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Syria Declares Its Readiness in Backing Efforts to Fight Jihadists - New York Times

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Middle East |Syria Declares Its Readiness in Backing Efforts to Fight Jihadists



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BAGHDAD — Syria’s foreign minister said Monday that his government was ready to cooperate with international efforts to fight the extremists of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. But in a nod to the possibility of expanded American airstrikes, he warned that any action inside Syria without the government’s approval would be considered “aggression.”


The offer by the minister, Walid al-Moallem, appeared to be a preliminary effort to rehabilitate the international standing of his government, which has been condemned by the United States and others for its brutal tactics in the country’s civil war and against the popular uprising that preceded it.


In comments to reporters in Damascus, Mr. Moallem seemed well aware of how greatly the rise of ISIS in both Syria and Iraq had changed Western views toward the region. He presented his government as the natural partner in the fight against jihadist groups.



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“Syria is prepared to cooperate and coordinate regionally and internationally to fight terrorism,” he said, stipulating that all efforts had to go through the Syrian government.



Interactive Graphic



The victories gained by the militant group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were built on months of maneuvering along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.




OPEN Interactive Graphic



Western alarm about ISIS, the extremist group that calls itself the Islamic State and controls a swath of territory across the Syria-Iraq border, has spiked since it released a video showing an ISIS fighter beheading the American journalist James Foley last week.


Mr. Moallem condemned the killing of Mr. Foley and suggested that a failed raid into Syria by American Special Operations forces seeking to free him could have succeeded with Syrian government help.


“If there had been coordination beforehand, I tell you that the chance of failure would have been weak,” he said.


The United States has been conducting airstrikes on ISIS positions in Iraq — an effort that officials have suggested could extend into Syria. Last week, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, said that ISIS could not be defeated in Iraq without attacks on its bases in Syria.


Responding to that possibility, Mr. Moallem said any such strikes launched unilaterally would be considered an act of war.


“Any violation of Syrian sovereignty from any side is aggression,” he said.




Play Video|1:47

U.S. Military Strategy Against ISIS



U.S. Military Strategy Against ISIS



A look at the next military steps the United States is considering in the battle against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.


By Emily B. Hager and Quyn Do on August 21, 2014. Hasan Jamali/Associated Press

Anti-government activists have long accused the Syrian government of allowing ISIS to expand because its presence helped them in the civil war: ISIS was good at killing rebels and strengthened the government’s argument that it was facing a terrorist plot, not a popular uprising.


But as ISIS has overshadowed the rebel movement, it has increasingly fought the government directly, often winning.


Since mid-July, the group has seized three military bases in the northern province of Raqqa, including an air base it stormed on Sunday.


But analysts said it was unlikely that the United States would change direction and publicly ally with Damascus against ISIS. Mr. Assad’s forces have not proved to be effective militarily against the group, and American officials are likely to find it hard to work with a government that has launched chemical attacks on its own people and destroyed residential areas in its quest to kill rebels.


“It is inconceivable to me that the United States would coordinate with the Syrian government in any way,” said Steven Simon, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and a former White House adviser to Mr. Obama on the Middle East. “How can we see over the mountain of bodies that they have created?”


Both the Syrian government and some of its insurgent adversaries have been impeding or blocking the flow of international emergency food and medical assistance to besieged civilians. But Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations, said in a monthly report to be submitted to the Security Council later this week that humanitarian access had increased somewhat since July 14, when the 15-member council authorized convoys in Turkey and Jordan to deliver assistance across the Syrian border without the government’s consent.


“For the first time in these monthly reports to the Security Council, I can report some improvement in access across borders and across lines,” Mr. Ban said in the report, obtained Monday by The New York Times. Nonetheless, he said, approximately 10.8 million people in Syria, nearly half of them in hard-to-reach areas, remained in need of “urgent humanitarian assistance.”


Mr. Ban also asserted that “all parties to the conflict continue to deny access to humanitarian assistance in an unjustifiable manner.”



Rick Gladstone contributed reporting from New York.




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