Obama: US lacks ‘complete strategy’ for training Iraqis

Acknowledging military setbacks, President Barack Obama said Monday the United States still lacks a "complete strategy" for training Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). He urged Iraq's government to allow more of the nation's Sunnis to join the campaign against the violent group.

He made the comments after meeting the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on the sidelines of the Group of Seven (G-7) summit in Germany on Monday.

ISIL has continued to gain ground in both Iraq and Syria, and nearly one year after American troops started returning to Iraq to assist local forces, Obama said ISIL remains "nimble, aggressive and opportunistic."

Last month its fighters captured the key city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, prompting Defense Secretary Ash Carter to lament that Iraqi troops lack "the will to fight."

Obama said there has been "significant progress" in areas where the U.S. has trained Iraqis to fight but said forces without U.S. assistance are often ill equipped and suffer from poor morale.

But simply increasing the number of Americans in Iraq would not resolve the country's issues, he said. The U.S. has about 3,000 troops in Iraq for train-and-assist missions.

"We've got more training capacity than we have recruits,” he said. “We want to get more Iraqi security forces trained — fresh, well equipped and focused — and Abadi wants the same thing, so we're reviewing a range of plans for how we might do that."

"We don't have, yet, a complete strategy,” he said, “because it requires commitments on the part of Iraqis as well about how recruitment takes place, how that training takes place."

The Iraqi military has been the beneficiary of billions of dollars in U.S. assistance dating back to the war started in 2003 during George W. Bush's administration.

G-7 leaders invited Abadi to join them on Monday for talks on the security situation in the Middle East. He and Obama also met one on one shortly before the president departed for Washington.

Obama urged the prime minister and his Shia-led government to allow more Sunnis to fight ISIL. The White House has long blamed Iraq's sectarian divisions for stoking the kind of instability that allowed the group to thrive.

"We've seen Sunni tribes who are not only willing and prepared to fight ISIL but have been successful at rebuffing ISIL," Obama said. "But it has not been happening as fast as it needs to."

In Washington the highest-ranking Sunni in Iraq's government said Sunni tribes are still receiving insufficient training and inferior weapons compared with the national army. Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri put the onus for fixing that on Baghdad, saying it should provide clear assurances that the tribes will receive the necessary weapons.

"Guarantees create confidence, and we need confidence," Jabouri told a small group of reporters, speaking through an interpreter.

As of June 4, the U.S. has trained 8,920 Iraqi troops at four sites, and 2,601 more are undergoing training, according to Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren. 

Beyond Iraq's sectarian divisions, senior defense officials told the AP news agency, training is hindered because Iraqi security forces have difficulty getting to training sites. Not only are they consumed with fighting, but also there are risks in the travel itself, from ISIL fighters to roadside bombs and blocked roads.

Al Jazeera with wire services