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U.S. Drops Aid to Iraqis; Militants Hit Hardest
Kurdish and Iraqi officials said that airstrikes had begun Thursday night on towns in northern Iraq seized by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but Pentagon officials denied that American forces had begun a bombing campaign. They said it was possible that allies of the United States, either the Iraqi or Turkish militaries, had conducted the bombing.
Administration officials said that Mr. Obama was considering airstrikes on ISIS targets in northern Iraq that would be aimed at preventing the fall of Erbil, as the Islamic militants continued to press advances. Such a move would involve the United States in a significant battlefield role in Iraq for the first time since the last American combat soldier left at the end of 2011. For the president, airstrikes would also mark an abrupt turning point in his Iraq strategy.
Mr. Obama has been reluctant to order direct military action in Iraq while Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki remains in office, but in recent weeks there have been repeated pleas from the Kurdish officials for weapons and assistance as ISIS militants have swept across northwestern Iraq. The militants, an offshoot of Al Qaeda, view Iraq’s majority Shiite and minority Christians and Yazidis, a Kurdish religious group, as infidels. Administration officials said on Thursday that the crisis on Sinjar Mountain in northern Iraq had forced their hand. Some 40 children have already died from the heat and dehydration, according to Unicef, while as many as 40,000 people have been sheltering in the bare mountains without food, water or access to supplies. Once Mr. Obama made the decision to approve the humanitarian airdrops on Thursday, administration officials said, the decision for airstrikes became more likely. For one thing, the American C-130 planes that would be likely to drop the food and medical supplies fly low and heavy, and would release the supplies from 500 to 1,200 feet. Forces with ISIS are not believed to have surface-to-air missiles, but they do have machine guns that could hit the planes at that altitude, according to James M. Dubik, a retired Army lieutenant general who oversaw the training of the Iraqi Army in 2007 and 2008. “These are low and slow aircraft,” General Dubik said. At the very minimum, he said, the United States would have to be prepared for “some defensive use of air power to prevent” the militant group from attacking American planes, or going after the humanitarian supplies themselves. Military officials have also repositioned satellites for surveillance. The risk to the American crew of the C-130 planes conducting the humanitarian mission “would be much higher if we did not have improved reconnaissance and a protective air capacity,” General Dubik said. If ordered, the Air Force could use both drones and F-16 fighter jets that are already deployed in the region, while the Navy could use F-18 fighters as well, military officials said. But it is one thing to use air power to defend a humanitarian operation. Offensive strikes on ISIS targets in northern Iraq would take American involvement in the conflict to a new level, demonstrating deep concern with ISIS’s offensive shift toward the Kurds. On Thursday, one Kurdish official said in an interview that Kurdish troops had pulled back in the expectation that there would be airstrikes, perhaps by Turkey and the United States. President François Hollande of France pledged his country’s support to forces battling the militant group as well.
Posted by: Steve White 2014-08-08 |
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