MANAMA - The international coalition fighting Islamic State extremists could be jeopardised if the Baghdad government fails to bridge Iraq’s sectarian divide, the US military’s top officer warned Monday.
Iraq’s political leaders have yet to deliver on promises to reach out to the minority population and have raised concerns in the region by forging closer ties to Iran, General Martin Dempsey said after spending several hours in Baghdad.
For the longer term, the solidarity of the anti-IS coalition - which includes Arab states - could be put at risk, Dempsey told reporters in Manama.
In Cairo, Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi called on Monday for the creation of a unified Arab force to battle Islamic extremist groups.
“There is an urgent need for the creation of a multi-purpose common Arab military force... able to intervene rapidly to fight terrorism and the activities of terrorist groups,” he said.
Dempsey, for his part, said: “I come away a bit concerned that it’s going to be difficult to sustain the coalition for the rest of the challenge - which is trans-regional - unless the government of Iraq can actually form that national unity platform to which they committed.”
With the IS group “under pressure in almost every corner of Iraq,” the “military aspect” of the campaign is on course and “going fine,” said the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. But an overriding goal for Washington and other coalition members was to ensure that Iraq’s authorities also upheld the rights of its Arab and Kurdish communities, he said.
Flying over Baghdad by helicopter earlier, Dempsey noted militia banners flying over many buildings, describing “the plethora of flags, only one of which happens to be the Iraqi flag.” He said Arab countries in the region, several of which are taking part in air strikes in Syria, were anxious over Iran’s influence in Iraq.
In a joint press conference with Dempsey in Baghdad, Iraqi Defence Minister Khaled al-Obaidi made no apologies for enlisting military aid from Iran.
“We are in a state of war and we look to our friends to help us in this confrontation,” Obaidi said. But he said Iraq’s approach was “balanced” and added: “I want to assure you that Iraq does not want to enter into any conflicts with any of the countries around us.” In his talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Obaidi, Dempsey said he acknowledged their “instinct” to look for assistance from any country ready to provide it.
But he also stressed that “they should also be aware of the challenge of holding together the ... coalition,” Dempsey said.
ome 30,000 men have been involved in a week-old operation to recapture Tikrit, one of the militants’ main hubs since they overran large parts of Iraq nine months ago. But in a sign of the brutal lengths to which IS will go to maintain control, the group executed 20 men in Iraq’s northern province of Kirkuk and strung up more than a dozen of their victims’ bodies in public.
Meanwhile, a young German woman fighting alongside Kurdish forces in Syria was killed over the weekend in clashes with Islamic State fighters, Kurdish officials and a Turkey-based communist group said on Monday.

“What I’m trying to sort out is the degree to which the near term embrace of the assistance they’re receiving from Iran is a reaction to the existential threat (from IS) or whether it’s something longer-term,” he said.
“And by the way, it could be longer-term and not necessarily negative.”
Throughout his trip to the region, which included talks with leaders in Bahrain and with his French counterpart aboard an aircraft carrier in the Gulf, Dempsey said he stressed the importance of maintaining the global coalition arrayed against the IS militants.
“I reminded everyone - the Bahrainis, the French and the Iraqis - that fundamental to the success of the campaign is the solidarity of the coalition, and anything that could threaten that solidarity we really need to be alert to,” he said.

Air strikes on IS-run refineries in Syria kill 30

US-led coalition air strikes on oil refineries run by the Islamic State group in northern Syria killed 30 people, mostly militants, a monitoring group said on Monday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said coalition warplanes launched two strikes Sunday on oil facilities in Raqa province, a stronghold of the extremist group which borders Turkey.
Since September, the coalition has conducted repeated air strikes against IS in Syria, as well as in neighbouring Iraq, where the militants have declared an Islamic “caliphate” in areas under their control.
The raids have frequently targeted oil facilities run by the militants, who according to some estimates earn more than $1 million per day from oil sales.
On Sunday, the coalition also launched strikes against Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra Front in the northwestern province of Idlib.
The attacks, which targeted an Al-Nusra Front military base in Atmeh near the Turkish border, killed nine members of the group, the Britain-based Observatory said.
A civilian in Atmeh told AFP that three buildings targeted by the strikes “were completely destroyed”.
Regime warplanes meanwhile struck a suburb northeast of the Syrian capital on Sunday, killing 13 people, including two children, and wounding more than 50, the Observatory said, updating an earlier toll of 11 dead.
Government forces also targeted the key rebel bastion of Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus using barrel bombs - weapons crudely constructed from barrels packed with explosives and usually dropped from helicopters, the monitoring group said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Human rights groups have criticised the regime’s use of barrel bombs as indiscriminate, citing the large number of civilians they kill, but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has denied the army uses them.