U.S. Coalition Against ISIS

The coalition organized by the United States against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) drew support from Middle Eastern as well as European nations, though for different reasons. Differing goals among the allies complicated efforts to support Kurdish and moderate Islamic militias fighting ISIS.

The collapse of Iraqi security forces in Mosul in June 2014 exposed the need for international action against ISIS. Several Arab nations joined the coalition despite mixed feelings about its benefit to the Assad regime in Syria. European nations, some with troops only recently returned from Afghanistan, provided support in Iraq but declined to get involved in Syria without Assad's cooperation. The U.S. specifically excluded Syria and Iran from the anti-ISIS coalition. A key ally, Turkey agreed to facilitate coalition flights and training activities but prevented Kurdish volunteers from entering Syria to fight in Kobane because it viewed Kurdish militias as a greater threat than ISIS to Turkey's own security. Until the siege of Kobane, coalition air strikes in Syria were mostly directed at infrastructure. As Kobane was about to fall, the coalition intensified its direct air support for ground forces, illustrating the effect of divergent goals on coalition operations. By the end of 2017, coalition efforts in Syria and Iraq had deprived ISIS of nearly all its territory.

Note: ISIS is also known as the Islamic State (IS) or Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Countries: Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates joined the U.S. in air strikes in Syria while Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. carried out operations in Iraq. At its height, some seventy countries agreed to support the coalition either militarily or with logistics or humanitarian aid.

Organized: September 2014.

Stated Goal: To degrade and ultimately destroy ISIS.

Key Events

• June 10, 2014—ISIS overwhelms Mosul, leaving one-third of Iraqi military units in chaos.
• August 7, 2014—President Obama authorizes air strikes and weapons to support Kurds fighting ISIS.
• September 10, 2014—Obama outlines a long-term strategy to defeat ISIS without U.S. ground troops.
• September 16, 2014—ISIS attacks Kobane, seeking control of a long stretch of Syria's border with Turkey.
• September 22, 2014—Coalition launches a first wave of air attacks in Syria.
• January 26, 2015—With intensified air support, Syrian Kurdish fighters drive ISIS out of Kobane.
• April 1, 2015—Iraqi forces seize Tikrit, Iraq, from ISIS.
• October 30, 2015—U.S. announces plans to deploy up to 50 special operations forces to northern Syria to assist rebels.
• December 26, 2015—U.S.-backed rebels seize Syria's Tishreen Dam from ISIS.
• December 27, 2015—Iraqi forces seize Ramadi from ISIS in Iraq.
• April 25, 2016—U.S. announces plans to deploy 250 special operations forces to Syria.
• June 26, 2016—Iraqi army retakes Fallujah from ISIS.
• October 16, 2016—Final push begins by Iraqi and Kurdish forces, supported by U.S.-led allies, to retake Mosul from ISIS.
• June 6–October 17, 2017—The Battle of Raqqa in Syria results in the retaking of Raqqa, ISIS's de-facto capital, by the Syrian Democratic Forces supported by the U.S.-led coalition.
• July 20, 2017—Mosul is freed of the last of the ISIS fighters.
• October 27, 2019—ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is killed in a U.S. special operation in Syria.

Status

By the end of 2017, the coalition opposing ISIS had retaken almost all the territory once held by the group in Iraq and Syria. By 2023, ISIS was considered a largely defeated organization. However, the group retained affiliates in more than a dozen countries around the world, from Libya to the Philippines, and continued to take credit for inspiring terrorist attacks in Europe and elsewhere.

In 2019, ISIS endured what is recognized as the final defeat of its self-proclaimed caliphate. This was marked as a U.S.-led coalition, in conjunction with the insurgent Syrian Democratic Forces wrested control over the town of Al-Baghouz in Syria. This was the last remaining city of any significant size held by ISIS. In 2023, ISIS continues to be assessed as a primarily defeated force. Although it still contains active insurgents and is capable of notable acts of violence, it is not believed to be capable of overrunning wide swaths of territory such as it did in 2014. At this juncture ISIS controlled about a third of both Iraq and Syria. A larger challenge is how to address the approximately 65,000 ISIS detainees who are now incarcerated in camps controlled by the SDF. Various options are being considered to include reintegration and repatriation efforts.

