Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

Their dismay reflects a broader sense on all sides that President Obamas policies on Syria and
the Islamic State remain contradictory, and the longer the fight goes on without the policies
being resolved, the more damage is being done to Americas standing in the region.
More than two months after the campaign against the Islamic State plunged the United States
into direct military involvement in Syria, something Mr. Obama had long avoided, the group has
held its strongholds there and even expanded its reach. That has called into question basic
assumptions of American strategy.
One is that the United States can defeat the Islamic State without taking sides in Syrias civil
war. Another is that it can drive the group out of Iraq while merely diminishing and containing it
in Syria, pursuing different approaches on each side of a porous border that the Islamic State
seeks to erase.
The fundamental disconnects in U.S. strategy have been exposed and amplified as Islamic
State militants have advanced in central Syria in recent weeks, said Emile Hokayem, a Syria
analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Like Mr. Assads opponents, he
contends that extremists cannot be defeated without ending decades of harsh Assad family rule
and empowering the disenfranchised Sunni Muslims who drive the insurgency.
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Mr. Obama has sought to treat Syria as a separate problem and concentrate on Iraq, where he
sees more compelling United States interests if only the political need to salvage the legacy of
American deaths there. But most analysts say the two conflicts are inextricable.
In Iraq, the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, seems to have reached the limits of its expansion
as it bumps up against areas without a Sunni Arab majority and Iraqi and Kurdish forces make
some gains. But driving it out entirely is another matter, particularly if it can rely on a rear base
in Syria, where Mr. Hokayem said it could still expand in majority-Sunni areas.
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In eastern Syria, Islamic State fighters easily cross the Iraqi border. Mr. Assad, focused on
holding Syrias main cities in the west, is unlikely to bring the area under control soon. Last
week, the Islamic State said it was setting clocks in Raqqa ahead one hour to match Iraqi time.
Inside and outside Syria, a growing refrain from Mr. Assads supporters and opponents alike is
that American policy makes little sense that by trying to avoid taking sides, the United States
is neither having its cake nor eating it.

Supporters of Mr. Assad say that the United States should ally with him and his main backer,
Iran. They note that Irans proxies have already worked indirectly with American-backed forces
to fight ISIS in Iraq, and that in Syria, those forces appear far better organized than Mr. Obamas
putative allies, mainstream Syrian insurgents opposed to the Islamic State.
But in Syria, where well over 150,000 people have died in three years of war, such cooperation
would put the United States in the awkward position of siding with a government that opponents
say has killed many times more Syrians than has the Islamic State. For years they are killing
people, and they didnt hurt him, Amjad Hariri, 31, a Syrian refugee in a ramshackle Palestinian
refugee camp in Beirut, said of Mr. Assad. They only went after ISIS.
Mr. Hariri, who moved his family from the southern Syrian city of Daraa after losing three
siblings in the crackdown, drew a bitter conclusion. It gives him the privilege to kill his people,
like a father killing his children.
Many of Mr. Assads opponents see themselves as stranded between two violent oppressors, the
government and the Islamic State. Others who could have been peeled off, Mr. Hokayem said,
are now embracing the militants as they lose hope of United States action against Mr. Assad,
who they see as a greater threat. Syrian government warplanes, as well as barrel bombs
dropped from helicopters, kill the very fighters that Mr. Obama hopes to recruit. Many of those
Syrian insurgents say that only by attacking or curbing Mr. Assads military can the United
States win them to its side against the extremists.