President Obama on Saturday vowed a prolonged campaign to smash the growing terrorist caliphate in Iraq as America’s military headed to the rescue of the country’s beleaguered Yazidi minority.
US, Iraqi and other air forces continued drops of food, water and gear to tens of thousand of the ancient religious sect’s members trapped on a mountain.
Speaking to reporters before heading to vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, Obama said he was “confident” the US could prevent the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria “from going up the mountain and slaughtering the people who are there.”
He called the US offensive a “long-term project.”
“I don’t think we are going to solve this problem in weeks. This is going to take some time,” he said.
Obama underscored the “barbarity and brutality” ISIS has imposed in its captured territory.
View videoThe militants have told the Yazidi they must convert to Islam or be killed and have reportedly taken Yazidi women as sex slaves.
“We have one or two days left to help these people. After that they will start dying en masse,” Yazidi politician Vian Dakhil told Agence France-Presse.
US jets have conducted airstrikes aimed at slowing the militants’ advances against the Yazidis and Erbil, a city of 1.5 million that is the capital of Kurdistan.
Dozens of Pentagon military advisers are believed to be operating out of Erbil, home to a US Consulate.
Riding in American armored vehicles seized from Iraq’s army, the militants routed Kurdish forces last week and are now within a 30-minute drive of the city.
Because of the threat, Kurdish fighters, or peshmerga, are now getting US weapons. The US had refused to arm them in the past, fearing they would set up an independent state.
A source in Kurdistan’s regional government told Reuters that extra supplies of heavy weaponry from the Iraqi and “other” governments had arrived.
Kurdish and Iraqi forces have a common cause, said Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd.
“The Iraqi army and the peshmerga are fighting side-by-side in the same trenches now,” Zebari said.
With Post Wire Services