Anti-Daesh coalition meet for first time since Trump elected

Foreign ministers from 68 countries meet in Washington today to agree on the next steps to defeat Daesh, the first such gathering of the US-led military coalition since the election of President Donald Trump in November.

The meeting will be hosted by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Trump has vowed to make the fight against Daesh a priority and directed the Pentagon and other agencies in January to submit a plan for defeating the militant group.

The militants have been losing ground in both Iraq and Syria, with three separate forces, backed by the United States, Turkey and Russia, advancing on the group’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. The US backs leftist Kurdish militants fighting for the YPG, Turkey backs the Free Syrian Army (FSA), while Russia supports the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad as well as Iran-backed Shia jihadists.

The meeting is the first of the international coalition since Iraqi government forces, backed by the US-led international coalition, retook several Iraqi cities from Daesh last year and recaptured eastern Mosul in early February.

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While the extremist group is overwhelmingly outnumbered by Iraqi forces – with an initial Daesh force of 5,000 men facing off against 100,000 soldiers – it has been using suicide car bombs and snipers to defend its remaining strongholds.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi, who met with Trump in Washington on Monday on the anniversary of the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, said he had won assurances of more US support in the war against Daesh.

Read: US weighs deploying up to 1,000 ‘reserve’ troops for Daesh fight

A White House statement after the meeting said both Trump and Al-Abadi agreed that “terrorism cannot be defeated by military might alone,” and the two leaders called for deepening commercial ties.

Discussions today will also focus on how to help Mosul rebuild and ways to tackle Daesh operations in Libya and elsewhere.

In Syria, the US-led coalition has been working with an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias. Its current focus is to encircle and ultimately recapture Raqqa – Daesh’s main stronghold and base of operations in Syria.

Syrian dictator Al-Assad, who is supported by Russia and Iran, has said he saw scope for cooperation with Trump, although he has dismissed the US-backed military campaign against Daesh in Syria as “only a few raids.”