Jordan: Still committed to fighting Islamic State
AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan remains “as committed as ever” to a U.S.-led military coalition against the Islamic State group, the kingdom’s foreign minister said Sunday, amid heightened fears for the life of a Jordanian fighter pilot held by the militants.
Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh spoke a day after another Islamic State hostage, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, was purportedly beheaded by the militants. The fate of the two captives had been linked, but a video of Goto’s purported slaying made no mention of the pilot.
The failure to save Goto raised new concerns about the fate of the pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh. Jordan’s government renewed an offer Sunday to trade Sajida al-Rishawi, an al-Qaida prisoner, for the pilot. Al-Rishawi, a failed suicide bomber, faces death by hanging in Jordan for her role in a 2005 hotel attack that killed 60 people.
The Islamic State demanded her release last week, and in response Jordan offered to swap her for the pilot. But the militants didn’t say at the time whether they were considering such a deal.
An audio message last week, purportedly from the Islamic State, said only that the pilot would be killed if al-Rishawi were not released Thursday.
That deadline passed, with al-Rishawi remaining in custody, after Jordan said it cannot free her without proof that the pilot is alive.
Government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani said Sunday that “we are still
ready to hand over” al-Rishawi in return for the pilot. However, Judeh said that “so far, we have seen no proof of life, which we have been asking for.”
Judeh said Jordan, a staunch Western ally, is not second-guessing its participation in the military coalition.
“We have said before, and we continue to say, that this is our fight and we are in this together for the long haul and we are as committed as ever,” he told the CBS program Face the Nation by phone from Jordan.
The coalition has been attacking Islamic State targets from the air since September. The militants control about one-third each of Syria and Iraq, which border Jordan.
Al-Kaseasbeh, 26, fell into the hands of the militants in December when his F-16 crashed near Raqqa, Syria, the de facto capital of the Islamic State.
On Sunday, President Barack Obama said the U.S. is doing everything in its power to try to rescue an American woman being held by the Islamic State.
Obama said the U.S. and its allies are deploying all available tools to identify a 26-year-old U.S. aid worker’s location.
The president spoke in an interview with NBC. The interview is airing today on The Today Show, but the network released excerpts in advance.
The woman was captured last year in Syria while working for aid groups. U.S. officials have asked that the woman not be identified out of fears for her safety.
Obama said “the terrible stuff that’s happening” is part of the reason why the U.S. has to be aggressive in going after Islamic State terrorists.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II has portrayed the campaign against the extremists as a battle over values. In a statement carried by the official news agency Petra on Sunday, he called for “concerted international efforts against terrorism and extremism.”
However, Jordan’s participation in airstrikes against fellow Muslims is not popular among Jordanians. The hostage crisis has prompted more vocal criticism of the government’s position, including from the pilot’s family.
Last year, the government intensified a crackdown on Islamic State sympathizers and the al-Qaida branch in Syria.
Currently, about 220 Jordanians are in prison because of purported ties to such groups, including 30 who are serving terms from three to five years, said Marwan Shehadeh, an expert on militant groups. The rest are awaiting trial on charges such as fighting in jihadist rebel ranks in Syria, incitement and recruiting, he said.
The killing of Goto, 47, shocked Japan, which until now had not been directly embroiled in the battle against extremists.
“I feel indignation over this immoral and heinous act of terrorism,” said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. In a phone call with Abe, King Abdullah II condemned the killing as a “criminal act.”
Japan responded to new threats from the militants by ordering tighter security at airports and at Japanese facilities overseas, including embassies and schools.
The government also has called on all journalists and others in areas near the Syrian conflict to withdraw.
Since taking office, Abe has increased military spending, removed a ban on defense exports and reinterpreted the U.S.- imposed pacifist constitution to let Japan defend other countries.
In parliamentary debate today, opposition lawmakers challenged Abe’s effort to raise Japan’s diplomatic profile through nonmilitary support for countries fighting the Islamic State.
Abe said he did not see an increased terrorist risk after savage threats in the purported Islamic State video, which vowed to target Japanese and make the knife Goto’s killer was wielding become Japan’s “nightmare.”
Japan will not be cowed by such threats, Abe said.
“The terrorists are criminals,” he said. “We are determined to pursue them and hold them accountable.”
Abe said Japan will persevere in providing humanitarian aid to countries fighting the Islamic State, saying that bowing to terrorist intimidation would prevent Japan from providing medical assistance and other aid it views as necessary for helping to restore stability in the region.
The Islamic State said in a previous video its threats against Goto and Yukawa were prompted by Abe’s speech in Cairo last month, in which he pledged $200 million in humanitarian aid for countries confronting the group.
The crisis has highlighted the fact Japan is not legally able to send troops to rescue its own citizens held hostage. Asked about this on broadcaster NHK, Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Sadakazu Tanigaki said discussion was needed about how to fill such “gaps” in security policy. Abe told parliament last week the military should be allowed to conduct a rescue.
Meanwhile, U.S. and allied commanders are beginning perhaps the most perilous phase of their fight against the Islamic State group: an attempt to recapture Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.
Military officers in Mosul said airstrikes over the past two weeks helped sever two crucial routes that the extremist militants used to move fighters and supplies from the Syrian border to Mosul, their self-declared capital in Iraq.
U.S. commanders who help oversee the air war said the joint offensive with Iraqi Kurdish ground forces pushed back the Sunni Islamists’ defensive line west of Mosul, recapturing territory and removing a key obstacle as military planners consider tactics for retaking the city as early as this summer.
American and allied advisers are training and equipping Iraqi security forces expected to lead any major ground assault. But options appear limited, given the state of Iraq’s army, White House resistance to any plan likely to cause heavy civilian casualties, and at least some support in the Sunni-dominated city for the occupying force.
“Fighting inside a city like that will definitely not be easy, going street by street, house to house,” said Ferhang Asandi, a Kurdish military officer. Islamic State militants are “trying to put all their effort and their fight in anticipation of the battle because they know that if Mosul is done it means the end” of a major source of prestige and recruitment.
Warplanes from the U.S.led coalition have dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria since August. Combined with attacks by Iraqi government forces, Kurdish fighters and Sunni Arab tribesmen who oppose the Islamist group, the campaign has stopped the militants from seizing much new territory and pushed them back in several areas.
In the past week, Kurdish fighters backed by hundreds of coalition airstrikes broke a four-month Islamist State siege on Kobani, a Syrian town on the border with Turkey. In Iraq, pro-government Shiite militias claimed they had taken “complete control” of Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, after seven months of fighting the Sunni extremists.
But Islamic State has not been dislodged from any of the cities that it captured during its offensive last year. Information for this article was contributed by Karin Laub, Mohammed Daraghmeh, Elaine Kurtenbach, Maamoun Youssef and staff members of The Associated Press; by Isabel Reynolds, Takashi Hirokawa, Maiko Takahashi, Andy Sharp and David Yong of Bloomberg News; and by W.J. Hennigan and Nabih Bulos of the Los Angeles Times.