US Stresses Iraq Emphasis: Campaign to Destroy ’ISIL’ Will Take Time

Local Editor

The commander of the US war against the "ISIL" placed the Syria side of his cross-border campaign on the back burner on Friday and could not predict when Iraqi forces will recapture territory from the extremists.

"Iraq is our main effort, and it has to be, and the things that we're doing right now in Syria are being done primarily to shape the conditions in Iraq," General Lloyd Austin, the commanding officer of US Central Command, told reporters at the Pentagon on Friday.

He further added: "The campaign to destroy ISIL will take time, and there will be occasional setbacks along the way."

Austin indicated that coming to Iraq's aid would retain central importance to the US's newest Middle Eastern war.
Austin described the battle for Kobani - which US officials have downplayed as peripheral to the anti-"ISIL" strategy - as a target of opportunity, despite contending that "ISIL" seeks to have the US divert its attention to marginal fights.
"I think that I'm able to do what we're able to do, and manage my resources, so I can take advantage of an opportunity that he has presented me, and he presented that opportunity by continuing to funnel forces into Kobani. Again, the more I attrit him there, the less I'll have to fight him on some other part of the battlefield," Austin said.

Yet Austin diminished expectations for capitalizing on that opportunity, saying Kobani's fall to "ISIL" was "highly possible", despite a week of US bombing.
The battlefield Austin portrayed as critical is within Iraq, where Austin had previously served as the last commander of the second Iraq war, ahead of a 2011 full troop withdrawal that he is said to have opposed.

His "first task", Austin said in his first press briefing since Barack Obama took the US back to war in Iraq, will be to aid Iraqi forces in restoring security, reconstituting Iraq's border with Syria and "regenerating some much-needed combat power".

"It's difficult to designate a specific point in time when they'll be able to do this," Austin said, offering instead "incremental" evidence of Kurdish success and an Iraqi division's advance toward Ramadi in support of a division already there. Anbar province, in which Ramadi sits, is "contested", and Austin mused about the "help of the tribes" there, recalling the 2006-2008 enlistment of Sunni tribesmen and ex-insurgents that retains a central role in the US military's understanding of why its greatest period of tactical success in Iraq was possible.

But Austin portrayed a battle to recapture Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, as long off, owing to an insufficiently capable Iraqi army.

"It is difficult terrain, and so we want to make sure that when we take that on, that we have the adequate capability, and we've set the conditions right to get things done," Austin said.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team