Saudi pilots involved in U.S.-led coalition airstrikes on Islamic State targets sit in the cockpit of a fighter jet in Saudi Arabia on Sept. 24. (Associated Press)
The major Arab powers once deemed essential to the fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq have largely pulled back from the U.S.-led military campaign, undercutting the Obama administration’s claims about the depth and reach of the coalition it has built with allies in the region.
The Obama administration consistently touts the “65-nation coalition” it has assembled to fight the group also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh — but critics say that fewer than a dozen nations today are contributing anything significant to the campaign.
And behind closed doors, administration and military officials admit that air support from such key Arab allies as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — something the White House once touted as an unprecedented and essential part of the coalition — has all but evaporated.
One Pentagon official directly involved in the counter-Islamic State fight told The Washington Times that the Saudis haven’t flown a mission against the group in nearly three months. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Bahrain is still involved, but confirmed that Jordan stopped flying sorties against the extremists in August and the UAE hasn’t flown one since March.
A top former Obama administration official who helped build the coalition last year, meanwhile, said that Persian Gulf Arab powers made a strategic gamble months ago to focus their military resources on helping Saudi Arabia wage war against Houthi rebels seen as Iranian proxies in neighboring Yemen — wagering that the U.S. and the European Union would lead the fight against Islamic State.
During the months leading up to last summer’s nuclear deal between Tehran and the West, Yemen had emerged as ground zero for a proxy war pitting Saudi Arabia, the Middle East’s top Sunni Muslim power, and Iran, the region’s largest Shiite power.
The months since have seen waves of Arab air and ground offensives carried out against the Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen, with a particularly deadly day occurring in early September, when 45 UAE soldiers and five troops from Bahrain were killed in Yemen.
“They’re eye-deep in Yemen now, and their attention is completely skewed in that direction,” said the former official, requesting anonymity to speak frankly about the situation. “It’s sucked up all the sorties and ground forces that we had wanted to deploy in Iraq and maybe in Syria.”
But the former official said it would be wrong to claim the Saudis and others had completely abandoned the Islamic State effort. “Their calculation was that the Americans would take care of leading the coalition against Daesh while they take care of fighting the Iranians in Yemen,” the former official said.
The catch, according to some longtime Middle East security experts, is that the Obama administration hasn’t done a very good job leading other U.S. allies — in particular Turkey, Germany, Britain, Australia and France — in the counter-Islamic State coalition, while the Arab powers have lost their initial enthusiasm.
“This is a ‘65-country coalition’ of which only about nine are doing something,” said Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington, who added that struggling support for the coalition stems in part from the administration’s failure to clearly articulate the goal of its bombing campaign against the extremists in Syria and Iraq.
“I can’t think of a single public document that explained in any coherent way what the strategy is that we have for the air war, or what more needs to be done,” Mr. Cordesman said in an interview. “So I find it difficult to get upset about the lack of allied support, particularly when the Europeans are focused on what’s happening in Europe and the Gulf States are concerned about Yemen.
“There is no sort of automatic tendency of people in the Middle East who have different strategic objectives and goals to follow us, particularly when it isn’t quite clear what our goals are,” he said.
Obama administration officials dismiss such criticisms. One who is directly involved in diplomacy around the counter-Islamic State coalition, and who also spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Times on Tuesday that several Arab powers remain “very much a part of the effort.”
“Even if the airstrikes are not there because of the focus on Yemen, they’re still allowing the use of their bases, and they’re still very much involved with the humanitarian effort and the finance effort.”
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