In-Depth Description

The first nation to join the coalition was Saudi Arabia, on September 12, 2014. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates followed suit. Jordan, which ordinarily stays clear of controversy, joined on September 19. Qatar, at odds with Saudi Arabia because of Doha's past support for the Muslim Brotherhood, allowed the U.S. air base at Al Udeid to be used for command and control of coalition flights.

Belgium, France, and the Netherlands were the first European allies to send combat aircraft, although these were limited to operations within Iraq. In general, the European allies and Australia and Canada came to Iraq at Iraq's invitation but were reluctant to use force in Syria without authorization from its government. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was unable to gain a commitment against ISIS from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during a summit in Wales on September 4-5. Several NATO countries, having sent troops to Afghanistan, joined the anti-ISIS coalition after politically sensitive votes in parliament. An estimated 3,000 European citizens have traveled to the Middle East to join ISIS and posed a threat of terrorism on their return.

Strategy in Syria

Coalition attacks on ISIS targets in Syria began September 22, 2014, with the launch of forty-seven Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. ships in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. These and follow-up strikes by fighter aircraft were spread across Syria, from Aleppo to Deir al-Zour, to maximize the advantage of surprise. In addition to targeting ISIS, the September 22 action included a strike against Khorasan, a jihadist group planning terrorist attacks in Western countries. The targets in Syria were mainly infrastructure, including headquarters, supply depots, training camps, and staging area used to support ISIS units in Iraq. In contrast, coalition air strikes in Iraq gave direct assistance to Peshmerga and Iraqi armed forces in combat against ISIS.

To avoid accidental encounters between coalition aircraft and Syrian air defenses, the U.S. notified Syria's ambassador to the United Nations in advance of the September 22 attacks. Syria's foreign minister said his country was prepared to cooperate with regional and international powers. However, it was U.S. policy to have no dealings with the Assad regime, which Washington said had lost legitimacy in 2011 after using military power against its own people. With the Syrian military concentrated mainly in the west and ISIS-held territory mainly in the east, the risk of accidental encounters with coalition aircraft was generally low after the initial strikes.

While the U.S. goal was to avoid the Assad regime, Arab countries in the coalition regarded Syria's government as an enemy, propped up by Iran and facilitating Hezbollah's influence in Lebanon. They saw ISIS as the more immediate threat, challenging the Arab monarchies with its declaration of a new caliphate. With about 2,000 ISIS recruits coming from Jordan, and a similar number from Saudi Arabia, these fighters posed a long-term danger to their home countries. Domestically, the Arab monarchies faced public opposition to a war against Sunni rebels in Syria that benefitted its Shia-based government. While the Arab partners' preference for fighting both ISIS and Assad did not cause problems in early operations, the long-term success of the air campaign will depend on coordination with ground forces and clear political goals, according to U.S. Chief of Staff General Martin Dempsey. He estimated the coalition would need 15,000 fighters in Syria, assembled from secular, Kurdish, and moderate Islamist militias.

Turkey and the Siege of Kobane

Turkey maintained an ambiguous status as a partner of the coalition, in part because of its unwillingness to support Kurdish fighters. The gaps between U.S. and Turkish goals became increasingly apparent as ISIS advanced on Kobane, a city of 400,000 that would give the extremists control of much of Syria's northern border. In late September 2014, Turkey massed troops and armor at the border and said it would take whatever action was necessary to prevent the fall of Kobane. By early October, it insisted several conditions would have to be met before Turkish forces would cross into Syria: a no-fly zone to keep Syrian jets at a safe distance, a buffer zone against Syrian ground troops, and a coalition strategy that included the removal of the Assad regime. All of these conditions were in conflict with the U.S. and European preference for avoiding Assad.

