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U.S. Team Lands on Iraqi Mountain to Plan Evacuation
U.S. Breaks Siege on Iraqi Mountain, Defense Officials Say
(about 2 hours later)
EDGARTOWN, Mass. — American military advisers landed on Mount Sinjar in Iraq early Wednesday to begin assessing how to organize an evacuation of the thousands of Yazidi refugees under siege from Sunni militants, an American official said.
WASHINGTON — Defense officials said late Wednesday that United States airstrikes and Kurdish fighters had broken the siege on Mount Sinjar, allowing thousands of Yazidis trapped there to escape.
News of the landing, which involved fewer than 20 advisers, came hours after a senior White House official said that the United States would consider using American ground troops to assist in the rescue if recommended by the military team.
An initial report from about a dozen Marines and Special Operations forces who spent the last 24 hours on the mountain said that “the situation is much more manageable,” a senior defense official said in an interview.
“A rescue effort now is much more unlikely,” the official said.
Defense officials could not say how many Yazidis remained on the mountain, but Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was expected to make an statement later Wednesday night.
Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, told reporters on Martha’s Vineyard that President Obama would probably receive recommendations in the next several days about how to mount a rescue operation to help the refugees, who are stranded on a mountaintop surrounded by the militants. He said those recommendations could include the use of American ground troops.
The announcement came after American military advisers landed on Mount Sinjar early Wednesday to begin assessing how to organize the evacuation. The United States had said it would consider using American ground troops to assist in the rescue if recommended by the military team.
But he drew a distinction between the use of American forces to help a humanitarian mission and the use of troops in the battle against militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, something he said the president had rejected before and continued to oppose.
“What he’s ruled out is reintroducing U.S. forces into combat on the ground in Iraq,” Mr. Rhodes said. He added, using an alternative name for the militant group, that the deployment of ground troops to assist a rescue was “different than reintroducing U.S. forces in a combat role to take the fight to ISIL.”
He acknowledged that any ground troops in Iraq would face dangers, even if they were there to help the refugees find a safe way off the mountain. He said that like American forces anywhere, the troops would have the ability to defend themselves if they came under fire.
But Mr. Rhodes said the White House would not make a decision on how to carry out a rescue until the president heard back from an assessment team that the Pentagon sent into Iraq on Tuesday. That team, which includes about 130 personnel, will report back within several days, Mr. Rhodes said.
But he added that something would have to be done to help get the refugees off the mountain because “we don’t believe it’s sustainable to have permanent airdrops” of humanitarian aid.
No matter how it is done, getting tens of thousands of Yazidis off Mount Sinjar would be a complicated and dangerous endeavor, Pentagon officials said.
The most direct route off the mountain would be to head south into greater Iraq, but that would take the refugees and any troops protecting them through ISIS territory, increasing the potential for combat and casualties. Passing through the ISIS-held area, one senior military official warned, would also allow the militants to blend into the refugee population, making it more difficult to target them for American airstrikes.
The far more viable option, administration officials and humanitarian experts said, would be to establish a corridor northwest through Syria, following the paths established by the few refugees who have escaped. The refugees would then cross back over the border into Kurdistan.
The route through Syria would require Kurdish pesh merga fighters to make up the bulk of the troop escort, but a second military official said that American Special Operations forces and perhaps even Marines would have to reinforce that effort.
“We would have to thicken our advisory presence in a significant way,” said Hardin Lang, a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress and a former senior adviser to the United Nations special representative to Iraq. But American troops would be unlikely to go into Syria, making that route more complicated.
