Washington: Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi is making an in-person appeal to President Barack Obama on Tuesday for more help defeating the Daesh militants, hoping recent gains in the fight will encourage more investment from a war-weary United States.
Seven months after Al Abadi’s election raised hope in Washington for Iraq’s future, he’s making his first visit to the Oval Office. Al Abadi told reporters on Monday that the increase in US air strikes, weapons deliveries and training has helped roll back Daesh forces, but he needs greater support from the international coalition to “finish” them. “We want to see more,” he said.
The White House signalled that more aid could be coming. Last week, Vice-President Joe Biden touted momentum in the fight against Daesh, and White House press secretary Josh Earnest said on Monday, “If there are specific ideas that Prime Minister Al Abadi has for stepped-up assistance, then we’ll obviously consider them seriously.”
“This is a partnership that the United States is obviously invested in,” Earnest told reporters on Monday. “And our success in working with an inclusive Iraqi government has been important to some of the security gains that Iraq has realised against [Daesh] in the last few months.”
Earlier this month, Iraqi forces and allied militias, backed by US air strikes, were able to recapture the city of Tikrit from the militants in what was the government’s first major victory in Daesh heartland.
“More efforts to organise, arm and integrate the Sunnis willing to fight [Daesh] are going to be needed in the months ahead to liberate Al Anbar and Mosul,” the Daesh’s stronghold, Biden said in a speech on Thursday at National Defence University previewing Al Abadi’s visit. Biden joked that he’s spent more time on the phone with the prime minister talking over the issues than he spends talking to his wife.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon said on Monday that Daesh has lost control of “25 to 30” per cent of the territory it holds in Iraq amid coalition air strikes and an Iraqi offensive.
Following months of an air campaign by a US-led coalition and a rallying of Iraqi forces, the Daesh grip on parts of the country is fading, the Pentagon claims.
“[Daesh] is now being slowly pushed back,” said Pentagon spokesperson Colonel Steve Warren.
“Iraqi security forces and coalition air power have unquestionably inflicted some damage on [Daesh],” he said.
The lost territory amounts to some 13,000 to 17,000 square kilometres, Warren said.
Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said Biden was trying to make the case that it’s worth investing more at a time when many Americans feel their country has done enough.
“There’s a military campaign that the US is helping wage, but it has more internal problems than I think people on either side are willing to admit,” Alterman said. “The reality is what we are trying to do is very difficult, very complicated and many people question how unified we are with the Iraqi government on what we are trying to do.”
The US and its coalition allies have carried out nearly 2,000 strikes in Iraq since the campaign against Daesh began in August — as well as nearly 1,400 in neighbouring Syria. American officials say that while the campaign has made gains, it is likely to stretch on for years.
After years of war, the United States withdrew its forces from Iraq in 2011 but left behind troops to guard the US Embassy. In November, Obama authorised the deployment of up to 1,500 more American troops to bolster Iraqi forces, which could more than double the total number of US forces to 3,100. The Pentagon has made a spending request to Congress of $1.6 billion, focusing on training and arming Iraqi and Kurdish forces. According to a Pentagon document prepared in November, the US is looking to provide an estimated $89.3 million worth of weapons and other equipment to each of the nine Iraqi army brigades.
The US blamed the lack of inclusiveness by Al Abadi’s predecessor, Nouri Al Maliki, for giving the Daesh a recruiting tool and had made the formation of a new government a condition for deeper military action to stop the militant group. Obama met Al Abadi at the United Nations shortly after his election and praised him as “the right person to help work with a broad-based coalition of Iraqis,” and he said the US supports the new prime minister’s “political vision.”
