Islamic State fighters paraded along the streets of Raqqa, Syria, in 2014. Credit Reuters
WASHINGTON
— American intelligence analysts have identified seven buildings in
downtown Raqqa in eastern Syria as the main headquarters of the Islamic
State. But the buildings have gone untouched during the 10-month allied
air campaign.
And
just last week, convoys of heavily armed Islamic State fighters paraded
triumphantly through the streets of the provincial capital Ramadi in
western Iraq after forcing Iraqi troops to flee. They rolled on
unscathed by coalition fighter-bombers.
American
and allied warplanes are equipped with the most precise aerial arsenal
ever fielded. But American officials say they are not striking
significant, and obvious, Islamic State targets out of fear that the
attacks will accidentally kill civilians. Killing such innocents could
hand the militants a major propaganda coup and alienate the local Sunni
tribesmen, whose support is critical to ousting the militants, and Sunni
Arab countries that are part of the fragile American-led coalition.
But many Iraqi commanders and some American officers say that exercising
such prudence with airstrikes is a major reason the Islamic State, also
known as ISIS or Daesh, has been able to seize vast territory in recent
months in Iraq and Syria. That caution — coupled with President Obama’s
reluctance to commit significant American firepower to a war the White
House declared over in 2011, when the last United States combat troops
withdrew from Iraq — has led to persistent complaints from Iraqi
officials that the United States has been too cautious in its air
campaign.
Iraqi
officials say the limited American airstrikes have allowed columns of
Islamic State fighters essentially free movement on the battlefield.
“The
international alliance is not providing enough support compared with
ISIS’ capabilities on the ground in Anbar,” said Maj. Muhammed
al-Dulaimi, an Iraqi officer in Anbar Province, which contains Ramadi.
“The U.S. airstrikes in Anbar didn’t enable our security forces to
resist and confront the ISIS attacks,” he added. “We lost large
territories in Anbar because of the inefficiency of the U.S.-led
coalition airstrikes.”
Much
of the American caution comes from experience. Civilian deaths from
American airstrikes during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were
sometimes unacknowledged or understated by the military and caused a
great deal of anger, which is a reason for the United States’ current
skittishness and what commanders say is their overriding goal to prevent
those deaths now.
The military’s Central Command on Thursday announced the results of an inquiry into the deaths of two children
in Syria in November, saying they were probably killed by an American
airstrike. It was the first time the Pentagon had acknowledged civilian
casualties since it began the air campaign. A handful of other attacks
are under investigation.
According
to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in
Britain that tracks the conflict through a network of contacts in
Syria, more than 120 civilians have been killed by coalition strikes
inside Syria.
By
far the largest episode was in the remote northeastern village of Bir
Mahli, where more than 60 people, including numerous women and children,
were reported killed this month in a series of strikes. Military
officials acknowledged that the coalition had struck the village but
said that those killed were Islamic State fighters.
Human rights advocates say that it remains unclear how many civilian lives the restrictions on airstrikes have saved.
“The
U.S. has indeed put in place rigorous policies and procedures to
minimize civilian harm, but with no combat troops on the ground, it is
hard to evaluate how successful these policies have been,” said Federico
Borello, the executive director of the Center for Civilians in
Conflict, an advocacy group.
Islamic
State troops, however, appear to be taking advantage of the
restrictions, as the militants increasingly fight from within civilian
populations to deter attacks.
In
Iraq, more than 80 percent of the allied airstrikes are supporting
Iraqi troops in hotly contested areas like Ramadi and Baiji, the home of
a major oil refinery. Many of the other strikes focus on so-called
pop-up targets — small convoys of militants or heavy weaponry on the
move. These have been a top priority of the campaign, even though only
about one of every four air missions sent to attack the extremists have
dropped bombs. The rest of the missions have returned to the base after
failing to find a target they were permitted to hit under strict rules
of engagement designed to avoid civilian casualties.
In
Syria, the United States has a limited ability to gather intelligence
to help generate targets, although the commando raid there this month
that killed a financial leader of the Islamic State may signal a
breakthrough. Many Islamic State training compounds, headquarters,
storage facilities and other fixed sites were struck in the early days
of the bombing, but the military’s deliberate process for approving
other targets has frustrated several commanders.
“We
have not taken the fight to these guys,” the pilot of an American A-10
attack plane said in a recent email. “We haven’t targeted their centers
of gravity in Raqqa. All the roads between Syria and Iraq are still
intact with trucks flowing freely.”
These
critics describe an often cumbersome process to approve targets, and
they say there are too few warplanes carrying out too few missions under
too many restrictions.
“In
most cases, unless a general officer can look at a video picture from a
U.A.V., over a satellite link, I cannot get authority to engage,” the
A-10 pilot said, referring to an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, and
speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid punishment from his
superiors.
