The Islamic State has lost a significant amount of territory in Syria and Iraq, most recently with the fall of Fallujah. But horrifying terror attacks from Orlando to Istanbul make clear that the group still remains a potent threat and that President Obama still has not crafted a plan to “destroy” it, as he vowed to do in September 2014.
What would such a plan entail? For a start, more military action — more US airstrikes and more US troops on the ground working with indigenous forces. Just as important as increasing the number of US forces is loosening their rules of engagement so they can more readily operate on the front lines with the forces they are mentoring.
To be effective, military operations need to be matched by greater political effort to convince Sunnis in both Syria and Iraq that they can get a better deal from turning against ISIS than by sticking with it. Most Sunnis have little love for ISIS, but at the moment, many see it as a preferable alternative to domination by Iran and its Shiite death squads.
In 2007, during the “surge” in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker convinced the Iraqi government to be more accommodating to Sunni concerns. We need a similar full-court press today — and if it’s not successful, we should reserve the option of acting unilaterally to support an autonomous Sunni Regional Government just as we backed Kurdish autonomy beginning in 1991.
In Syria, winning Sunni support means committing to toppling not just the Islamic State but also Bashar al-Assad, who has killed far more people than ISIS has. Only such a commitment will convince Sunnis to sign up for US training and arms. The failure to pursue an anti-Assad policy accounts for the fact that, as of last fall, the US military training program in Syria had produced only “four or five” fighters — a figure that has now increased to all of 100.
There’s little chance Obama will do what is necessary before he leaves office. That means, in all likelihood, fighting ISIS will be a top action item for his successor.
Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present.”