By Diyar Guldogan
ANKARA
The United States' airstrikes are not enough to defeat the terrorist group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, known as ISIL, according to Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi.
Under a new strategy announced by the American president last week, the U.S. will lead an international coalition to carry out airstrikes against the militants throughout Iraq, however, the U.S. President Barack Obama struck an adamant tone that U.S. combat troops will not be used in Iraq to fight extremists.
Obama said Wednesday that U.S. forces “will support Iraqi forces on the ground as they fight for their own country against these terrorists,” while speaking to service members at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, and added "But I want to be clear: The American forces that have been deployed to Iraq do not and will not have a combat mission."
Some Turkish experts are of the view that it is hard to tell that this difference of opinion represents an early division in the coalition to fight ISIL.
A lecturer in Bilkent University, Ali Oguz Dirioz, said it was too early to comment on the potential division of the coalition, adding Obama would not want to launch a ground operation in Iraq and Syria due to the U.S. congress election coming up in November.
Mensur Akgun, a Turkish professor of political science at Istanbul Kultur University, backed Allawi's view, and attached importance in establishing a correct policy in fighting the Sunni rebels.
Akgun also questioned the possibility of the coalition receiving support from Sunni tribes in their international struggle against the armed group as the new government is led by a Shia majority.
"This [international] coalition will fail as long as it launches operations against the ISIL militants only with Peshmerga and Shiite fighters," said Mehmet Sahin, a Turkish associate professor at Gazi University in Ankara.
Earlier on Monday, leaders and officials from 29 countries, participating in an international conference in Paris on peace and security in Iraq, agreed to provide Baghdad with military aid to fight ISIL.
The participants were "committed to supporting the new Iraqi government in its fight against ISIL by any means necessary, including appropriate military assistance," the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that tackling ISIL was "a matter of urgency".
ISIL have captured large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria, on which it has declared what it calls a cross-border Islamic "caliphate."
Violence conducted by ISIL has claimed more than 1,400 lives in Iraq, and caused 1.2 million Iraqis, including Turkmen, Arabs, Christians and Ezidis, to flee their homes.
www.aa.com.tr/en
