Your trusted source

The U.S.-led coalition carrying out airstrikes against ISIS must do more to target the jihadis’ command centers, French army chief Denis Mercier said Wednesday, AFP reports.

He compared operations in Iraq, where French warplanes are carrying out airstrikes, and Syria, where the U.S. is bombing jihadi positions, to the 2011 international intervention in Libya.

“In Libya we went after [Libyan leader Moammar] Gadhafi’s center of gravity ... it was by attacking these centers that we managed to topple Gadhafi, not by firing at 150 pickup trucks a day. Otherwise we would still be there,” Mercier told journalists. “It is exactly the same problem in Iraq today. We are shooting at the front line but behind that we need to concentrate on the centers of gravity.”

He said the difficulty was that these command centers were mostly based in Syria. In Iraq, the government has asked the coalition not to strike such centers, Mercier said.

Mercier brushed off criticism that the coalition’s bombing campaign was not having the desired effect, after a series of key battlefield advances by ISIS.

“If we had not been there, honestly, the situation would be settled: ISIS would have taken control of everything, Baghdad, etc.,” he said. “These rather intense air operations allow us to give Iraqi forces freedom to act on the ground. Full stop.

“Afterward the ball is somewhat in their court ... the problem is you need a ground offensive by these Iraqi forces which is complicated by the overlapping of different communities,” he said, referring to the Sunni and Shiite fighters who are deeply distrustful of one another.