Senators: Obama Counter-IS Strategy Failing | A secret to IS success: Shock troops who fight to the death - Wednesday July 8th, 2015 at 1:48 PM
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Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain, joined by the committee's ranking member Sen. Jack Reed, speaks during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 7 / AP
BY: Bill Gertz
President Obama’s strategy against the Islamic State terror group came under harsh criticism from senators on Tuesday who said the United States is losing the war by not doing more to attack the group.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) said the president was guilty of “self-delusion” in claiming progress is being made against the ultra-violent al Qaeda offshoot, also known as ISIL or ISIS.
During a committee hearing with Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, McCain said 5,000 allied air strikes on IS targets have so far done little to stop IS advances.
“Since U.S. and coalition airstrikes began last year, ISIL has continued to enjoy battlefield successes, including taking Ramadi and other key terrain in Iraq, holding over half the territory in Syria and controlling every border post between Iraq and Syria,” McCain said.
“Our means and our current level of effort are not aligned with our ends,” he said. “That suggests we are not winning, and when you’re not winning in war, you are losing.”
Dempsey, the Joint Chiefs chairman, said restoring Iraqi sovereignty over IS-held territory in Iraq will take at least three years, and defeating the terror group could take up to 20 years.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) also said the president’s strategy against IS is failing.
“And I am deeply disappointed,” Sessions told Carter. “I don’t see the confidence in your testimony or Gen. Dempsey’s testimony. I believe we’re actively carrying out a strategy that the president has, and I don’t believe it has sufficient respect for the use of military force necessary to be successful.”
Additionally, Republican senators criticized the Pentagon leaders for adopting a counter-IS strategy that excludes a concerted military effort to oust Syria’s Bashir Assad from power.
McCain said the failure to deal with the Syrian civil war, where Iran, pro-Iran Hezbollah forces, and Russia are supporting Assad, is the greatest accelerant for Islamic State gains in both gaining recruits and on the battlefield.
“None of our efforts against ISIL in Iraq can succeed while the conflict in Syria continues, and with it, the conditions for ISIL’s continued growth, recruitment, and radicalization of Muslims around the world,” McCain said.
A U.S.-backed program to train Syrian rebels has been restricted to training fighters solely to battle IS militants and not the Assad regime. Fewer than 100 fighters have been trained so far, the Senate testimony disclosed.
The administration launched a Syrian rebel training program just three months ago that plans to produce a force of 7,000 volunteer anti-IS rebels.
“As of July 3rd, we are currently training about 60 fighters,” Carter, the defense secretary, said. “This number is much smaller than we’d hoped for at this point.”
The Pentagon currently has some 3,500 troops involved in training Iraqi forces and has conducted over 5,000 airstrikes on IS targets in Iraq and Syria.
McCain, however, said a large number of the aircraft sorties returned to their bases without dropping bombs because of a lack of ground spotters.
Dempsey testified that IS terrorism is one of several global threats that include Russian revanchism in Eastern Europe, Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, Iranian terrorist activities in the Middle East, and new technical advancements by North Korea, as well as a growing cyber threat.
“While our potential adversaries grow stronger, many of our allies are becoming increasingly dependent on the United States and on our assistance, and some of our comparative military advantages have begun to erode,” Dempsey said.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) said the Islamic State is expanding its operations to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
“There have been a series of spectacular terrorist attacks in the Sinai peninsula,” he said. “The Islamic State takes credit for those attacks. We still have the multinational force and observers in the Sinai peninsula, almost 1,800 soldiers, 1,200 of which are American personnel.”
Dempsey said the Joint Staff conducted a vulnerability assessment of the Sinai and added some new weapons and communications to U.S. and Egyptian forces there.
“I’m confident that [American forces] are adequately protected today, but I fully expect that threat to increase,” Dempsey said.
Dempsey, under questioning from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) agreed that currently more terrorist organizations are operating in more safe havens, and with more weapons and people capable of striking U.S. homeland than at any time since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The four-star general also said IS is expanding to other countries outside Syria and Iraq.
