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Anti-IS coalition likely to seek 'political' solutions at Paris talks
  • | AFP | June 02, 2015 08:23 AM
A meeting of the US-led coalition combating the Islamic State (IS) group opens in Paris on Tuesday with two potential strikes against it: the absence of US Secretary of State John Kerry and a "central" focus on Iraq despite IS gains in Syria.

 

Mohammed Sawaf, AFP | Iraqi security forces

Tuesday’s  – which brings together representatives from 24 coalition countries as well as international agencies – comes weeks after the , the capital of Iraq’s Sunni-dominated Anbar province, to Islamic State group control in what was a key defeat for the coalition.

US Secretary of State John Kerry will not be present at the Paris meeting following a cycling accident in France over the weekend. The top US diplomat  on Sunday to seek treatment for a fractured femur.

Kerry had been scheduled to fly to Paris on Monday for a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi ahead of Tuesday’s talks. Monday’s face-to-face has since been cancelled, with Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken representing the United States in Paris while Kerry is expected to participate in the talks remotely from Boston, where he is undergoing treatment.

A September summit in Paris brought together officials from around the globe to discuss what role each would play in the US-led coalition of more than 60 countries, at least a dozen of which have launched air strikes on IS group targets.

But the latest round of talks may have doomed itself to failure by declaring an almost exclusive focus on Iraq, relegating the Islamic State group’s recent significant gains in Syria to the background.

In  the coalition summit last month, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the “central” focus of the talks would be the Islamic State group’s activities in Iraq, although he said that it was “” that the Syrian crisis would also be discussed.

'Political initiative'

“Political solution” is likely to be the catchphrase as the talks get under way, with US officials increasingly warning that the battle against the Islamic State group requires more than just a successful military strategy.

In an  last week, General John Allen – the special US presidential envoy to the international coalition – said that pressing political questions must be addressed to undermine support for the militants.

“We have to deal with the political issues,” he said. “We have to deal with inherent social, economic, religious issues. Because in the end, the aggregation of those creates an environment where an organisation like  (the Arabic acronym for the IS group) can find cohesion and purpose.”

Former CIA director David Petraeus, who led the successful 2007  in Iraq, on Sunday that the “force of arms” was not enough, emphasising that battling the insurgency required giving the Sunni minority a stake in "the new Iraq”.

“You can’t deal with an industrial-strength extremist problem just with the force of arms. You have to have that political component as well,” said Petraeus.

“To enable that will require political initiative of those key Iraqi leaders, starting first and foremost with Prime Minister Abadi, who knows and has stated what needs to be done to give the Sunni Arab community the need to support the new Iraq rather than oppose it,” he said.

And yet the strategy to take back Ramadi has so far revolved on the use of controversial Shiite militias – a strategy the US, as well as Abadi, had been keen to avoid for fear of fanning the flames of sectarian conflict in the Sunni-majority territory.

When he replaced Nuri al-Maliki as prime minister last year, many hoped Abadi would bring an end to his predecessor’s sectarian tendencies and bring Sunnis back into the national fold.

But the operation to take back Anbar province got off to a controversial start last week, raising questions of Abadi’s ability to tackle Iraq’s systemic divisions.

The military offensive, initially codenamed , drew criticisms from Sunni leaders as well as the Pentagon, which called the codename “unhelpful” given its deeply sectarian nature.

Labaik ya Hussein,” which roughly translates as, “We are at your service, Hussein,” is a reference to one of the most revered Shiite imams, whose death in the 7th century marked the birth of Islam’s bitter Sunni-Shiite divide.

Operation Labaik ya Hussein was eventually changed to Operation Labaik ya Anbar – but for many critics, the political damage had already been done.

Despite persistent concerns, Abadi enjoys considerable support among members of the international coalition against the IS group.

In discussing the Paris talks last month, France's Fabius said: "We have to take stock of how the coalition wants to proceed. And the Iraqi prime minister will tell us what the situation is [on the ground].”

A weakened Assad

The  of Western powers to enter into discussions with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has made finding a diplomatic solution tricky, if not impossible. But the fast-changing situation on the ground in Syria is now pushing officials in both regional and far-flung capitals to re-examine the political issues at the root of the country's Islamist problem.

Over the past few weeks, Assad has been losing ground in the war against IS and other rebel groups across the country. The IS group’s takeover of the  last month marked the first regime loss to the jihadists, who have swept across swaths of both Syria and Iraq since early last year.

According to Charles Lister of the , the Syrian army and its supporting militias appear to be “at their weakest point since early 2013” – before the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah joined the Syrian battle on Assad’s side.

The recent loss of Palmyra to the IS group, as well as advances by a rebel coalition in Idlib and the southern province of Deraa, have inflicted psychological and military pressures on the Syrian regime, Lister noted in a recent report entitled, "".

“Frustration, disaffection and even incidences of protest are rising across Assad’s most ardent areas of support on Syria’s coast – some of which are now under direct attack. Hezbollah is stretched thin and even Iranian forces have begun withdrawing to the areas of Syria deemed to be the most important for regime survival,” noted Lister.

Reinvigorated cooperation between Sunni Muslim powers Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar to contain the regional influence of Iran – a key Assad supporter, and now backing anti-IS militias in Iraq – has brought , such as anti-tank weapons, to Syrian rebel groups battling Assad’s forces.

And Assad’s other main international backer, Russia, is believed to be “”, according to the Saudi-backed, London-based newspaper Ashraq al-Awsat. In a report published Sunday, the Arabic-language newspaper noted that Russia had most recently evacuated around 100 of its officials, including experts who worked in Assad’s “war room” in Syria.

According to a number of Arabic media reports, Moscow is also engaged in serious talks with Washington to arrive at a political solution to the Syrian crisis.

Assad’s weakened position has lent new urgency to efforts to try to find a so-far-elusive diplomatic fix for the Syrian crisis.

“Things have moved in Syria. The regime is in a very bad way and is losing ground, so it helps to push towards finding a political solution," a senior French diplomat told Reuters ahead of the Paris talks.

In recent months the international community has increased its diplomatic efforts, with UN special envoy to Syria  holding talks in May with several of the , including the Syrian regime's envoy to Geneva.

But the talks were dealt a setback when the internationally recognised opposition Syrian National Coalition declined to take part, with deputy chief Hisham Marwa dismissing the negotiations as "". 

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