The inevitable has occurred. In the face of an al-Qaeda surge in Iraq that has seen militants linked to the international terrorist group seize parts of the city of Ramadi and much of the city of Falluja over the last few days, the White House has announced a response. The Obama administration will be sending military equipment in support of the embattled government of Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, which is attempting to retake the two cities. Al-Qaeda is believed to have recently regrouped in the Sunni province of Anbar, with a number of fighters crossing the porous border between Iraq and Syria. What assistance might Washington be offering the Iraqi government? Clearly out of the question is the reintroduction of substantial number of American troops into the fray. The domestic political cost to the Obama administration of intervening in a conflict declared over by the current president would be too high for the Democrats facing mid-term elections in the autumn of 2014 to face. As in Vietnam, it is now an Iraqi fight albeit with American backing short of boots on the ground. What form then will the American support that is forthcoming take? One answer has been supplied by the Iraqi ministry of defence which displayed a video showing a strike against militants that was described as carried out by a "jet". More realistically, it appears that the attack was launched from unmanned aerial vehicles, more commonly known as drones. Indeed, the White House announcement of military weaponry for Baghdad did not hide the involvement of these devices. "Additional" hellfire missiles, which are fired from drones such as the Predator and Reaper versions, will be dispatched by the spring to Iraq, according to White House spokesman Jay Carney, along with 10 ScanEagle surveillance drones and 48 Raven surveillance drones. The ScanEagle drones, developed by Boeing and Insitu, are launched by catapult while the Raven drones, which resemble model airplanes, are made airborne by hand, usually on the part of soldiers in the field. The equipment to be shipped reiterates the dual possibilities of drones. The surveillance role was the original reason for the drone's development; it was only later that the Central Intelligence Agency hit upon the idea of equipping some drones with hellfire missiles in order to carry out strikes on targets, a role that began in November 2002. In a real sense the White House's announcement reflects a strain within the Obama administration that was apparent during debates in 2009 around the future course in Afghanistan. At that time, some in the administration, the best example being Vice President Joe Biden, opposed the eventual course that Obama followed, namely an increase in troops on the ground. Instead, Biden and others favoured increased training of Afghan troops and a greater reliance on drone strikes and American Special Forces to target al-Qaeda in neighbouring Pakistan. The Biden approach now appears to be the American strategy in Iraq as the United States looks to influence the on-going conflict in favour of the government of Iraq without the sort of commitment that would put US lives at risk. Drones are the ideal weapon for such an approach and for targeting an insurgency in the short run (the long term implications of such an approach are another matter entirely). The other relevant issue with the use of drones in Iraq is who is operating them? It seems rather certain based on their use elsewhere around the Middle East and in Pakistan and Africa that it is not Iraqis. The practice in these other places has been for the drones to be operated by either the CIA or the US military or some combination of the two. Since American troops exited Iraq in 2011, it seems more likely that the drones would be operated by the CIA or security contractors working for the United States. Either way, they are going to be busy in the coming weeks.
