The Islamic State (IS) has challenged American claims that the aerial bombing campaign has weakened and divided the militants, provoking the Iraqi government’s push to recover territory. Over the last couple of weeks, Ramadi in Iraq’s Anbar province and Palmyra in Syria have fallen to the IS. Soon after thousands of civilians fled Ramadi, the IS took the inhabited town next to the ancient Roman ruins of Palmyra, a Unesco world heritage site close to oil and gas fields. Much depends now on the success of the ground operations launched by pro-government forces on Tuesday to retake Ramadi. The fate of Palmyra continues to rest in the IS’s hands, where the spectre of a Bamyan-style destruction looms.
The US took Baghdad to task after its 1,500-strong troops abandoned Ramadi in the face of only 150 IS fighters, exposing their lack of commitment and incompetent leadership. Others allege that the exhausted Iraqi troops, having defended Ramadi for more than a year, without ground reinforcements or support from the US-led coalition, cannot be faulted for overestimating the strength of the IS assault. But the uncontested fact is that the anti-IS strategy is coming up short.
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the Arab world is witnessing a collapse of states whose borders were artificially drawn by the colonisers. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops now defend contracting patches of territory, while the moderate rebels remain weak. It is difficult to see how the US-led coalition will defeat the IS without a workable arrangement with Assad and more formal coordination with Iran.