To
be sure, the air campaign has achieved several successes in conducting
about 4,200 strikes that have dropped about 14,000 bombs and other
weapons. The campaign has killed an estimated 12,500 fighters and helped
Iraqi forces regain about 25 percent of the territory seized in Iraq by
the Islamic State, according to American military figures.
It
has blunted the advance of Islamic State fighters in most areas by
forcing them to disperse and conceal themselves. Allied warplanes have
attacked oil refineries, weapons depots, command bunkers and
communications centers in Syria as part of a plan to hamper the Islamic
State’s ability to sustain its operations in Iraq and to disrupt
communications among its senior leaders.
But
American officials acknowledge that the Islamic State has remained
resilient and adaptive. Fighters mingle with civilians more than ever.
Islamic State commanders routinely change their methods of communication
to avoid detection. Militants used a sandstorm, which made it more
difficult for the Iraqis to identify targets, to seize an advantage in
the recent Ramadi attack.
“We
have always said this fight will be difficult, and there will be some
setbacks,” Lt. Gen. John Hesterman III, the top allied air commander,
said in a statement from his headquarters in Qatar. “Coalition air power
has dramatically degraded Daesh’s ability to organize, project and
sustain combat power while taking exceptional care to limit collateral
damage and civilian casualties.”
The
air campaign has averaged a combined total of about 15 strikes a day in
Iraq and Syria. In contrast, the NATO air war against Libya in 2011
carried out about 50 strikes a day in its first two months. The campaign
in Afghanistan in 2001 averaged 85 daily airstrikes, and the Iraq war
in 2003 about 800 a day. American officials say targeting is more
precise than in the past, so fewer flights are needed. A major
constraint on the air campaign’s effectiveness, critics say, has been
the White House’s refusal to authorize American troops to act as
spotters on the battlefield, designating targets for allied bombing
attacks.
Some members of Congress, including Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, have advocated this idea.
The
absence of air controllers is a particular complication for battles in
urban places like Ramadi, where Islamic State units cannot always be
readily identified by American pilots flying overhead.
The administration is considering training a cadre of Iraqi troops to designate airstrike targets from allied fighter jets.
Canadian
special forces advising Iraqi troops are designating targets “on a
case-by-case basis,” said Ashley Lemire, a spokeswoman for the Canadian
defense ministry.
The
American-led coalition has imposed other conditions on its use of
airstrikes. During the operation in March and April to liberate Tikrit,
the United States initially refrained from bombing runs because of the
involvement of Iranian-backed Shiite militias in the fighting who were
not under Iraqi government control. Once those militias failed to retake
the city, they pulled back, and the Americans began bombing before
Iraqi security forces and the militias advanced.
Iraqi
officials have praised those airstrikes as an important component in
the liberation of Tikrit. But many of the Iraqis involved in that
operation complain that the Americans refused to strike targets that
they had provided.
One
army commander in Salahuddin Province, of which Tikrit is the capital,
said he had passed along a long list of potential targets, including
weapons caches, training centers and the homes of local Islamic State
leaders.
“The
least important 5 percent of them were targeted,” said the officer, who
was not authorized to speak publicly and did not want to be identified
as criticizing Iraq’s ally. “We also asked the U.S. coalition to attack
ISIS convoys while they were moving from one place to another, but they
either neglected our requests or responded very late.”
These same Iraqi commanders drew criticism
on Sunday from Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, who said on CNN’s
“State of the Union” that Iraq’s troops had shown no will to fight in
Ramadi and had abandoned the city.
Civilians
from Raqqa, who were interviewed in Turkey and often go back and forth
across the border, said the Islamic State offices were well known around
the city and had not been targeted by coalition airstrikes. Locals
assume that this is because the Islamic State holds civilian prisoners
in each location to deter the coalition.
The
Islamic State’s primary security office is known as Point 11 and is
inside a soccer stadium, where its central prison is also believed to
be. The extremists’ Islamic court is in a building that used to belong
to the Syrian Finance Ministry; it, too, holds prisoners, residents say.
The office of the militant group’s so-called Islamic police is also
near Point 11 and contains a small jail.
An American military spokeswoman declined to comment on specific targets in Raqqa.
Civilians
who now rely on the Islamic State for services often come and go from
the offices, according to a middle-aged real estate agent who lives in
Raqqa and spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of the
extremists.
“The
civilians like the coalition because it doesn’t hit civilians, but ISIS
hates it because it targets their fighters,” he said.
But
even residents who oppose the Islamic State said they could not imagine
the group’s leaving Raqqa at this time, because it has learned to deal
with the airstrikes and there is no force on the ground to challenge it.
“If
they had acted when ISIS was small, they could have stopped them, but
now it has settled and grown, and people have gotten used to it,” said
an aid worker from Raqqa who spoke on the condition of anonymity because
he travels in areas controlled by the Islamic State. “As long as there
is no plan to get rid of them, they are staying, and it is clear that
there is no plan.”[source]
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