http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303433304579302540213869618
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Jay Solomon
Updated Jan. 5, 2014 10:06 p.m. ET
Fighters patrol in Fallujah, Iraq, on Sunday. Residents and officials said U.S. weapons were pillaged from armories after fighters took control of Fallujah and skirmished with Iraqi government troops on the road to Baghdad. The spillover of violence in the region from Syria's civil war has raised concerns. Reuters
BEIRUT—Spiraling violence and advances by al Qaeda-linked fighters in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are underscoring the cost of Syria's civil war as it increasingly spills over the country's borders.
The rise of the Islamist forces in Iraq is particularly worrisome to the Obama administration. In response, U.S. officials said Sunday they were seeking to boost military support—though they emphasized no troops—for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to help in his campaign to push back al Qaeda. U.S. officials are also considering new military aid for Lebanon, which is plagued by rising sectarian violence.
Resurgent al Qaeda-allied forces battled Sunday in both Iraq and in neighboring Syria. Fighters in Iraq's Anbar Province pillaged American weapons from armories after taking control of the town of Fallujah and skirmished with Iraqi government troops on the road to Baghdad, said residents and officials there.
In Syria, al Qaeda-linked militants battled as well—but this time on the defensive. Syrian rebels said they fought al Qaeda militants on Sunday in at least five northern zones the rebels held. Many Syrian rebels have turned on the main al Qaeda group—the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, which is increasingly reviled for its extremism and violence.
This broadening instability, according to Middle East diplomats and experts, is placing the White House in a growing diplomatic quandary as its regional allies fall into competing camps amid a intensifying proxy battle between regional powerhouses Iran and Saudi Arabia.
While the U.S. is trying to shore up the Shiite-led government in Iraq, it simultaneously is strongly supporting Lebanon's government and Sunni militias in Syria that are attempting to weaken Iran's political allies in Beirut and Damascus.
The U.S.'s ability to navigate these worsening regional divisions will greatly influence international attempts to stabilize Iraq, Lebanon and Syria in the coming months, said these diplomats.
It will likely also determine whether President Barack Obama succeeds in achieving the top two foreign policy initiatives of his second term—securing an Arab-Israeli peace agreement and forging a deal with Iran to contain its nuclear program.
"One could see ignoring the conflict in Syria if the violence there was the only issue," said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "But it's increasingly evident that the conflict there won't be contained."
In Iraq, the surge of fighting involving fighters affiliated with al Qaeda signaled the extremist force's well-armed and well-organized return two years after U.S. forces ended their eight-year Iraqi war following more than 4,000 American deaths and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties.
In Fallujah, which had been the scene of some of the most entrenched fighting between U.S. forces and anti-U.S. insurgent fighters during the U.S. war, ISIS forces over recent days have seized police and army headquarters. There, they have taken the automatic weapons and artillery left behind by American forces for Iraqi government security forces.
Pushing on from Fallujah toward the capital, the al-Qaeda-allied fighters claimed Sunday to control a portion of the town of Abu Ghraib, the prison town between Fallujah and Baghdad where U.S. jailers tortured inmates. Thousands of families have fled the renewed fighting in Fallujah.
Iraqi officials told the Associated Press that 22 soldiers and 12 civilians died in Sunday's fighting in Anbar Province. In Baghdad, bombings linked to the Qaeda forces killed at least another 20 people on Sunday, according to AP.
Mourners in Najaf on Sunday carry the coffin of an Iraqi soldier who was killed during clashes in Fallujah. Reuters
ISIS also hold parts of the Anbar provincial capital, Ramadi, Iraqi officials say. On Sunday, helicopter gunships of the Iraqi military attacked three suspected militant sites around Ramadi, killing more than 30 ISIS fighters, Iraqi Police Gen. Ismail Mahlawi said. One of three air attacks mistakenly hit government-allied tribal fighters, killing five, Gen. Mahlawi said.
"We fear that Anbar will merge with Syria," to become the Middle East's first al Qaeda state, said Iraqi Col. Ammar Ahmed, who is stationed in Anbar.
Senior American officials said on Sunday that the Pentagon and State Department have been holding discussions with Iraq leaders in recent days to support efforts to push back the al Qaeda advances. These include the acceleration of weapons shipments to Iraq, including 100 Hellfire missiles, which have been used in recent days by the government.
"Even if we had a small number of troops in Iraq, it's not like they should be fighting in Fallujah to deal with this issue 10 years after the U.S. invasion," said Ben Rhodes, the U.S. deputy National Security Adviser. "U.S. troops on the ground would not, in our judgment, make the situation better."
American officials stressed, though, that there were no plans to use American troops or air power to assist Baghdad in its fight. They said the strategic decision to pull out of Iraq was now irreversible.
"We will help them in their fight; but this fight, in the end they will have to win, and I am confident they can," Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Israel on Sunday.
Iraq's Shiite-led government has in recent days tried to convince tribes in Anbar to lead the fight against ISIS. Anbar's tribal leaders rallied their followers starting in 2006 to join the U.S. campaign against al Qaeda that later became known as the Sahwa, or Awakening. The Sunni movement withered after tribal forces complained of persecution and nonpayment from the government.
Mr. Kerry said U.S. officials already were also in contact with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province.
In Syria, meanwhile, an array of rebel groups battled fighters with ISIS in Raqqa, the group's stronghold in Syria, and in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib. At least 60 people were killed in the day's fighting, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Rebel groups battling ISIS included some rebel forces that previously had coordinated with the al Qaeda-linked group, including the Islamic Front, a coalition of Islamist rebel forces that Saudi Arabia has supported.
ISIS is one of hundreds of rebel forces that have claimed territory in northern Syria during what started as a peaceful uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad three years ago.
While better-armed and better-funded than many rebels, ISIS has alienated many in rebel-held Syrian territory for often-violent treatment of civilians and even other rebels as ISIS tries to consolidate its base in northern Syria and impose its strict form of Islamic law.
Gulf Arab countries that support the opposition to Mr. Assad's government increasingly have urged other rebels to turn against ISIS. News reports suggest it was the torture and killing of a popular doctor in the opposition city of Aleppo, a death blamed on ISIS, that sparked the surge of rebel attacks on ISIS.
—Mohammed Nour Alakraa in Beirut; a correspondent in Fallujah, Iraq; and Carol E. Lee in Washington contributed to this article.
Write to Ellen Knickmeyer at ellen.knickmeyer@wsj.com and Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com
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