon to solidify the anti-Islamic State coalition. And Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is traveling to Ankara, Turkey, on Monday to woo another potential ally in the fight against the Sunni militant group.

Although details of how the emerging coalition would counter the Islamic State remain undecided, several US officials said that they believe the list of allies so far includes Jordan, offering intelligence help, and Saudi Arabia, which has influence with Sunni tribes in Iraq and Syria and which has been funding moderate Syrian rebels.

The United Arab Emirates, officials said, has also indicated a willingness to consider airstrikes in Iraq. Germany has said it would send arms to peshmerga fighters in Kurdistan. And rising concern over foreign fighters returning home from Syria and Iraq may also have spurred Britain, Australia, France and Denmark to join the alliance.

Administration officials acknowledged, however, that getting those same countries to sign on to airstrikes in Syria is proving harder.

"Everybody is on board Iraq," an administration official said. "But when it comes to Syria, there's more concern" about where airstrikes could lead.

The official nonetheless expressed confidence that the countries would eventually come around to taking the fight into Syria, in part, he said, because "there's really no other alternative."

The talks between Hagel and the Turkish leadership may be crucial in determining whether the United States will be able to count on Ankara on a number of fronts, including closing the Turkish border to foreign fighters who have been using Turkey as a transit point from which to go to Syria and Iraq to join militant organizations and allowing the US military to carry out operations from bases in Turkey.

But Turkish officials have been wary of attracting notice from the Islamic State, given the group holds the fate of 49 kidnapped Turkish diplomats in its hands. In June, Sunni militants with the Islamic State stormed the Turkish consulate in Mosul, Iraq, kidnapping the consul general and other members of his staff, and their families, including three children. The consul general, Ozturk Yilmaz, is a former adviser to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Obama's planned speech suggests that the president may be moving closer to a decision on many remaining questions, including whether and at what point the White House might widen the air campaign to include targets across the border in Syria, possibly to include Islamic State leadership, and its equipment, supply depots and command centers.

Senior officials have repeatedly ruled out sending ground combat troops, a vow Obama reaffirmed in his appearance on "Meet the Press."

"This is not going to be an announcement about US ground troops," Obama said. "This is not the equivalent of the Iraq War."

But it is not clear if that declaration would preclude the eventual deployment of small numbers of American Special Operations forces or CIA operatives to call in airstrikes on behalf of Kurdish fighters, Iraqi forces or Sunni tribes, a procedure that makes it much easier to distinguish between Islamic State militants, civilians and counter Islamic State fighters.

During the recent operation to take Mosul Dam, Kurdish soldiers, using a more roundabout procedure, provided the coordinates of Islamic State fighters to the joint US-Kurdish command center in Irbil, which in turn passed them to American aircraft, Masrour Barzani, the head of Kurdish intelligence said in a recent interview.

The White House is counting on an effort by US, Iraqi and Gulf Arab officials to persuade Sunni tribesman in western Iraq, now aligned with the Islamic State, to break their ties after chafing under the harsh Sharia law the group has imposed.

Unless the new Iraqi government is substantially more inclusive, US encouragement and support for these groups to turn on the Islamic State may be far less effective than it was in 2007, when many tribes fought the forerunner of the group, Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Some Sunni tribal leaders are still bitter at the treatment under former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shia.

"Even if they try we will not accept it," said Sheik Ali Hatem Suleimani, a tribal leader in Anbar who now resides in Irbil. "In the past, we fought against Al Qaeda and we cleaned the area of them. But the Americans gave control of Iraq to Maliki, who started to arrest, kill, and exile most of the tribal commanders who led the fight against Al Qaeda."

(Julie Hirschfeld Davis contributed reporting from Washington, and Azam Ahmed from Irbil, Iraq)