A double paradox

President Obama's decision to send another 450 troops to Iraq is the latest example of a strategy mired in double paradox. The US wants to save a unified Iraq—by strengthening the ethnic and religious militias that could tear the country apart. And to pull it off, Washington is counting on the cooperation of groups divided by a chasm of suspicion.

In its announcement Wednesday, the Obama administration said the additional American troops are supposed to help more Sunnis come forward and eventually receive US military training. The goal is for those Sunnis to align with the largely Shia government in Baghdad to drive out the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the Sunni-dominated terror army that controls the region where they live.

But there's a major catch. Several, actually. For these Sunni fighters, fighting ISIS not only means going to war against their fellow Sunnis. It also means teaming up with the central government in Baghdad—a government dominated by their Shia rivals, with a long history of mistreating Sunnis.

In Iraq, Sunni leaders describe a central government that is deeply distrustful of its potential trainees, unwilling to give them arms provided by the United States, and quick to turn a blind eye when sectarian forces carry out attacks against them.

“This is a half-measure not designed to achieve effects on the ground but a response to critics,” an adviser who works with the US military on its strategy against ISIS explained to The Daily Beast. “This is the least they could do with the least amount of risk.”

White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Wednesday that “these new advisers will work to build capacity of Iraqi forces, including local tribal fighters, to improve their ability to plan, lead, and conduct operations against ISIL in eastern Anbar under the command of the prime minister.”

Sunnis, recruited by US troops, would join the Iraqi military—or, more likely, local militias—to fend off an expanding ISIS threat. Among the ways the US troops will find potential recruits will be to seek recommendations of candidates from tribesmen, Army Col Steven Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Wednesday.

In other words, the US military is reaching out to a sect of Iraqis that does not trust the US-backed central Shia-dominated Iraqi government and encouraging them to join the Iraqi military or fight ISIS through their own forces.

Until now, all trainees came by way of the Shia-dominated central Iraq government—usually unsuccessfully—leading to a largely sectarian Shia-dominated military and Sunni areas of Iraq susceptible to ISIS.

This would be the first time in the new Iraq war that the US military has reached out at a local, tribal level for potential trainees.

“What we are trying to do is bring Sunnis into the fold,” Warren told reporters.

The US forces will be stationed at Taqaddum base, in Iraq's restive, Sunni-dominated Anbar province. The base is at Habbaniya, which sits between the Iraqi cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, both under ISIS control. Taqaddum became a headquarters for the Iraqi police and military after its troops lost Ramadi and fled to the base last month. It was a major tactical and psychological defeat for the Iraqi military.

The US troops will advise members of the Iraqi army's 8th Division about tactics to eventually reclaim Ramadi, Warren said. American forces will also help find Sunnis to join the army or to receive military training to create a local force. US-backed Sunni candidates for training will also receive body armor, small arms, and communications equipment, Warren said.

The announcement of the additional 450 troops came on the one-year anniversary of the fall of Mosul, Iraq's second-biggest city, to ISIS, the group's largest gain in Iraqi until Ramadi.

The 450 American troops, at the longtime urging of the Sunni Iraqi leaders, will now help create a Sunni equivalent militia force that it has so far lacked.

That the US is leaning more on paramilitary forces only confirms the failure of both the central government and its forces to protect Iraq, said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Washington, DC-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“We are increasingly living in a world where threats come at a sub-state level. The reason why sub-state threats are able to reach strategic levels is because the state that is nominally supposed to control a territory does not,” he said.

“It may be locking the US into engaging at the sub-state level,” he continued. The American war plan may center around strengthening Baghdad, but American actions may be contributing to forces that weaken the government there.