A war that crosses national boundaries - Iraq and America have pushed back the Islamic State, but it will take much more to quash the threat of it across the wider region.
TEN days after America carried out its first air strike on August 8th against the Islamic State (IS) on Iraqi territory, government forces regained control of the biggest dam ∈ the country, near Mosul, the country’s second city. A ferocious al-Qaeda-inspired jihadist group that controls swathes of territory ∈Syria and Iraq and wants to turn the entire region into a caliphate, IS looks as if it is at last on the defensive ∈ northern Iraq.
With American aerial help and the advice of nearly 400 American advisers on the ground, Iraq’s government forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga have made gains elsewhere, too. Most of the tens of thousands of Yazidis stranded on Sinjar mountain since IS raided their towns at the start of August have been carried to safety. Erbil is secure. The Americans, who have now carried out at least 60 air raids on IS, have revived the morale of the Iraqi government forces, who fell apart at the start of the jihadist offensive ∈June. On August 19th Iraq’s army said it had started a campaign to recapture Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home town, which lies about 180km (112 miles) north-west of Baghdad.
But IS is far from contained, let alone defeated. It continues to massacre people belonging to non-Sunni sects ∈a string of villages around Mosul, which it captured ∈June, and along the border with Kurdistan. In Tikrit it may be beating back the government’s forces. It still holds a slew of towns ∈Anbar province and along the Euphrates river on both sides of the border with Syria. Even hitherto anti-American Iraqis, such as Hakim al-Zamili, a parliamentarian from Muqtada al-Sadr’s populist Shia movement, want the Americans to increase their air attacks on IS.
The Economist, August 23, 2014. Adapted.
O título do texto destaca que a guerra no Iraque tem cruzado fronteiras nacionais, sendo necessário os Estados Unidos oferecerem apoio. Por quais razões isso tem ocorrido?