Graham said IS is “recruiting more foreign fighters than we’re training [for the] Free Syrian Army.”
“The math doesn’t work. This is never going to result in Assad or ISIL being degraded or destroyed. The only way I see ISIL to be degraded or destroyed is for a ground force, regional in nature, to go into Syria,” Graham said.
The defense secretary said the U.S. objective in Syria is to force Assad to step down through political and not military means.
Carter and Dempsey said in their testimony that the U.S. ground forces in the region are limited to being used as trainers for Iraqi forces.
Four divisions of U.S.-trained Iraqi military forces deserted during the IS incursion from Syria into Iraq last year, providing both military equipment and a propaganda edge for the group.
“The lack of coherent strategy has resulted in the spread of ISIL around the world to Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, and even to Afghanistan,” McCain said.
“We have seen this movie before, and if we make the same mistakes, we should expect similarly tragic results,” he said. “I do not want to attend another hearing like this with your successors, trying to figure out a strategy to clean up after avoidable mistakes.”
Under questioning from Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah) Carter said IS exercises “mixed” command and control over affiliate terror groups and individual jihadists in the Middle East and North Africa, and in Europe and the Western Hemisphere.
“ISIL is more resilient because it is more decentralized and informal in that sense,” Carter said.
Carter and Dempsey met Monday with Obama at the Pentagon to discuss the administration’s counter-IS strategy that includes nine “lines of effort.”
They include military, diplomatic, and intelligence programs, along with sanctions and efforts to counter IS propaganda and recruitment.
Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, a former senior CIA counterterrorism leader, said in an interview that the administration’s Syrian training program is a waste of time.
Clarridge said the Pentagon should fund and organize a regional military force of Egyptians, Saudis, Jordanians, and Persian Gulf militaries based on the Sunni Arab National Front for the Salvation of Iraq, also known as the Awakening Movement, that was developed in Iraq from 2008 to bring stability to the country.
“Then you’d have a real force that could whack ISIS to the ground,” he said.
Additionally, Clarridge said the Pentagon needs to stop sending all arms and aid through Baghdad and should follow Germany’s lead in sending weaponry directly to Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq.
Clarridge also said that the Obama administration is doing nothing to counter IS propaganda and recruitment efforts, he said.
“Everyone says you can’t win this war militarily. But where is the psychological warfare effort? I have people monitoring this day in, day out, and there is none, zero,” Clarridge said, adding that the current efforts is limited to a few people at Fort Bragg, N.C.
“There are people standing by with large capabilities, Muslims, ready to put their capabilities to work, if someone would organize it,” Clarridge said.
Additionally, no radio broadcasting is being carried out in Iraq and Syria, he said.
Carter said the key Iraqi city of Ramadi that was overrun by IS forces on May 17 needs to be retaken but not until Iraqi forces are better prepared for the counter offensive.
“This will be a test of the competence of the Iraqi security forces, and it’s a test that they must pass,” Carter said. “Our and the coalition’s involvement is to try to train and equip and support them to be successful.”
Dempsey said a counter attack against Ramadi was called off about a month ago because Iraqi troops were not ready.
According to a detailed situation report from Iraq by the contractor Falcon Group, coalition forces conducted 11 airstrikes on July 6, near Sinjar, the Makhmour district, Kirkuk province, Baiji, Haditha, Ramadi, and Fallujah. The strikes hit an IS tactical unit and destroyed a heavy machine gun and a building.
Reports from the region indicated that IS forces near Baiji, where a major oil refinery is located, carried out a major counter offensive against Iraqi forces, the Falcon Group said.
“IS elements also attacked in the oil refinery and now control 60 percent of the refinery,” the report said.
The Iraqi government denied the reports and said most of the refinery remains under Iraqi security forces’ control.
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BAGHDAD (AP) — Bearded and wearing bright blue bandanas, the Islamic State group’s “special forces” unit gathered around their commander just before they attacked the central Syrian town of al-Sukhna. “Victory or martyrdom,” they screamed, pledging their allegiance to God and vowing never to retreat.
