By MICHAEL R. GORDON and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
September 13, 2014
CAIRO — Secretary of State John Kerry received broad assurances but no public commitments from Egypt on Saturday as he continued his tour of the Middle East to try to assemble a coalition behind an American campaign against the extremist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, the new prime minister took a small step toward alleviating the deep alienation that has made some in the Sunni Muslim minority receptive to ISIS: He said Saturday that he had ordered the Iraqi security forces to stop “the indiscriminate shelling” of civilian communities under the control of the militants.
Together, the professions of good intentions in Baghdad and Cairo underscored the long road ahead for the Obama administration as it tries to assemble a regional coalition to roll back and dismantle ISIS.
After meeting with Mr. Kerry in Cairo, Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s foreign minister, declared at a joint news conference that “Egypt believes it is very important for the world to continue their efforts strongly to fight this extremism.”
But Egyptian officials declined to specify what help they would provide in the campaign against ISIS, and Mr. Shoukry made it clear that he also had in mind fighting Islamist militants at home and in neighboring Libya.
Mr. Kerry has already visited Baghdad; Amman, Jordan; and Ankara, Turkey; and he attended an emergency meeting of regional governments in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, in which Arab nations endorsed a coordinated military and political campaign against ISIS. Saudi Arabia has pledged to allow the training of Syrian rebel forces opposed to ISIS at bases in its territory, but no country in the region has publicly detailed what military support it might provide.
Early Sunday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia committed aircraft and military advisers to the effort. He said in a statement that the commitment was a response to a formal request from the United States, adding that combat troops would not be deployed. “The ISIL death cult threatens the people of Iraq, the region and the wider world,” Mr. Abbott said, referring to the group by the acronym for an alternate name, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
The Obama administration is keen to enlist material support from regional powers with Sunni Muslim majorities like Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to avoid the impression that the United States is intervening in a sectarian war on behalf of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government against its opponents in the Sunni minority, some of whom have lent support to ISIS.
Egypt is not expected to make an important military contribution; rather, American officials want Cairo to use its clout as the traditional capital of Sunni Islam — and home to the Al Azhar center of Sunni scholarship — to mobilize public opinion in the Arab world against ISIS. “As an intellectual and cultural capital of the Muslim world, Egypt has a critical role to play,” Mr. Kerry said.
After ISIS made headlines around the world for beheading American hostages, militants in Sinai began carrying out beheadings as well, and Egyptian state media seized on the atrocities to underscore that the government’s fight to consolidate its authority at home was part of the same fight as the American battle with ISIS.
A senior State Department official traveling with Mr. Kerry said that there were anecdotal accounts that volunteers who had fought with ISIS in Iraq and Syria had later provided tactical advice to the main Egyptian militant group, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, while stopping in the Sinai Peninsula on their way back to their homes in Egypt and North Africa.
“They stop off and sort of lend their professional skills,” said the State Department official, who could not be identified under the agency’s rules for briefing reporters. “These terrorist groups are beginning to cooperate.”
While in Cairo, Mr. Kerry met with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, Mr. Shoukry and Nabil al-Araby, the secretary general of the Arab League.
During a visit in July, Mr. Kerry sought to strengthen relations with Mr. Sisi by declaring that he was confident that the United States would soon restore military aid it had suspended after Egypt’s military ousted President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood and waged a bloody crackdown on his Islamist supporters.
But Mr. Kerry also pressed Mr. Sisi on certain human rights issues, including the case of three journalists for Al Jazeera’s English-language network who were charged with conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood to broadcast false reports of chaos. In remarks after their meeting, Mr. Kerry said he had received a very positive response from Mr. Sisi.
The next day, an Egyptian judge overlooked an absence of evidence, convicted the journalists and sentenced each one to at least seven years in prison. None of the journalists — a Canadian citizen, an Australian and an Egyptian — have any history of Brotherhood ties or political activism.
Mr. Kerry insisted on Saturday that he had not refrained from pressing human rights concerns even as he sought Egypt’s cooperation in fighting ISIS.
“The United States does not ever trade its concerns over human rights for any other objective,” Mr. Kerry said.
“We had a frank discussion today,” he said, adding that he understood the independence of the Egyptian judiciary. He said he was confident the issues would be addressed “on an appropriate schedule that is controlled by Egyptians, not by me or anybody else complaining.”
In Baghdad, Haider al-Abadi, the new Iraqi prime minister, was speaking in a televised news conference about the plight of displaced Iraqis when he declared that he had told the security forces to stop “the indiscriminate shelling” of civilian populations in Sunni towns under the control of ISIS.
“I have issued the orders to stop the indiscriminate shelling on cities inhabited by civilians,” Mr. Abadi said, “including cities where ISIS terrorists are operating.”
Senior Iraqi officials have acknowledged in recent days that shelling by their armed forces has killed innocent civilians in the course of the battle against ISIS, but Mr. Abadi’s statement appeared to go further. By indicating that an order from the armed forces could curtail the “indiscriminate shelling,” he implied that the shelling had previously been tolerated as a matter of government policy.
Such broad-brush attacks on Sunni towns have been part of what many Sunnis called a pattern of sectarian bias by the Shiite-dominated security forces. In a report set to be issued Sunday, the independent group Human Rights Watch said that one Iraqi government airstrike at the beginning of this month hit a school near Tikrit where displaced Sunni families had taken refuge; it killed at least 31 civilians, including 24 children, the group said, calling for an investigation.
Human Rights Watch reported in July that 17 Iraqi government airstrikes, including six with barrel bombs, had killed at least 75 civilians and wounded hundreds more in several mainly Sunni areas.
The United Nations special representative for Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, said in a statement that he “welcomed” and “commended” Mr. Abadi’s order.
Michael R. Gordon reported from Cairo, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Baghdad. Ali Hamza contributed reporting from Baghdad.
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(via NY Times)
