NEW YORK, October 1 (RIA Novosti) – US plans to defeat Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria have made some progress in halting the jihadists, while also leaving big unanswered questions about Syria’s political future, analyst Lawrence Korb told RIA Novosti Wednesday.
“It’s an appropriate strategy because it has stopped the military momentum of IS,”Korb, a former US Department of Defense official and currently an analyst at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank, said .
“The US went in to rescue the Yazidis in August, when it looked like even Kurdistan would fall. We were able to rescue the Yazidis, stop IS from taking to Irbil and have retaken the dams that IS seized control over.”
The United States and some allies from a 60-nation coalition have launched strikes on IS, which is also called ISIS and ISIL, a sectarian Sunni Muslim militia of more than 30,000 fighters that controls swathes of Sunni-majority areas on either side of the Iraq-Syria border.
US President Barack Obama says IS can be routed by US-led airstrikes and bolstering a ground force of Kurds, Iraqis and moderate elements of Syria’s opposition. Critics say he lacks reliable allies, is over-reliant on air-power and has no strategy for ending Syria’s civil war.
“The strategy will degrade and weaken IS so it no longer threatens the region. But there are many unanswered questions. What role will Iran play? What about President Bashar al-Assad in Syria? Will this lead to a negotiated settlement in Syria that involves parts of Assad’s regime?” added Korb.
Anti-government protests that erupted in Syria in March 2011 triggered an increasingly bloody civil war in the country that, according to UN recent estimates, has claimed the lives of more than 191,000 people over a three-year period. The civil war forced as many as three million more to flee their homes.
The US air campaign on the Syrian soil, which was not agreed with the Assad administration, is feared by some to have a potential of evolving into a smoke screen for an offensive targeting the Damascus-based government in the country without UN’s authorization.
Various politicians and international experts have stressed that all actions against the IS and other extremists in the Middle East must be carried out with consent of suffering countries' legitimate authorities, otherwise such actions violate the international laws.
