Iraqi forces ready push after Obama offers advisers

Iraqi forces were massing north of Baghdad on Friday, aiming to strike back at militants whose drive toward the capital prompted the United States to send military advisers to stiffen government resistance.

Personnel from the Kurdish security forces detain a man suspected of being a militant belonging to the Al Qaeda-linked ISIL in the outskirts of Kirkuk on June 16, 2014. - Reuters

US President Barack Obama offered up to 300 Americans to help coordinate the fight. But he held off granting a request for air strikes from the government and renewed a call for Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki to do more to overcome sectarian divisions that have fuelled resentment among the minority.

In the area around Samarra, on the main highway 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, which has become a frontline of the battle with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the provincial governor told cheering troops they would now force ISIL and its allies back.

A source close to Maliki said that the government planned to hit back now that it had halted the advance which saw ISIL seize the main northern city of Mosul, capital of Nineveh province, 10 days ago and sweep down along the Tigris valley toward Baghdad as the US-trained army crumbled.

Governor Abdullah Al Jibouri, whose provincial capital Tikrit was overrun last week, was shown on television on Friday telling soldiers in Ishaqi, just south of Samarra: “Today we are coming in the direction of Tikrit, Sharqat and Nineveh.

“These troops will not stop,” he added, saying government forces around Samarra numbered more than 50,000.

This week, the militants’ lightning pace has slowed in the area north of the capital, which views them as heretics to be wiped out. Samarra has a major shrine.

The participation of militias and tens of thousands of new army volunteers has allowed the Iraqi military to rebound after mass desertions by soldiers last week allowed ISIL to carve out territory where it aims to found an caliphate straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border.

“The strategy has been for the last few days to have a new defence line to stop the advance of ISIL,” a close ally of Maliki told Reuters. “We succeeded in blunting the advance and now are trying to get back areas unnecessarily lost.”

Pockets of fighting continue. Government forces appeared to be still holding out in the sprawling Baiji oil refinery, the country’s largest, 100 km north of Samarra, residents said.

At Duluiya, between Samarra and Baghdad, residents said a helicopter strafed and rocketed a number of houses in the early morning, killing a woman. Police said they had been told by the military that the pilot had been given the wrong coordinates.

“Targeted” US action

While a new reality is emerging with the key cities of Mosul and Tikrit for now out of reach for the government, Obama has put US military power back at Baghdad’s disposal, while insisting he will not send ground troops back, two and half years after he ended the occupation that began in 2003.

US President Barack Obama speaks about the situation in Iraq from the briefing room of the White House in Washington on June 19, 2014. - Reuters

Announcing the despatch of advisers, the president said he was prepared to take “targeted” military action later if deemed necessary, thus delaying but still keeping open the prospect of air strikes to fend off a militant insurgency.

Obama also delivered a stern message to Maliki on the need to take urgent steps to heal Iraq’s sectarian rift, something US officials say the leader has failed to do and which ISIL has exploited to win broader support.

“We do not have the ability to simply solve this problem by sending in tens of thousands of troops and committing the kinds of blood and treasure that has already been expended in Iraq,” Obama told reporters. “Ultimately, this is something that is going to have to be solved by the Iraqis.”

The contingent of up to 300 military advisers will be made up of special forces and will staff joint operations centres for intelligence sharing and planning, US officials said.

Leading US lawmakers have called for Maliki to step down, and Obama aides have also made clear their frustration with him.

While Obama did not join calls for Maliki to go, saying “it’s not our job to choose Iraq’s leaders”, he avoided any expression of confidence in the embattled Iraqi prime minister.

Warning that Iraq’s fate “hangs in the balance,” Obama said: “Only leaders with an inclusive agenda are going to be able to truly bring the Iraqi people together.”

Iraqis appeared content with Obama’s decision. The Maliki ally said Obama’s offer of aid was appropriate and included the establishment of an intelligence liaison centre that would allow for future US air strikes on ISIL and other groups.

Obama’s decision to hold off for now on such strikes underscored scepticism in Washington, and among its regional allies, over whether they would be effective, given the risk of civilian deaths.

A large plume of smoke rises from what is said to be Baiji oil refinery in Baiji, northern Iraq, in this still image taken from an amateur video posted on a social media website onJune 18, 2014.- Reuters

“We will be prepared to take targeted and precise military action if we conclude the situation on the ground requires it,” Obama said. But he insisted that any US military response would not be in support of one Iraqi sect over another.

Maliki’s alliance won the most votes in April parliamentary elections, and US officials said the Obama administration was pressing Iraqi authorities to accelerate the process of forging a new governing coalition and for it to be broad-based.

Anthony Cordesman, an expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think-tank in Washington, said Obama’s decision guaranteed that the United States, not just Maliki’s other key foreign allies in Iran, will have a presence on the ground during the Iraq crisis.

“It gives the United States the kind of direct contact with Iraqi forces that allows them to judge their strengths and weaknesses and act as a check on sectarian abuses,” he wrote. “It keeps up the right kind of pressure on Maliki and any successor.”