WASHINGTON—More than three months of U.S. airstrikes in Syria have failed to prevent Islamic State militants from expanding their control in that country, according to U.S. and independent assessments, raising new concerns about President Barack Obama ’s military strategy in the Middle East.
While hundreds of U.S. bombing runs and missile strikes have put Islamic State forces on the defensive in Iraq, they have not had the same kind of impact in Syria. Instead, Islamic State fighters have enlarged their hold on Syria since the U.S. started hitting the group’s Syrian strongholds in September, according to the new estimates by the Defense Department and independent analysts.
Islamic State’s ability to grab more territory in Syria is one outgrowth of the U.S. decision to focus its military efforts on Iraq, where the militant group has seized major parts of the country and declared them part of a new Islamic Caliphate. The U.S.-led military effort has pushed Islamic State forces out of some key battlegrounds in Iraq.
But Syria still serves as a haven for Islamic State fighters, also known in the West by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL.
“Certainly ISIS has been able to expand in Syria, but that’s not our main objective,” said one senior defense official. “I wouldn’t call Syria a safe haven for ISIL, but it is a place where it’s easier for them to organize, plan and seek shelter than it is in Iraq.”
The expansion of Islamic State control isn’t purely the result of conquests. In some cases, competing rebel forces battling Islamic State have been convinced to join forces with them, officials and experts said.
The problem mirrors the one U.S. forces faced in Afghanistan, where Taliban fighters found vital sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan, able to rest and rearm before returning to fight American troops in Afghanistan.
U.S. officials routinely complained that Pakistan’s haven for Taliban leaders undermined America’s strategy in Afghanistan. The same thing is happening in Iraq and Syria, the latest assessments indicate.
The U.S. strategy also has created difficulties for battling Islamic State in some areas within Iraq, including Sinjar, where the militants have targeted the country’s minority Yazidi community, methodically raping, torturing, enslaving and killing thousands, according to the United Nations.
While U.S. airstrikes have helped Iraqi forces make gains in Sinjar, Islamic State fighters have been able to find sanctuary across the nearby border with Syria, said Jennifer Cafarella, a Syria analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, an independent research group that has been an advocate of a more muscular U.S. military role in the Middle East.
“ISIS has lost terrain in Sinjar, which has prompted ISIS fighters to flow into Syria where they are very seldom targeted,” she said. “It’s a little bit of a safe haven that ISIS is able to utilize to regroup and launch a counterattack.”
In Syria, nearly three-quarters of the U.S.-led airstrikes have centered on the fight in the Kurdish town of Kobani on Turkey’s border. Coordinating with Kurdish forces in the area, the U.S. campaign has kept Islamic State forces from seizing Kobani.
Beyond that, Ms. Cafarella said, the strikes have done little to prevent Islamic State fighters from consolidating power across Syria. The group hasn't only retained power in its strongholds in northeastern Syria, it has also made gains in western Syria and near the government controlled capital of Damascus, she said.
“The current air campaign will not be successful in denying or removing ISIS from the Syrian theater without coordinating with forces on the ground,” she said.
Pentagon officials agree with that assessment and say that the military strategy has to remain focused on Iraq until American plans for arming and training thousands of Syrian rebels gets traction. The current plan could take years to have a significant impact in Syria.
“Absent a partner on the ground in Syria, ours is still an Iraq-first strategy,” said one defense official. “You’ve got to have forces on the ground.”
Col. Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East military campaign, said the airstrikes aren’t intended to prevent Islamic State fighters from gaining ground in most of Syria.
While the U.S. has stepped in to help Kurdish fighters in Kobani, Col. Ryder said coalition strikes in Syria are primarily “shaping” operations meant to weaken their hold in neighboring Iraq.
“Gaining territorial control in Syria has never been our mission,” he said. “That wasn’t the objective of our airstrikes.”
That focus is likely to be questioned in the coming weeks when the new Republican-controlled Congress holds hearings on Mr. Obama’s strategy in the Middle East. Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is likely to challenge the strategy when he holds a confirmation hearing in early February for Ashton Carter, a longtime Pentagon official who is Mr. Obama’s nominee to be his next defense secretary.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-led-...ria-1421271618
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