U.S.-led airstrikes produce few gains

BAGHDAD — After two months, the U.S.-led aerial campaign in Iraq has hardly dented the core of the Islamic State group’s territory. The extremist fighters have melted into urban areas when needed to elude the threat, and they have even succeeded in taking new territory from an Iraqi army that still buckles in the face of militants.

In neighboring Syria, days of airstrikes have been unable to stop militants on the verge of capturing a strategic town on the Turkish border.

The limited results show the central weakness of the campaign: There is only so much that can be done from the air to defeat an extremist force that has swept over much of Iraq and Syria. The Islamic State fighters have proven elusive and flexible, able to reorganize to minimize the blows. And more importantly, there are almost no allied forces on the ground able to capitalize on the airstrikes and wrest back territory from the militants.

The exception: Iraqi Kurdish fighters, the most effective forces in Iraq, have made some modest gains the past week.

That only highlights how others have proven unable to do the same. The Iraqi military is undermined by corruption and command problems. A new Iraqi government has being trying to woo support from more Sunni tribesmen, whose fighters are seen as vital against the Sunni extremists, but so far there has not been a flood of support. In Syria, rebels supported by Washington are in no position to move against the extremists, and Syria’s Kurds are not as well armed as Iraq’s.

The U.S. launched airstrikes in Iraq on Aug. 8 and in Syria on Sept. 23. Several European nations are participating in Iraq, but not in Syria, where the U.S. was joined by a coali- tion of Arab allies. U.S. officials have warned repeatedly that the campaign will be long — even years.

The Pentagon press secretary, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, contended last week that the strikes have hampered the militants. Before the strikes, he said, “they pretty much had free rein. They don’t have that free rein anymore, because they know we’re watching from the air. ... They have dispersed, whereas before they were more structurally cohesive in certain places.”

PROGRESS NORTH

Most of the success for the air campaign has been in rural, open areas of northern Iraq. Last week, airstrikes paved the

IN

THE way for the Iraqi Kurdish fighters known as peshmerga to plow into a string of towns held by the extremists near the Syrian border: Mahmoudiyah, Rabia and Zumar. The Kurdish offensive is aiming for the town of Sinjar, and if they capture it, the Kurds would secure a main road in and out of Syria that is a militant supply line.

The early airstrikes also halted the extremists’ advance toward the Kurdish capital of Irbil and broke the Islamic State group’s grip on the strategic Mosul Dam, enabling peshmerga and Iraqi troops to recapture it. Strikes were also instrumental in breaking a siege of the northern town of Amirli, which the militants had surrounded.

Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press Turkish Kurds sit on the outskirts of Suruc, on the Turkey-Syria border, as they watch smoke rising from a fire following an airstrike in Kobani, Syria, where the fighting between militants of the Islamic State group and Kurdish forces intensified....