Washington is considering the option of arming local Sunni tribes in the battle to retake the fallen city of Ramadi in Anbar province from Isis, a security spokesperson has confirmed.
Ramadi, 105km (65 miles) from the Iraqi capital Baghdad, was overrun by the terror group's militants on Sunday with the aid of sleeper cells and double agents in the Iraqi security forces, forcing US president Barack Obama to rethink his strategy in the country against the Islamic fundamentalists.
"We are looking at how best to support local ground forces in Anbar, including accelerating the training and equipping of local tribes and supporting an Iraqi-led operation to retake Ramadi," Alistair Baskey, National Security Council spokesman, told AFP news agency.
On numerous occasions, Obama has ruled out sending ground troops into Iraq to battle the terror group but has provided hundreds of military advisors to improve the capabilities of the Iraqi armed forces. However, the arming of Sunni tribes without the approval of Baghdad would prove controversial, so it is likely that arms would only be sent to the local tribesman with the consent of Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi.
"I think what [Obama] is likely to do is to put pressure on Baghdad to say 'Look, we have the weapons, we just need your go-ahead to provide them to the tribes' rather than the Americans just unilaterally deciding to circumvent Baghdad," says Sajad Jiyad, Baghdad-based Iraq expert and director of research at independent consultancy Integrity. "I don't think that will happen. It's not good for relations between the countries."
On Monday, Sunni tribesman helped prevent the group moving eastward towards Baghdad when they joined forces with Iraqi troops to prevent the fall of the town of Khaldiyah, east of Ramadi. While a number of Sunni tribesmen are aiding the battle against the terror group, Jiyad adds that there remains a lack of will to join the fight among the Sunni-majority population in Anbar province.
"There's not enough local Sunni Arabs who are willing to fight Isis. Last month, American trainers complained that some of the Sunnis stopped turning up," Jiyad adds. "There's a lack of will and the Iraqi forces are stretched thin and they are not having enough recruitment. There's enough Kurds, there's enough Shia Arabs, but there's not enough Sunni-Arab men willing to take up arms for the government."
Despite the unlikelihood of Baghdad being overtaken by Isis, the victory for the group in Ramadi, which they celebrated in a newly-released video with words from caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is their first significant capture of a city since sweeping across the country last summer when they took control of the Iraqi cities of Tikrit and Mosul.
The group have suffered a number of defeats at the hands of Iraqi coalition forces and the US-led coalition, specifically in Kobane and Tikrit, however the capture of Ramadi, Anbar's provincial capital, has dealt a blow to the US-Iraqi campaign to oust the group.
"We have seen a lot of success, but we've also seen significant periods of setback," Josh Earnest, Obama's press secretary, told a White House press briefing yesterday. "That's part of what a military conflict is going to be, particularly one that's going to be a long-term proposition like this one. Are we going to light our hair on fire every time that there is a setback in the campaign?"
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