by Matthew Rusling
WASHINGTON -- While Islamic State (IS) continues to make gains across the Middle East and North Africa, U.S. President Barack Obama still does not have a concrete plan to fight the radical group and is thus blasted for a lack of leadership.
The IS has in recent months overrun vast swaths of territory in the Middle East in a bid to enforce a Medieval version of Islamic rule. The group has attracted followers worldwide, and threatened this week to conquer Iraq's capital, Baghdad.
At the same time, during comments on the issue on Monday at the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Germany, Obama said that his administration does not yet "have a complete strategy because it requires commitments on the part of the Iraqis." This was in spite of an ongoing U.S.-led bombing campaign against the IS over the last several months.
Critics say Obama has not addressed a key problem -- the need for a political solution in addition to the U.S.-led bombing campaign that has over several months witnessed around 4,000 U.S.-led air strikes. Critics say that Iraq's Shiites-dominated government and military are alienating and abusing Sunnis.
Wayne White, former deputy director of the U.S. State Department's Middle East Intelligence Office, told Xinhua that increases in foreign military aid to Iraq will remain of only limited value unless there is a robust outreach by Baghdad's Shiites-dominated government to the country's alienated and abused Sunni Arab community, from which IS preys and draws power.
Obama again this week met with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, but if past meetings with G7 and coalition leaders are typical, Abadi and his Shiite cronies will shun the critical political dimension of the conflict while pleading for more foreign military aid, experts said.h "The longer Baghdad refuses to extend its hand meaningfully to Sunni Arab tribes, military officers, etc., the more IS's grip on its core Iraqi holdings will solidify," White said.
That will make it harder to foment a significant Sunni Arab rebellion against the IS, he said.
Ramadi, for example, never would have fallen, had Baghdad made the political deals needed to energize tens of thousands of Sunni Arab fighters to take up arms at its side - the large number of effective combatants Abadi and his allies have failed to muster otherwise, White said.
Indeed, Ramadi fell to the Islamist terror group last month, with the White House billing the defeat as a "setback," although many experts said that word was a major understatement. The fall of Ramadi, which forced Iraqi troops to flee, has cast a major doubt on the Iraqi government's competence to fight the Islamist terrorists.
Meanwhile, the IS is making major gains in Libya, which has become a failed state after the U.S. helped topple strongman Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, leaving the country fractured and in chaos.
White said much more U.S. and European heft needs to be thrown behind the UN efforts to broker anything from a ceasefire to a national unity government involving Libya's two rival governments.
Instead, UN Libyan envoy Bernadino Leon has largely soldiered on alone in pursuit of the desperately-needed closure enabling the two sides to throw all their military resources against the IS in the face of international neglect, he said.
