When asked, Clapper told senators he wasn’t optimistic Turkey would take a more active role in the war against the IS group.
“I think Turkey has other priorities and other interests,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The Turkish government was more concerned with
Kurdish opposition and the country’s economy, the director of national
intelligence said.
“Public opinion polls show in Turkey they
don’t see ISIL as a primary threat,” said Clapper, using an alternative
acronym for the extremists.
The effect of Turkey’s approach was to allow a
“permissive” climate for foreign recruits heading to Syria to take arms
for the IS group, he said.
“And of course, the consequence of that is a
permissive environment… because of their laws and the ability of people
to travel through Turkey en route to Syria,” Clapper said.
“So somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 percent of those foreign fighters find their way to Syria through Turkey.”
The spy chief said some other governments in
the Middle East have been reluctant to join the US-led coalition against
the IS group because of Washington’s reluctance to directly confront
the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
But the “brutal savagery” of the IS militants,
including the beheadings of hostages and the immolation of a captured
Jordanian fighter pilot, “have had a galvanizing effect on opinion in
the Mideast region,” he said.
There was more willingness to cooperate with
the United States in the war effort, with some Arab countries now
sharing intelligence with Washington, he said.
The spy chief acknowledged that the United
States faced intelligence “gaps” in Syria, as Washington had no embassy
or any major presence on the ground.
In the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the
Islamic State group was struggling to find the money to pay for
electrical power and other services, Clapper added.
“They do not have enough financial wherewithal
to provide the services, municipal services that are required to run a
city of a million people,” he continued.
“We’re seeing signs of electricity outages, shortages of food and commodities.”
There were signs the IS group was resorting to
conscription to fill their ranks after having suffered heavy losses on
the battlefield, especially in the Syrian border town of Kobane where
large numbers of jihadists were killed in US-led airstrikes, he said.
“At least” 3,000 IS fighters were killed in Kobane, stated Clapper.
Source: ToI
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