Kerry seeks Mideast's help in Islamic State fight

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By Michael R. Gordon and David D. Kirkpatrick

New York Times

CAIRO -- Secretary of State John Kerry received broad assurances but no public commitments from Egypt on Saturday as he continued his tour of the Middle East to try to assemble a coalition behind an American campaign against the extremist group known as the Islamic State.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, the new prime minister took a small step toward alleviating the deep alienation that has made some in the Sunni Muslim minority receptive to the Islamic State: He said Saturday that he had ordered the Iraqi security forces to stop "the indiscriminate shelling" of civilian communities under the control of the militants.

Together, the professions of good intentions in Baghdad and Cairo underscored the long and potentially lonely road ahead for the Obama administration as it attempts to roll back and dismantle the Islamic State, with only spoken pledges so far by Iraq's government to win back the trust of the Sunni minority and only token commitments of support from regional allies such as Egypt and Turkey.

After meeting with Kerry in Cairo, Sameh Shoukry, Egypt's foreign minister, declared at a joint news conference that "Egypt believes it is very important for the world to come together to fight this extremism."

But Egyptian officials declined to specify what help they would provide in the campaign against the Islamic State, and Shoukry made it clear that he also had in mind fighting Islamist militants at home and in neighboring Libya.

Kerry already has visited Baghdad; Amman, Jordan; and Ankara, Turkey, and he attended an emergency meeting of regional governments in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, in his drive to mobilize support for a campaign against the Islamic State. Saudi Arabia has pledged to allow the training of Syrian rebel forces opposed to the Islamic State at bases in its territory, but no country in the region publicly detailed what military support it might provide.

The Obama administration is keen to enlist material support from regional powers with Sunni Muslim majorities such as Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to avoid the impression that the United States is intervening in a sectarian war on behalf of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government against its opponents in the Sunni minority, some of whom have lent support to the Islamic State.

Egypt is not expected to make an important military contribution; rather, American officials want Cairo to use its clout as the traditional capital of Sunni Islam -- and home to the Al Azhar center of Sunni scholarship -- to mobilize public opinion in the Arab world against the Islamic State.

"As an intellectual and cultural capital of the Muslim world, Egypt has a critical role to play," Kerry said.

After the Islamic State made headlines around the world for beheading American hostages, militants in Sinai began carrying out beheadings as well, and Egyptian state media seized on the atrocities to underscore that the government's fight to consolidate its authority at home was part of the same fight as the U.S. battle with the Islamic State.

A senior State Department official traveling with Kerry said there were anecdotal accounts that volunteers who had fought with the Islamic State later provided tactical advice to the main Egyptian militant group, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, while stopping in the Sinai Peninsula on their way back to their homes in Egypt and North Africa.

"They stop off and sort of lend their professional skills," said the State Department official, who could not be identified under the agency's rules for briefing reporters. "These terrorist groups are beginning to cooperate."

While in Cairo, Kerry met with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt, Shoukry and Nabil al-Araby, the secretary-general of the Arab League.

During a visit in July, Kerry sought to strengthen relations with el-Sissi by declaring that he was confident that the United States would soon restore military aid it had suspended after Egypt's military ousted President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood and waged a bloody crackdown on his Islamist supporters.

But Kerry also pressed el-Sissi on certain human rights issues, including the case of three journalists for Al-Jazeera's English-language network who were charged with conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood to broadcast false reports of chaos. In remarks after their meeting, Kerry said he had received a very positive response from el-Sissi.

The next day, an Egyptian judge overlooked an absence of evidence, convicted the journalists and sentenced each one to at least seven years in prison. None of the journalists -- a Canadian citizen, an Australian and an Egyptian -- have any history of Brotherhood ties or political activism.

Kerry insisted Saturday that he had not refrained from pressing human-rights concerns even as he sought Egypt's cooperation in fighting the Islamic State.

"The United States does not ever trade its concerns over human rights for any other objective," Kerry said.

"We had a frank discussion today," he said, adding that he understood the independence of the Egyptian judiciary.

He said he was confident the issues would be addressed "on an appropriate schedule that is controlled by Egyptians, not by me or anybody else complaining."

In Baghdad, Haider al-Abadi, the new Iraqi prime minister, was speaking in a televised news conference about the plight of displaced Iraqis when he declared that he had told the security forces to stop "the indiscriminate shelling" of civilian populations in Sunni towns under the control of the Islamic State.

"I have issued the orders to stop the indiscriminate shelling on cities inhabited by civilians, including cities where ISIS terrorists are operating," al-Abadi said, referring to the Islamic State.

Senior Iraqi officials have acknowledged in recent days that shelling by their armed forces has killed innocent civilians in the course of the battle against the Islamic State, but al-Abadi's statement appeared to go further. By indicating that an order from the armed forces could curtail the "indiscriminate shelling," he implied that the shelling had previously been tolerated as a matter of government policy.

Such broad-brush attacks on Sunni towns have been part of what many Sunnis called a pattern of sectarian bias by the Shiite-dominated security forces.

In a report set to be issued Sunday, the independent group Human Rights Watch said that one Iraqi government airstrike at the beginning of this month hit a school near Tikrit where displaced Sunni families had taken refuge; it killed at least 31 civilians, including 24 children, the group said, calling for an investigation.

Human Rights Watch reported in July that 17 Iraqi government airstrikes, including six with barrel bombs, had killed at least 75 civilians and wounded hundreds more in several mainly Sunni areas.

"The attacks revealed a pattern of aerial bombardments in residential areas by government forces," the group said in a statement to be released Sunday.