distracted from cell phones to a small stretch of the side work and insist n texting and talking while walking . they were intended to remind people how dangerous it is to walk with cell phones. "inside story" is next. next.

both support the distribution of the islamic state which is also trying to

bring down bashar al-assad. turkey wants to defeat the islamic state, but without emboldening the kurds. there's no pop quiz at the end of the programme, but the latest turmoil created a strange alliance. >> reporter: some 30 nations from around the world met in paris on monday, discussing ways to degrade and destroy a group they mutually hate. the islamic state of iraq and levant, or i.s.i.l. >> translation: the message is clear - no country will be abandoned if it were to be attacked by terrorists. the international community will stand united. >> reporter: the conference on monday included documents from europe, the gulf states and others, broaching the idea of forming a coalition led by the u.s. france agreed to help the u.s. in its air campaign against i.s.i.l. >> the fight of the iraqi people against terrorists is ours as

well. we have to act toot. and there's no time to lose. australia pledged 600 troops and ate ate fighter -- 8 fighter jets. a video emerged showing the beheading of an u.k. aid worker david haines. >> we cannot walk on by to keep the country safe. we must confront the menace. we must drive back and destroy i.s.i.l. we must do so in a calm way, with an iron determination. >> saudi arabia, and the united arab emirates are two states supporting the coalition. no arab nations pledged the military to the coalition's mission so far, something the u.s. hopes they'll do in the near future. after generations of religious

and political strife in the region, a united arab army on the front lines in iraq and syria will be a challenge for the u.s. to put picture. on "inside story" last week graham alley son backed it up. the fishes among the parties who will be part of had coalition of the weird. some of them hate each other more than i.s.i.l. but i.s.i.l. is almost the enemy of everywhere. it's the enemy of iran, of bashar al-assad. the enemy of saudi arabia, the enemy of baghdad, the enemy of the u.s., the enemy of civilisation. >> iran's foreign minister was not invited to paris on monday. secretary of state john kerry says iran's support for syria's president bashar al-assad in syria's civil war makes their presence in the conference inappropriate. >> iran's supreme leader said

monday kerry sought iran's cop craigs earlier. the american hands are dirty. how do we cooperate with those whose hands are dirty. u.s. and the coalition have to know if they do air strikes against i.s.i.l. and syria, they'll come across the same problems. >> while kerry continued a push for support, dennis mcdonough rallied for confidence and support in the u.s. >> it's a painstaking effort. an effort like in somalia and yemen, where we take the tight to the enemies, without putting ground troops into the effort. we need the ground troops, that's why we want the programme to train the opposition pending in congress. that's why we'll make sure the

coalition brings sunnis to the fight. >> the next conference will be hosted by bahrain, a date hasn't been set. the nation will discuss ways to cut funding to the fighters, and thwart the ability to recruit jihadists. the fight against the islamic state in the islamic state of iraq and levant, this hour in the programme n a speech to the nation nation, the president told americans he'd pull together an international coalition against i.s.i.l., and americans would not have to send ground troops. the coalition members will have to stop snarling at each other long enough to defeat the islamic state. is that going to work. joining us, christopher swift, professor of security studies at george town university and author of "the fighting vanguard - local insurge sis in the global jihad', joshua landers, director of the studies at oklahoma, and lawrence core,

senior fellow at the center for american congress. if we polled all the people we saw at the table and asked what they saw after it was over, more would have a multual contradictory version of an i.s.i.l. in the middle east, but agree they want it gone. is that enough. >> it's enough in the short term, here is why. every member of the anti-i.s.i.l. commission has different agenda, restraints and abilities. they face a common threat. they recognise it as real, incredible, and to the extent that the united states plays a role as mediator, aggregator or a coach. they share a common interest in confronting the adversary and taking it off the table. >> is there a track record,

enough of one, to make us believe that many of these countries can set aside their own differences to working on the common challenge? >> well, iraq seems to be doable. the problem is in syria. very few partners in syria. we don't want to work with the syrian government. bashar al-assad owns 50% of syria, and more than that in the personnel of people, and amongst the rebels, about 70%. rebels don't want the united states to come in because they are worried that we'll work with the free syrian army, about 40,000 rebels and 70 groups that are not coordinated, but 70 groups we have been funding and helping. they are worried if we help those, people defeat the islamists, who are the majority in syria, that we'll get - we'll help some fighters against others, and we'll turn this into

a battle ground very - that will turn one syrian against the other, amongst the rebels. there's a lot of resistance to this effort. we do not have many partners in syria. >> you saw the ayatollah he said don't help, he said don't bomb syria. >> i think joshua is right. there's a difference between iraq and syria. in iraq we do have the help of the iranians, we have an inclusive government and forces on the ground, the peshmerga, the shi'ite militias that iran is putting in there. that's a different thing. you know, i think we have to get over it. if you look at the history, who do we align ourselves with in the world war ii. the soviet union. we beat hitler but had a 50 year

cold war. look at franco, a fascist in spain, he hay-- aligned against the soviet union. you don't have good for great choices you'll get help where you can. >> is this danger in syria. i under your point about sometimes not being able to pick your short-term friends. is there danger in syria that doesn't exist, where there's wider agreement on how to proceed and what needs to be done? >> definitely. it's a different thing. the president was right when he went into iraq the way that he did. in addition to strategic regions, we created the mess. we had to do something. the president said i'm not going to do anything until i get an inclusive government. which is the future. they'll have to determine it. the free syrian army, or the moderate remind me of the holy

rome yn empire. it's -- roman empire. it's difficult to figure out the ground forces. >> the president walked up to the edge in the speech, and didn't say the united states is going to - definitely going to start strikes in syria, but left it open as a possibility. why the careful wording? >> well, he has to see where it goes. he can contain - u.s. strategy has been to contain violence in syria. this summer i.s.i.s. stormed out of syria, captured a hunk of iraq, and that alerted us. we feel a responsibility to iraq, especially since they were killing the minorities, the yazidi. it was important to push them back. the problem is with the destroy part of what the president promised. we can easily degrade and contain i.s.i.s. destroying them may be a little bit further than we can go, or

this president can go in a year and a half, particularly with bad choices on the ground. if you take an example, the big city on the you freighties, the center -- ufrates, the center for i.s.i.s. if we bombed i.s.i.s. there, who would take over the city. the regime has an airport and base close to the center of the city. al qaeda dominated with a few other militias the city before i.s.i.s. took it over. if you destroy i.s.i.s., the natural people to take it over is al qaeda, or the bashar al-assad regime. there are bad choices on the ground. we could parachute in, free syrian troops from the west. it's a hard thing to do. >>? a lot of the analysis of the p's speech, there has been doubt about the destroy part that you heard josh landers expressing. with the coalition partners, can you help to dry up the

recruiting routes. can you dry up the funding. by bringing other people with you, does it make it more possible to actually destroy, rather than incapacitate. >> sure. >> make life difficult for. >> right. so i would say that the coalition is necessary in order to proceed, both in iraq, and especially in syria. it's never going to be sufficient. it's not going to be sufficient in the short term. if you look at the u.s. approach in syria over the short term, the focus will be two fold, the first on drone tricks to the extent that intelligence will allow. that's part of the reason the reference to yemen and somalia was made. and you will see an effort to try to figure out who within the syrian rebel coalition, or coalition of coalitions that is the free syrian army represents credible people that we can work with.

and the administration - i agree with my colleagues - has a problem. when i was in yemen in 2012, and the yemeni army used american air power to push al qaeda and the arabian peninsula out of the two suburbs in the south, we did a good job operating. as soon as the campaign was over, the united states didn't have the relationship or the intelligence capabilities that allows us to see into tribal leaders. syria's far more complicated than yemen is, it's a bigger war, more players, and if we don't build the relationships and the intelligence networks immediately, our long-term strategy in syria will be a light footprint indeed. >> we'll be back with more "inside story" after a break. when we return, we talk about the need to defeat the islamic state on the ground, and how it clashes with assurances other

countries are giving their people about not getting ground troops involved as well. stay with us.

welcome back to "inside story" on al jazeera america. i'm ray suarez. this time on the programme the unusual alliance that's being cobbled together to fight the so-called islamic state. that is destabilizing syria and iraq. last week president obama told

americans u.s. ground troops would not be involved in going after the islamic state. and that others would carry the fight to the gorilla army, while the u.s. attacks from the sky. other alliance members tell their people the same thing - can this really be an air-based campaign on the part of all the big nations involved. over the weekend larry, the u.a.e., saudis, announced they'd send planes and be part of that. france said the same thing. sounds like the idea of bombing the group is popular, but not necessarily sending in soldiers. >> it's less risk. you saw libya, all the bombing, none are of the planes were lost, and it doesn't inflament the local population. i don't think it's a problem in iraq. you do have iraqi forces there, the peshmerga, and hopefully

some units of the iraqi military, now that you have an inclusive government and shia militias. the problem is syria. at some point the free syrian army may be ready. it will not happen quickly. as has been pointed out, no matter what you do, you'll help someone you don't want to help. if you get i.s.i.s. out, you bring in the al nusra, the al qaeda offshoot, or bring in bashar al-assad. i think the hope in syria is that we could do a decapitation strike like we did about osama bin laden or something, and at some point have the russians interseed to come up with a netted solution down the road. it's hard to see us going in and taking it over. >> does that willingness to send

