BAGHDAD -- Sunni militants have blitzed through the vast desert of western Iraq, capturing four towns and three border crossings and deepening the predicament of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad led by Nouri al-Maliki.
The latest military victories -- including two border posts captured Sunday, one along the frontier with Jordan and the other with Syria -- considerably expanded territory under the militants' control just two weeks after the al-Qaida breakaway group began swallowing up chunks of northern Iraq, heightening pressure on al-Maliki to step aside.
The offensive by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant takes the group closer to its dream of carving out an Islamic state straddling both Syria and Iraq. Moreover, controlling the borders with Syria will help it supply fellow fighters there with weaponry looted from Iraqi warehouses, significantly reinforcing its ability to battle beleaguered Syrian government forces.
President Barack Obama, in an interview with CBS' Face the Nation that aired Sunday, warned that the Islamic State could grow in power and destabilize the region.
"We're going to have to be vigilant generally. Right now the problem with ISIS is the fact that they're destabilizing the country," Obama said, using a common acronym for the group. "That could spill over into some of our allies, like Jordan."
The Sunni insurgency in Iraq and neighboring Syria is just one of an array of threats the U.S. must guard against, Obama said. He pointed to the group Boko Haram in north Africa and al-Qaida groups in Yemen that he said also demand the attention of the U.S. and its partners.
"What we can't do is think that we're just going to play whack-a-mole and send U.S. troops occupying various countries wherever these organizations pop up," Obama said. "We're going to have to have a more focused, more targeted strategy and we're going to have to partner and train local law enforcement and military to do their jobs as well."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, in the Jordanian capital on Sunday, also weighed in. The Islamic State, he warned, is a "threat not only to Iraq, but to the entire region."
"There is no safety margin whatsoever in funding a group like ISIL, and we particularly discourage individuals in the region who may have been sending money through some illicit charity or through various back-channel initiatives under the guise this is for the general welfare and benefit for people who have been displaced, but then that money finds its way into the hands of terrorists," Kerry said.
Both Kerry and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said it's up to Iraqis to decide their leaders, but at the same time, they said, Baghdad must create an inclusive government if it hopes to quell the violence.
The militants' battlefield successes in the north and the west of Iraq have laid bare the inadequacies of the country's U.S.-trained forces and their inability to defend the rapidly shrinking territory they hold. In the north, troops fled in the face of the advancing militants, abandoning their weapons, vehicles and other equipment. In some cases in the west, they pulled out either when the militants approached or when they heard of other towns falling.
The chief military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, spoke Sunday of tactical withdrawals to regroup and prepare to retake what has been lost to the militants.
"We have a very, very serious crisis to deal with," acknowledged a senior government official close to al-Maliki's inner circle. "Up until now, we don't have a plan to retake any territory we lost. We are working on one still."
A top Iraqi military intelligence official was equally blunt, saying the battlefield setbacks in Iraq's restive western Anbar province and the north have given the militants much more freedom of movement and their firepower has dramatically increased.
"Their objective is Baghdad, where we are working frantically to bolster our defenses," said the official. "I will be honest with you, even that is not up to the level of what is needed. Morale is low."
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject.
Thousands of armed Shiite militiamen staged military-style parades Saturday in cities including Baghdad, Basra, Najaf and Kut, Al Arabiya television reported, broadcasting footage. In Baghdad, militiamen loyal to anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr marched through the Shiite Sadr City district, Al Arabiya reported. Some wore military fatigues and carried weapons.
It is not clear whether Obama's deployment of up to 300 military advisers to retrain Iraqi troops could make a difference or turn things around quickly enough to prevent the militants from digging in and improving their defenses. Obama has also left the door open for airstrikes.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said he was opposed to any U.S. involvement in the Iraqi crisis, accusing Washington of fomenting the unrest. His comments appeared to quash recent speculation that the two rivals might cooperate in addressing the shared threat posed by the Islamic extremists.
"We strongly oppose the intervention of the U.S. and others in the domestic affairs of Iraq," Khamenei, who has the final say over Iran's state policy, was quoted as saying by the IRNA state news agency. "The main dispute in Iraq is between those who want Iraq to join the U.S. camp and those who seek an independent Iraq."
"The U.S. aims to bring its own blind followers to power," said Khamenei, whose Shiite nation has close ties with al-Maliki's government and effectively plays the role of guarantor for Iraq's Shiite political domination. The U.S. has long accused Iran of meddling in Iraq, including organizing and backing Shiite militias following the 2003 invasion.
The commander of Iran's elite Quds Force, Gen. Ghasem Soleimani, was reportedly in Iraq last week to consult with the government there on how to stave off insurgents' gains. Soleimani's forces are a secretive branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard that in the past has allegedly organized Shiite militias to target U.S. troops in Iraq and, more recently, was involved in helping Syria's President Bashar Assad in his fight against Sunni rebels.
On Sunday, the militants' advances took the conflict in Iraq to the doorstep of Jordan, a key U.S. ally that also borders embattled Syria to its north.
Sunday's capture of crossings bordering Jordan and Syria follows the fall Friday and Saturday of the towns of Qaim, Rawah, Anah and Rutba, all of which are in Sunni-dominated Anbar province, where the militants have since January controlled the city of Fallujah and parts of the provincial capital, Ramadi.
Islamic State militants and Sunni supporters now control territory in Iraq from Mosul in the north to Rutba in the west. Rutba is located next to a highway running from Baghdad to the Jordanian border and is the last major town before crossing into Jordan.
Rutba's capture is "significant because it could help them with the movement of supplies," said Theodore Karasik, director of research at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai. "It secures routes along tribal lines that run between Jordan, Syria and Iraq."
In a separate attack in Anbar, twin blasts by a suicide bomber and a car bomb targeted a funeral for a senior army officer, killing eight people and injuring 13, police and hospital officials said. The attack near the provincial capital of Ramadi hit the funeral of Brig. Gen. Abdul-Majid al-Fahdawi, who was killed by a mortar shell in Qaim on the Syrian border on Friday.
In other violence, Sunni militants in control of a small northern town handed over the decomposing bodies of 15 Shiites to authorities in the northern city of Kirkuk, according to the city's deputy police chief, Maj. Gen. Torhan Abdul-Rahman Youssef.
Information for this article was contributed by Hamza Hendawi, Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Sameer N. Yacoub, Nasser Karimi, Lara Jakes and staffmembers of The Associated Press and by Khalid Al-Ansary, Glen Carey, Margaret Talev, Tony Capaccio, Terry Atlas, Nicole Gaouette, Caroline Alexander, Alaa Shahine, Nadeem Hamid and Kadhim Ajrash of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 06/23/2014