The IS calls them “Inghemasiyoun,” Arabic for “those who immerse themselves.” The elite shock troops are possibly the deadliest weapon in the extremist group’s arsenal: Fanatical and disciplined, they infiltrate their targets, unleash mayhem and fight to the death, wearing explosives belts to blow themselves up among their opponents if they face defeat. They are credited with many of the group’s stunning battlefield successes — including the capture of al-Sukhna in May after the scene shown in an online video released by the group.
“They cause chaos and then their main ground offensive begins,” said Redur Khalil, spokesman of the US-backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units, which have taken the lead in a string of military successes against the IS in Syria.
Though best known for its horrific brutalities — from its grotesque killings of captives to enslavement of women — the Islamic State group has proved to be a highly organized and flexible fighting force, according to senior Iraqi military and intelligence officials and Syrian Kurdish commanders on the front lines.
In this picture released on June 26, 2015, by a website of Islamic State militants, Islamic State militants fire an anti-tank missile in Hassakeh, northeast Syria. (Militant website via AP)
Its tactics are often creative, whether it’s using a sandstorm as cover for an assault or a lone sniper tying himself to the top of a palm tree to pick off troops below. Its forces nimbly move between conventional and guerrilla warfare, using the latter to wear down their opponents before massed fighters backed by armored vehicles, Humvees and sometimes even artillery move to take over territory. The fighters incorporate suicide bombings as a fearsome battlefield tactic to break through lines and demoralize enemies, and they are constantly honing them to make them more effective. Recently, they beefed up the front armor of the vehicles used in those attacks to prevent gunfire from killing the driver or detonating explosives prematurely.
Those strategies are being carried over into new fronts as well, appearing in Egypt in last week’s dramatic attack by an IS-linked terrorist group against the military in the Sinai Peninsula.
Andreas Krieg, a professor at King’s College London who embedded with Iraqi Kurdish fighters last fall, said IS local commanders are given leeway to operate as they see fit. They “have overall orders on strategy and are expected to come up with the most efficient ways of adapting it,” he said. The group “is very much success oriented, results oriented.” That’s a strong contrast to the rigid, inefficient and corrupt hierarchies of the Iraqi and Syrian militaries, where officers often fear taking any action without direct approval from higher up.
IS fighters are highly disciplined — swift execution is the punishment for deserting battle or falling asleep on guard duty, Iraqi officers said. The group is also flush with weaponry looted from Iraqi forces that fled its blitzkrieg a year ago, when IS overtook the northern city of Mosul and other areas. Much of the heavy weapons it holds — including artillery and tanks — have hardly been used, apparently on reserve for a future battle.
In this photo released on Sunday, June 28, 2015, by a website of Islamic State militants, an Islamic State militant waves his group’s flag as he and another celebrate in Fallujah, Iraq, west of Baghdad (Militant website via AP)
Iraqi army Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi said IS also stands out in its ability to conduct multiple battles simultaneously.
“In the Iraqi army, we can only run one big battle at a time,” said al-Saadi, who was wounded twice in the past year as he led forces that retook the key cities of Beiji and Tikrit from IS.
Even the group’s atrocities are in part a tactic, aimed at terrorizing its enemies and depicting itself as an unstoppable juggernaut. In June 2014, the group boasted of killing hundreds of Shiites in Iraq’s security forces, issuing photos of the massacre. It regularly beheads captured soldiers, releasing videos of the killings online. It is increasing the shock value: Recent videos showed it lowering captives in a cage into a pool to drown and blowing off the heads of others with explosive wire around their necks.
The number of IS fighters in Iraq and Syria is estimated between 30,000 to 60,000, according to the Iraqi officers. Former army officers of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein have helped the group organize its fighters, a diverse mix from Europe, the United States and Arab and Central Asian nations. Veteran jihadis with combat experience in Afghanistan, Chechnya or Somalia have also brought valuable experience, both in planning and as role models to younger fighters.
