The Obama administration has decided to hold any military intervention in Iraq in abeyance until it sees clear evidence that the country’s politics and governance are reforming, reported a foreign news outfit, citing United States officials.
After the sudden invasion of Iraqi cities by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants, the US administration has been holding regular crisis meetings to assess the situation and weigh its options.
The newspaper reported that President Barack Obama had ordered that options be prepared for possible airstrikes in Iraq as well as a wide range of direct military assistance, short of American boots on the ground.
“But after assessing that Baghdad’s fall to advancing forces of the ISIS is not imminent, the administration has opted for a short-term strategy that it sees as offering potential long-term gain,” the paper reported.
The US “is not simply going to involve itself in a military action in the absence of a political plan by the Iraqis that gives us some assurance that they’re prepared to work together,” Obama has said in a statement outside the White House.
Obama cautioned that whatever happens, it “is going to take several days. People should not anticipate that this is something that is going to happen overnight.”
The strategy addresses a dilemma that US intervention to stop ISIS forces could help spark all-out sectarian war if it were seen as enabling the Shi’ite government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to stay in power without making concessions to the long-abused Sunni minority, the report said.
On the other hand, failure to intervene could bring the same result if the Shi’ite majority activates its own radical militias and rises up to protect the government.
“This will get even more entrenched,” said a senior administration official, adding, “It has the potential to really ignite a sectarian conflagration.”
The news outfits said that the US administration has been pressing Maliki and other political leaders for years, with virtually no success, to accommodate the interests of Sunnis, Kurds and other minorities.
Instead, the sectarian divide that underlies Iraq’s current problems has grown worse, with Maliki and his allies seizing a greater share of the central government and delaying power-sharing initiatives.
The paper points out that many Sunni citizens of Mosul and other northern cities where ISIS took power this week have greeted the militants with at least initial gratitude after the departure of Iraq’s largely Shi’ite and oft-abusive army.
“This crisis may have the potential to concentrate minds in a way that nothing that’s come before has,” the senior official said.
In Baghdad, officials are “looking over the abyss right now. . . . We can’t say it will for sure, but it has the potential to be a defining moment.”
“We’re talking to the entire leadership, starting with the prime minister, to include everyone from all the different communities,” said the official, who, according to the newspaper, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations and policy decisions.