On October 2, 2014, the Turkish parliament passed a bill allowing allies to use the air base at Incirlik for air strikes against militants and for training militias to be sent into Iraq and Syria. However, the government did not take action on this authorization. Notably, the bill identified not only ISIS but also the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as militant threats. Turkish concern about the PKK, which carried on an insurgency in Turkey for decades, extended to Kobane because the militia defending the city belonged to the PYD (Democratic Unity Party), the PKK's affiliate in Syria. As refugees fled Kobane, Turkish Kurds gathered at the border to volunteer to fight in Syria, but Turkish guards prevented their crossing. Turkey claimed that U.S. weapons given to the Peshmerga in Iraq had already turned up in the hands of PKK fighters. Allowing Turkish Kurds into Syria would amount to arming militants who would soon return to Turkey and continue their insurgency, officials said. From Ankara's perspective, ISIS was less of a threat than the PKK.

Turkey's emphasis on toppling Assad accorded with the views of Arab countries in the coalition, but there was significant disagreement over another hot issue: the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood was welcomed in Turkey as part of the Syrian National Council, the rebel government in exile. However, the organization was anathema in most Persian Gulf countries because of its criticism of pro-Western Muslim monarchies. The exception was Qatar, which had a history of working with the Muslim Brotherhood and allowing it air time on Al Jazeera. In March 2014, the other Persian Gulf States withdrew their ambassadors from Doha. Officials in two coalition countries—Saudi Arabia and Germany—publicly accused Qatar of being a source of private funding for Islamist extremists. The U.S. Treasury attested that Qatar had significantly tightened its enforcement of financial regulations to prevent charitable donations from reaching terrorist groups. In Jordan, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood was a recognized political party and held seats in parliament.

Coalition Challenge in Western Iraq

Through October 2014, as the coalition intensified air strikes around Kobane, U.S. and European efforts in Iraq turned toward Anbar, the Sunni-majority province bordering Syria. While ISIS continued to hold the cities of Mosul and Tikrit in the north, its advance toward Baghdad had been halted. ISIS reinforcements flowed into Anbar, linking areas under the group's control, including parts of the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah. There was consensus among coalition allies in Iraq on their objectives and geographical limits to operations, so the challenge was the sufficient deployment of ground forces in western Iraq for the coalition to support. On October 11, Anbar's provincial council alerted Baghdad that Iraqi military units were being overmatched by ISIS forces and that government control of the province could collapse in a matter of days. A U.S. official confirmed the situation was "fragile."

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ruled out the use of foreign ground troops. He took initial steps to organize Sunni volunteers to bolster the Iraqi military in western Iraq. Tribal leaders driven out by ISIS in early 2014 came forward to form a militia of 30,000 fighters to secure Anbar province. In the meantime, ISIS consolidated positions across Iraq and Syria.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ruled out the U.S.e of foreign ground troops. He took initial steps to organize Sunni volunteers to bolster the Iraqi military in western Iraq. Tribal leaders driven out by ISIS in early 2014 came forward to form a militia of 30,000 fighters to secure Anbar province. In the meantime, ISIS consolidated positions across Iraq and Syria.

In 2019, ISIS endured what is recognized as the final defeat of its self-proclaimed caliphate. This was marked as a U.S.-led coalition, in conjunction with the insurgent Syrian Democratic Forces wrested control over the town of Al-Baghouz in Syria. This was the last remaining city of any significant size held by ISIS. In 2023, ISIS continues to be assessed as a primarily defeated force. Although it still contains active insurgents and is capable of notable acts of violence, it is not believed to be capable of overrunning wide swaths of territory such as it did in 2014. At this juncture ISIS controlled about a third of both Iraq and Syria. A larger challenge is how to address the approximately 65,000 ISIS detainees who are now incarcerated in camps controlled by the SDF. Various options are being considered to include reintegration and repatriation efforts.

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