Top General: No Ground Troops Limits ISIS War Efforts

President Barack Obama’s refusal to deploy ground troops to Iraq or Syria in the fight against the Islamic State group has hampered coalition efforts to investigate reports of civilian casualties and determine the exact size of the force it's facing, the top U.S. general for the ongoing conflict says.

Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. Central Command, said Thursday he believes there are between 9,000 and 17,000 fighters within the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Initial estimates when the U.S. bombing campaign began in August pegged that number as high as 31,000.

“I know that number has bounced around a bit,” said Austin, speaking at the Atlantic Council in Washington in only his second public remarks since the U.S. began fighting the Islamic State group. “Without having human intelligence on the ground to confirm or deny, it’s very difficult.”

Austin noted the extremist fighters could exponentially increase their numbers if able to roll through the majority Sunni populations of Iraq or Syria and recruit. The ongoing U.S.-led air campaign has, however, quelled their ability to do that, he said.

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Central Command also has had to contend with reports that coalition airstrikes have caused civilian deaths. Iraqi media reported last month that as many as 18 Iraqis, largely women and children, had been killed during strafing of the strategic town of Hit.

At the time, the command said there was no evidence of such deaths.

“In this kind of campaign, whenever you drop a bomb, you never know what the outcome is going to be,” Austin said Thursday. “We’ve not seen a lot of reports of collateral damage … Certainly every one that we’ve looked into, we’ve not found any evidence that there was in fact unintended consequences which resulted in the loss of human life of civilians.

“Having said that, this is war. I don’t have people on the ground. I don’t have people everywhere. We know there’s probably some things out there that have happened, but we’ve not seen the evidence of that we can sink our teeth into.”

The Islamic State group formed from the insurgent al-Qaida in Iraq network. Its members were chased into neighboring Syria during the Iraq War, finding a safe haven amid the chaos of civil war to recruit, train, raise money and gather supplies. The group launched an offensive back into Iraq earlier this year, exploiting Sunni disenfranchisement from the government of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and seizing key towns – such as Mosul and Fallujah, which remain contested territory – in its march on Baghdad.

The U.S. responded with airstrikes in Iraq that began on Aug. 7 with permission from the local government, and then expanded the assault with warplane, drone and missile attacks in Syria the following month.

Throughout this process, Obama has insisted no U.S. ground forces will return to Iraq or step foot in Syria. It’s a repeated refrain from throughout the campaign, one which the president even took to the Florida headquarters of U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command in September.

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“This is going to be a long-term plan to solidify the Iraqi government – to solidify their forces, to make sure that in addition to our air cover that they have the capacity to run a ground game that pushes ISIL back from some of the territory they have taken," Obama said in a press conference on Wednesday,

But the "no boots on the ground" blueprint has been criticized by opponents and military experts who believe the U.S. strategy is incomplete and shortsighted. At the least, some say, it's naive to announce publicly such a sweeping restriction.

Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, even made headlines in September when he offered to the Senate Armed Services Committee – without being directly asked – that he would recommend deploying ground troops if the Islamic State group's influence grew into a direct threat against the U.S. homeland. 

And Austin himself reportedly told Obama in September that ground forces would be necessary to retake the Mosul Dam, which coalition forces wrested from Islamic State group control through bombing runs in tandem with attacks from local ground troops. The general declined to offer further details the next month while speaking at a press conference at the Pentagon, his first since the U.S.-led fighting began.

Among those questioning the president’s decision is former Sen. John Warner, who attended Austin’s remarks on Thursday. The retired Virginia lawmaker previously served as secretary of the Navy and later as the influential GOP chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was among those who called on President George W. Bush to fully withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2007 to demonstrate to the local government that U.S. support was finite.

Warner tells U.S. News that Obama’s insistence on no ground troops likely stems from a hostile political environment leading up to the midterm elections this week. Based off his previous experience, he says the Iraqi government surely will petition the White House for ground troop support once it bolsters its own military forces.

And Austin, Warner says, will be key in voicing that option to the president.

“If you have to say to the president, ‘I think it’s time, we’ve got to strengthen the ground elements with our own people,’ how are you going to answer that in the face of the disappointment we had in the early phase of training the Iraqi forces?” Warner asked Austin on Thursday.

Austin responded with talking points similar to those White House officials have used, explaining that blame for unrest in Iraq lies squarely with the exclusionary practices of the former Iraqi prime minister and the poor maintenance of an Iraqi military that the U.S. helped build before withdrawing in 2011.

“If more capability is required, then I’ll certainly make that recommendation,” Austin said. “[But] if the governmental piece of this doesn’t work, if Iraqi leadership cannot find themselves to be inclusive of the Sunnis and the Kurds, no matter how many troops you put on the ground, this is not going to work.”