“They tend to use their foreign fighters as suicide bombers,” said Patrick Skinner, a former CIA officer who now directs special operations for The Soufan Group, a private geopolitical risk assessment company. “People go to the Islamic State looking to die, and the Islamic State is happy to help them.”
The group’s tactics carried it to an overwhelming sweep of northern and western Iraq a year ago, capturing Mosul, Iraq’s second-biggest city. Shortly thereafter, IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a “caliphate” spanning its territory in Iraq and Syria.
In May, it captured Ramadi, capital of Iraq’s vast western Anbar province, in a humiliation for Iraqi forces. In Syria, it seized the central city of Palmyra.
In this photo released on June 26, 2015, by a website of Islamic State militants, an Islamic State militant fires an anti-aircraft gun from the back of a pickup truck in Hassakeh city, northeast Syria (Militant website via AP)
The elite shock troops were crucial in the capture of Ramadi. First came a wave of more than a dozen suicide bombings that hammered the military’s positions in the city, then the fighters moved in during a sandstorm. Iraqi troops crumbled and fled as a larger IS force marched in.
“The way they took Ramadi will be studied for a while,” Skinner said. “They have the ability to jump back and forth between traditional (military operations) and terrorism.” He said a similar combination of suicide bombings ahead of ground forces was used in last week’s Sinai attacks in Egypt.
Since US-led airstrikes in Syria and Iraq have made it more difficult for the group’s forces to advance, IS has lost ground. Iraqi troops and Shiite militiamen retook areas to the south and northeast of Baghdad, the oil refinery city of Beiji and Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit north of the capital.
In Syria, Kurdish fighters backed by heavy US airstrikes wrested the border town of Kobani from the IS after weeks of devastating battles. More recently, IS lost Tal Abyad, another Syrian town on the Turkish border.
Despite that loss, IS shock troops attacked Kobani last month. Around 70 of them infiltrated and battled a much larger Kurdish force for two days, apparently on a mission not to retake the town but to cause chaos.
They were all slain, but not before killing more than 250 civilians, including roughly 100 children, and more than 30 Kurdish fighters. At the same time, they attacked the northeast Syrian city of Hassakeh, driving out thousands of people and still holding out in parts of the city despite continued fighting. Last week, they carried out a bloody incursion into Tal Abyad, again fighting until they were all killed but demonstrating their relentlessness.
“We are still nursing our wounds in Kobani,” said Ghalia Nehme, a Syrian Kurdish commander who fought in last month’s battle. “From what we saw, they weren’t planning to leave alive. It seems they were longing for heaven,” she said.
The use of suicide bombings has forced IS’s opponents to adapt. Al-Saadi defied his own Iraqi military commanders who demanded a fast assault to retake Beiji. Instead, he adopted a slow, methodical march from a base near Tikrit, moving only a few miles each day while clearing roads of explosives and setting up barriers against suicide attacks. It took him three weeks to go 25 miles to Beiji, fighting the whole way and fending off more than two dozen suicide attacks, then another week to take Beiji, but he succeeded with minimal casualties.
IS also has adapted, and recently began using remote controlled aircraft fitted with cameras to film enemy positions. It is believed to have agents within the military. It also has superior communications equipment, using two-way radios with a longer range than the Iraqi military’s, said Maj. Gen. Ali Omran, commander of Iraq’s 5th Division.
Omran said that when the extremists figured out the military was listening in on its radio frequencies, it switched to more secure lines but continued using the infiltrated frequencies to feed the military false information.
Even IS supply chains are robust. Its fighters’ rations often include grilled meat kebabs and chicken, better than what Iraqi troops eat, Omran said.
But IS has its vulnerabilities, noted Skinner. It has no air force. And its open, state-like organization gives an opportunity for spies to infiltrate, something the group clearly fears given the many killings of people it suspects of espionage. It also faces internal strains, trying to control and direct its multi-national personnel.
“We think of them as this spooky faceless organization that runs seamlessly,” Skinner said. “I imagine it’s probably the hardest organization to run, because it’s staffed with unstable, violent people.”
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press.
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