AFP-Sept. 26th 2014 – Britain’s House of Commons voted by 524 lawmakers to 43 to back a motion authorizing air strikes in Iraq.
British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said there would be no “immediate military action” but that it would be a “long, drawn-out campaign.”
He welcomed “a lot of support” for military action in Syria as well, during a sometimes heated parliamentary debate.
Ahead of the vote, Prime Minister David Cameron told lawmakers that ISIS must be confronted.
“This is not a threat on the far side of the world. Left unchecked, we will face a terrorist caliphate on the shores of the Mediterranean,” Cameron said.
Washington wants to build the broadest possible coalition including Sunni Arab allies to tackle ISIS, which has captured large areas of Syria and Iraq and declared an Islamic “caliphate.”
But it has explicitly excluded Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime in Damascus, favoring instead moderate rebel factions fighting both the government and ISIS extremists.
Bahrain, France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States have already been hitting IS targets.
The Netherlands is also sending six F-16 jets and will provide 250 military personnel and 130 trainers for the Iraqi military, and Greece said it would send arms to Kurdish forces in Iraq.
Belgium and Denmark also approved plans to join the war in the air, but Washington warned that up to 15,000 “moderate” rebels would need to be trained and armed to beat back the militants in Syria, where they have set up their de facto capital.
In recent days, Washington and its allies have targeted the funding sources of what US President Barack Obama has branded a “network of death.”
The coalition has bombed oil refineries in eastern Syria where ISIS jihadists extract crude for sale on the black market, according to the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights, a British-based watchdog.
Experts say sales of oil from Syria and Iraq usually earn ISIS up to $3 million a day.
But now, according to activists in Deir Ezzor, Syria pumping has stopped.
The US is also planning to train and arm 5,000 Syrian rebels as part of the effort, although the top US military officer, General Martin Dempsey, said a force of between 12,000 and 15,000 would be required to recapture “lost territory” in eastern Syria.
The general said defeating the ISIS group would take more than air power and that “a ground component” was an important aspect of the US-led campaign.
“We believe the path to develop that is the Syrian moderate opposition,” he said.
Britain and France have so far ruled out launching strikes in Syria but London “reserved the right” to intervene there in case of an imminent “humanitarian catastrophe.”