As Islamic State Nears Conquest of Syrian Town, U.S. Presses Turks

MIDDLE EAST

As Islamic State Nears Conquest of Syrian Town, U.S. Presses Turks
By MARK LANDLER and ERIC SCHMITT NYT OCT. 8, 2014

President Obama, at the Pentagon on Wednesday, discussed the drive against the Islamic State. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — As fighters from the Islamic State were on the brink of a highly visible conquest of a Syrian town near the Turkish border, Obama administration officials on Wednesday said there were limits to what the United States was able or willing to do to defend it.

Officials from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon warned that airstrikes alone would not be sufficient to protect the town, Kobani, from the black-clad fighters. Their comments came a month after President Obama expanded the military campaign against the Sunni militant group into Syria. Although the Kurdish town — with television cameras trained on it from across the border in Turkey — has become a vivid symbol of the Islamic State’s lethal advance, and the Kurds’ fierce resistance, administration officials sought to play down its strategic importance.

“As horrific as it is to watch in real time what’s happening in Kobani,” Secretary of State John Kerry said at a news conference, “it’s also important to remember that you have to step back and understand the strategic objective and where we have begun over the course of the last weeks.”

The military’s Central Command said that the United States had conducted eight more airstrikes on Wednesday — for a total of 19 in the past four days — to try to halt the advance on Kobani. But officials drew a sharp distinction between Syria and Iraq, where it conducts airstrikes in concert with Kurdish pesh merga fighters and the Iraqi military.

“That sort of ground operation doesn’t currently exist in Syria right now, and that will limit the effectiveness of the United States military to have the same kind of impact on the situation in Kobani,” the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, told reporters.

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama was briefed on the military campaign by his commanders at the Pentagon and then met there with his national security team. “It remains a difficult mission,” he said. “As I’ve indicated from the start, this is not something that is going to be solved overnight.” The administration’s downbeat tone seemed aimed at managing expectations about the campaign and also at pressuring Turkey, which has signed on to the coalition but has so far been reluctant to commit military resources in the conflict.

Officials said they wanted the Turks to act by deploying ground troops in Syria, firing artillery at the militants, helping to train and arm Syrian rebels, sharing intelligence or opening its border to let Turkish Kurdish fighters join the fight and Syrian Kurds to flee the town. The White House, however, has not specifically asked Turkey to send troops to defend Kobani, in part because the Syrian Kurds there do not want Turkish reinforcements. The role of Turkish troops in Syria is complicated because President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made no secret that he wants to oust President Bashar al-Assad as much as he wants to repel the Islamic State.

The delicacy of the negotiations between the United States and Turkey is typified by the issue of a buffer zone in the northern part of Syria, which the Turkish government has long demanded and which the Pentagon has resisted because of its cost and complexity.

On Wednesday, Mr. Kerry said the idea of a buffer zone was “worth looking at very, very closely,” and would be a topic of discussion between Turkish officials and Mr. Obama’s special envoy for Syria, Gen. John R. Allen, in meetings in Ankara on Thursday. Mr. Earnest, however, said, “It’s not something that’s under consideration right now.”

Administration officials said the United States was walking a fine line with Turkey, which has conditioned military participation on the imposition of a buffer zone. General Allen is expected to argue that bolstering the Syrian rebels would not only create a fighting force against the Islamic State, but also be a counterweight to the Assad government.

Pentagon officials said that while airstrikes had succeeded in changing the tactics of the militants — dispersing them, forcing them to conceal their weapons and hide among the population and limiting their electronic communications — airstrikes would not be enough to stop them from seizing Kobani and other towns.

“Airstrikes alone are not going to fix this, not going to save the town of Kobani,” said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary. “We know that. We know that ISIL is going to continue to grab ground and there are going to be villages and towns and cities that they take.” Admiral Kirby was using an alternative name for the group.

Admiral Kirby also conceded that unlike in Iraq, where the United States has sent scores of military advisers to assist Iraqi and Kurdish troops, Syria offers no ready ground ally.

The Pentagon plans to train about 5,000 opposition fighters a year, but Admiral Kirby said it would take three to five months just to develop the “procedures and protocols” for the program before it begins at a base in Saudi Arabia. It would be several additional months after that before the first group of trained fighters could be fielded.

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid angering an important NATO ally, said Washington was pressing Turkey to send troops across the border and carry out airstrikes of their own to reverse the Islamic State’s gains.“We can’t have our boots on the grounds,” said the official. “That’s the responsibility of the countries in the region.”

Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting.