Arab leaders bemoan lack of strategy in fight against jihadists

Arab leaders have bemoaned what they call a lack of strategy and weapons in the fight against jihadists groups like Islamic State, a security conference in Munich has heard.

Islamic State fighters have taken large areas in Syria and Iraq under their control, using extreme violence against civilians, journalists and Arab and Kurdish soldiers.

US-led air strikes and arms deliveries from Western countries to Kurdish fighters have helped contain Islamic State expansion into Kurdish territory in northern Iraq. But on the ground, Islamic State - known as Daesh in Arabic - uses heavy weapons captured from a weakened Iraqi army, leaving local fighters painfully exposed.

“I don’t see that there is a clear strategy how to deal with (IS),” Palestinian foreign minister Riad al-Malki said. “How to face it, how to contain it, control it, defeat it and eliminate it. I don’t see it...Unless the air strikes is a strategy. That’s not a strategy.”

On Sunday, Jordan’s air force chief said his country’s jet fighters had conducted 56 raids in three days of intensified bombing targeting an Islamic State stronghold in northeast Syria.

Jordan launched the strikes on the group's positions in Syria and Iraq on Thursday in response to its brutal killing of a captured Jordanian pilot.

"We achieved what we aimed at. We destroyed logistics centres, arms depos and targeted hideouts of their fighters," General Mansour al Jbour, head of the Jordanian airforce, told a news conference.

Last month, the head of Nato said air strikes alone would not be enough to defeat Islamic State and greater Western help in building up Iraqi security forces could also play a role.

Qatar also criticised current efforts against the group, especially in Iraq where many Sunnis have felt disenfranchised by the Shi'ite-dominated leadership in Baghdad.

“If we want those people (Sunnis) to fight for themselves, to clean Iraq from any terrorists, we have to not only issue a programme but to implement this programme tangibly,” Qatar’s foreign minister Khaled al-Attiyah said in Munich.

“We still need to have a strategy in Iraq from our allies. There is no strategy, I’ll be very frank on this.”

Saudi Arabia has also taken part in air strikes against Islamic State. Other countries like Egypt say the international community is not helping enough in their fight against other jihadist groups such as Ansar Beyt al-Maqdis in the Sinai peninsula, bordering Israel.

"We need more weapons, the quality, the sophistication of the weapons, the technology so that we can track and be able to infiltrate these organisations," Egypt's foreign minister Sameh Shoukry said on the sidelines of the Munich conference.

Echoing Egypt's calls for a more comprehensive strategy, Afghan president Ashraf Ghani urged leaders in Munich to act on militants operating from his country, adding that this threat should not be treated in isolation from Islamic State and other groups.

Reuters