The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, said Thursday that the United States was deliberating on means to fully involve the Sunni Arab tribes of Iraq's Anbar province in the fight against the Islamic State militants.
The Sunni tribes of Anbar had helped the U.S. a great deal in restoring order in Iraq in the latter stages of the Iraq war.
Dempsey said that involving the Sunni tribes may give a boost to the Iraqi military and Kurdish forces in fighting the Islamic State militants.
"That's what we're now beginning to explore," he said. "We've got a program in place where we're beginning to restore some offensive capability and mindset to the Iraqi security forces. We need to think about how to do that with the tribes," he said, reports the Associated Press.
Elaborating further, Dempsey said that involving the tribes in the fight against the militants was one of the three key components of the U.S. strategy to defeat the Islamic State militants.
The two other components are advising the Iraqi military and establishing a National Guard units, which will function as a qausi-military force.
However, Dempsey said that the U.S. will train and advise the tribes only if the Iraqi government was ready to arm them.
Meanwhile, a report by the UN Security Council has cautioned that foreign jihadists are flocking to Iraq and Syria on an unprecedented scale.
The report, which was procured by The Guardian, says that 15,000 people, who come from more than 80 countries, have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State. However, the report did not mention the countries from where the fighters were flowing to Iraq and Syria.
