US Forms Coalition Against ISIS

The Obama administration on Friday announced that it had formed a “core coalition” to fight the militant group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), as the threat of increased U.S. military involvement in the area looms.

“We need to attack them in ways that prevent them from taking over territory, to bolster the Iraqi security forces and others in the region who are prepared to take them on, without committing troops of our own,” Kerry said at the NATO summit in Wales. “Obviously I think that’s a red line for everybody here: no boots on the ground.”

But while Kerry claimed no troops would be deployed in the region, the U.S. is still involved in a large-scale military intervention there, having conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Iraq and Syria within the past month. Likewise, NATO has offered to “build defense capacity” in Iraq if the government requested it. “There are obviously implications about Syria in this, and we can talk about that if we want in the course of the morning,” Kerry said, although he did not elaborate on the extent to which Syria would be involved in the campaign against the militant group that has occupied swaths of land throughout the country in the past few months.

The 10 countries in the coalition are the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark. There are no Arab nations in the group, although officials said they were hoping to extend the alliance to countries in the region, such as Jordan, whose leader, King Abdullah, is attending the summit.

The announcement also did not specify whether the campaign will involve removing the forces currently in the region, as President Barack Obama ordered additional troops to Iraq just two days ago following the beheading deaths of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff by members of ISIS. In late August, the U.S. conducted airstrikes to accompany a “humanitarian assistance operation” to help Shia Turkmen.

Critics have recently sounded the alarm over continued airstrikes in the region, which they say actually strengthens and emboldens ISIS militants. Stephen Miles of Win Without War told Common Dreams that ISIS “has grown strong and gained recruits, money, and territory from the violence in Syria and Iraq. They depend on those conflicts. If you are exacerbating them by taking part in Syrian civil war you will play right into their hand. The U.S. will give them a rallying cry in the war against us.”