U.S. military leaders said Tuesday their aerial bombardment of Syria was only the beginning of a prolonged campaign that will continue intermittently for months and will become more difficult as targeted terrorists seek refuge in populated areas.
The United States is now attacking two sets of enemies in the region: the Islamic State, a growing movement of jihadists seeking to create its own country in the Middle East, and the Khorasan Group, a smaller network affiliated with al-Qaeda that officials say is plotting against Europe and the United States.
At the same time, as the U.S. military and its Arab partners prepare more airstrikes in Syria in the coming days, they will have to contend with another adversary: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Although U.S. officials said they weren’t targeting Assad or his forces, many of the Sunni Muslim allies in President Barack Obama’s coalition would like to see his government finally collapse after a devastating three-year civil war. Whether the coalition’s intervention in Syria eventually will help or hurt Assad represents one of the greatest unknowns in a military campaign filled with uncertainty.
Army Lt. Gen. William Mayville Jr., director of operations for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, said the objectives set for the U.S.-led war in Iraq and now Syria could take years to complete. The attacks in Syria marked the start of a new phase, coming six weeks after the U.S. military began a similar campaign of airstrikes against Islamic State fighters in neighboring Iraq.
The first wave of strikes Monday primarily consisted of dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles launched by U.S. warships against eight Khorasan Group targets in northwestern Syria, near Aleppo.
Warplanes from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain participated in the second and third wave of airstrikes against Islamic State targets in north-central and eastern Syria, near the Iraqi border, according to Pentagon officials. Qatar also sent military aircraft in a supporting role, they said.
All told, about 200 missiles, bombs and rockets were launched against 22 separate targets in Syria, U.S. military officials said.
In brief remarks outside the White House on Tuesday, President Obama stressed that “this is not America’s fight alone” and vowed to press the battle against “these terrorists” in concert with U.S. allies.
The start of U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria drew mixed reactions across the Middle East and around the world Tuesday, ranging from staunch support by Britain to harsh condemnation by Russia.
In the Middle East, the fight against Islamic State terrorists is shifting regional dynamics, winning support from Arab nations that opposed previous U.S. military inventions in the region. At least on the first day of bombing, there was little public backlash, with virtually no outcry beyond a pro-Islamic State protest in Istanbul.
The attacks against the Islamic State militants were openly welcomed by rebels who have fought for three years against the government of President Bashar Assad.
The reaction from Damascus was somewhat opaque. The Syrian foreign ministry simply noted that before the bombing started, Washington had notified Damascus through its envoy to the United Nations. U.S. officials countered that they had provided only a general warning about the possibility of military action and had not coordinated with Assad’s government.
If Damascus was subdued, some of the government’s most prominent backers bluntly characterized the airstrikes as immoral and unlawful.
In Moscow, where President Vladimir Putin has been an important ally to Assad, the foreign ministry called the airstrikes a violation of international law — and, it added, they were doomed to fail.
More condemnation came from Lebanon, where Hezbollah is another ally of the Assad regime and has thousands of Shiite Lebanese militiamen fighting beside Syrian troops against the Sunni fighters from the Islamic State.
