Washington, Dec 15: US President Barack Obama has voiced fresh determination to destroy the Islamic State, vowing to kill the group’s leaders and win back territory in the Middle East.
Sounding a notably more strident tone, Obama said on Monday that the United States and its allies were taking the fight to Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, but admitted that progress needed to come faster.
“We are hitting ISIL harder than ever,” said Obama, in a second address following the seemingly Islamic State-influenced attack in San Bernardino, California that has raised questions about his strategy. “As we squeeze its heart, we’ll make it harder for ISIL to pump its terror and propaganda to the rest of the world,” Obama insisted at the Pentagon, after meeting top military and national security advisors.
Listing eight Islamic State figures killed in coalition operations, Obama issued a stern warning. “ISIL leaders cannot hide and our next message to them is simple: You are next.”
Obama said that US special forces were now in Syria and were helping local groups squeeze the Islamic State group’s proclaimed “capital” at Raqa. Meanwhile, he said, Iraqi forces were moving to take Ramadi “encircle Fallujah and cut off ISIL’s supply routes into Mosul.”
From the air, Obama said the United States and its allies had begun targeting “oil infrastructure, destroying hundreds of their tanker trucks, wells and refineries.”
“Since the summer, ISIL has not had a single successful major offensive operation on the ground in either Syria or Iraq,” Obama said.
Even before the December 2 attack by a Muslim husband and wife in California killed 14 people, polls showed that more than 60 % of Americans disapproved of the way Obama is handling the Islamic State and the broader terror threat.
Meanwhile, Obama reviewed the anti-IS strategy with his army commanders and announced to send his Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to the West Asia to seek enhanced support from the countries in the region against this terrorist organisation.
“This continues to be a difficult fight. ISIS is dug in, including in urban areas and they hide behind civilians, using defenseless men, women and children as human shields. So, even as we’re relentless, we have to be smart, targeting ISIS surgically with precision,” Obama told reporters at Pentagon after the meeting with army commanders and national security advisors.
Obama said the US and its allies has in recent weeks unleashed a new wave of strikes on ISIS’s lifeline, on their oil infrastructure, destroying hundreds of their tanker trucks, wells and refineries.
“We are going to keep on hammering those. ISIS also continues to lose territory in Iraq. ISIS had already lost across Kirkuk province and at Tikrit; more recently, ISIS lost at Sinjar, losing a strategic highway. ISIS lost at Baiji with its oil refinery,” he said, adding that the terror group has so far lost 40 per cent of the areas it once controlled in Iraq, and it will lose more.
Recognising that progress needs to keep coming faster, Obama said, “Just as the US is doing more in this fight, just as its allies, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, Australia and Italy are doing more, so must others.
“And that is why I have asked Secretary Carter to go to the West Asia – he’ll depart right after this press briefing — to work with our coalition partners on securing more military contributions to this fight,” he said.
“On the diplomatic front, Secretary (of State, John) Kerry will be in Russia tomorrow, as we continue to work, as part of the Vienna process, to end the Syrian civil war,” he said.
