Losses to ISIS in Iraq Spur U.S. to Rethink Syria
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)’s quick advance in Iraq is leading the Obama administration to rethink its Syria policy. Since the start of ISIS’s push more than two weeks ago, the U.S. has been pushing for a political deal in Iraq that could lend confidence to the embattled government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
ISIS’s storm of Mosul and Tikrit is “increasing pressure on the president to act more aggressively against a growing regional threat,” the paper says. “Some argue that any U.S. military action against ISIS in Iraq will fall short if it doesn’t hit the group’s major strongholds in neighboring Syria. ISIS now occupies territory on both sides of the border.”
“Syria and Iraq are largely a single problem,” a senior defense official tells the Journal. “If we really get into this, you will have to look into Syria to solve some of these problems.”
Turkey Pays Steep Price for Letting Jihadis into Syria
The New York Times reports on the role Turkey, by allowing easy access to Syria’s battlefields, played in the rise of extremism there, creating “fertile ground” in Syria for the development of ISIS.
“For three years, we have seen ISIS flags in Syria, and that is because of Turkey,” one analyst tells the paper. “Turkey let them in.”
“The fall of Mosul was the epitome of the failure of Turkish foreign policy over the last four years,” adds Soli Ozel, a professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. “I can’t dissociate what happened in Mosul from what happened in Syria, and Turkish foreign policy towards Syria has been unrealistic, hubristic, ideological and stubborn.”
Western Jihadists Increasingly Deterred by Syria and Iraq War Images
The Guardian reports that gruesome images coming out of Syria and Iraq, an important recruitment tool for the Syrian jihad, could now be reversing the trend of British jihadists traveling to fight in the region.
Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police’s head of specialist operations and Britain’s top counter-terrorism officer, said the past six weeks have “seen a significant shift in attitudes within communities and a record number of people at risk of radicalization being referred to the Channel program, a government scheme designed to stop vulnerable people being drawn into terrorism,” the paper says.
“This is a situation that is changing very quickly. For weeks and months before we started our media campaign six weeks ago advising people not to travel to Syria, people were saying, ‘How can you say do not travel?’” she said. “Now nobody is saying that.” She also said the war in Syria and Iraq is “highly attractive and iconic” to Western jihadists partly due to “highly provocative, emotive and inflammatory” videos and other messages on social media.
Suggested Reads from Our Editorial Team
Washington Post: Syrian Aircraft Bomb Sunni Militant Targets Inside Iraq
CNN: Western-born Jihadists Rally to ISIS’s Fight in Iraq and Syria
Al Arabiya: What it Takes to Reconstruct Syria