planes signal a squeamishness or a recognition of how complicated this is once you put soldiers standing on terra firma? >> absolutely. turkey has been clear. they are very reductant to get into this. we need turkey. 500 miles of common border between syria and furky. most of the rebels go back and forth between turkey, and they refused to join in the military side of this. they don't want us to use the bases to fly military sortees. they will - they will join us in resupply effort, but not on the military side. partly because they don't think we should prescribe al nusra, the al qaeda win and other islamists, forces they want to see brought in to the rebels. we disagree with the neighbourhood over who the good guys and the bad guys are. that's the problem. the vast majority of rebels in

syria are islamist. they want a form of islamic state. they do not trust in democracy, at least the announced islamic front. this makes it difficult for america to work with them, but not necessarily others in the neighbourhood, whether it's the saudis or the turks. we are not on the same page. that's where the squeaky wheels - no one wants to commit their troops, if they don't know who they are aligned with. >> professor smith, if you don't agree on who the bad guys are, you don't agree who you should be killing. >> everyone agrees they need to target i.s.i.s. but the difficulty any is how to coordinate a third group or force, that is neither i.s. or the bashar al-assad regime. we had a 3-sided civil war in syria, for the better part of two years, it's not something that the region created. it's something we have to

contend with. part of the process of identifying who we can work with in syria, and whether we can work with them will be managing the different issues, managing the different relationships. >> in divvying up the chores, the saudi arabias, were assigned the training and raising up of an army that will fight inside syria against i.s.i.l. >> we'll see how much they are doing and how much they are willing to do on that front as time progresses. the first step will be to identify where the adversary is, and identifying who we can work with. >> i do want to mention one thing, a decapitation approach was mentioned to dealing with i.s.i.l. in syria. if you look at the air campaigns that have been effective against groups like this, including pakistan and elsewhere, they are the campaigns where drones and air strikes hollow out the middle management. separating the senior leadership

from the foot soldiers, that precipitates organization alt collapse, as we gain intelligence on where i.s.i.l. is, how they are operating, who, by and through, we'll see a shift towards the hollowing out strategy, rather than decap days. >> more "inside story" in a moment. when we come back i want to ask my guests about the act of roping regional rivals into partnership with each other. will the battle against the islamic state allow them to paper over their differences, about a sustained struggle against a so-called islamic state carry a possibility of calming long-standing regional tensions. stay with us.

you're watching "inside story", on al jazeera america. i'm ray suarez. the fight against the islamic state, and the unusual countries joining to fight the guerilla

army, that has a hold on big chunks of syria and iraq. if it takes a while, will it increase tensions between some of the countries in the alliance who are not friends, but rivals. does the goal have the ability to lower the thermostat in the overheated part of the world. still with us, professor swift. joshua landers, and lawrence core, a senior fellow at the center for american progress. >> what do you think, professor landis, can it help to assuage simmering tensions that exist between regional neighbours to work together on the project of routing i.s.i.l. from syria and iraq? >> well, the big problem is the sunni shi'ite divide that has really split the middle east down the middle. we are trying to bring the two

sides together on syria. it will be very difficult to do. in many ways we are forgetting the syrian people here. in many ways, the sunnis, sunni arabs, are 70% of the syrian population. the government is dominated by shiate allo whites. these sooun -- allo wights. the sunnis are trapped teen sectarian governments, and caught in vice grips. unless we ultimately find a solution for the sunnis trapped in the middle that can bring them some justice, representation, we are never going to clear up the i.s.i.s. problem. which is extremism, fighting to gain a voice. many sunnis do not like i.s.i.s., but see - they don't like asaad more or the government in baghdad. this government is far from

inclusive, and hasn't solved the sunni problem. we are coding it over. they are weak sunnis, it's not clear, as we go forward, that we'll win a sunni center to help make this a fight of the moderates against the extremists. not a fight of shi'ites against sunnis. that's the problem. >> does this new alliance push that day of reckoning, about what josh landers was talking about, further away or bring it closer in. >> all things considered, it will not solve it. it brings it closer. saudis reached out. now the iraqis visit them, you have the iranians visit them. it gives you an opportunity, whether it will work or not... >> things are happening. >> yes, they are, and i think that it does give you an opportunity recollects and i think professor landers is rite f the government in baghdad. we have to keep pressure on

them. do they want us to help them, they have to be mo inclusive. it's up to them. they have to solve it. it gives you the opportunity, it's not going to be easy. >> a sense that this will about a long-term thing set in after the speech. does that make all of this harder? you have to put these people in harness for perhaps years. >> it makes it harder and that much more important. look, there's a near-term game and a long-term game, and the administration and successor have to play both of them well. here is why. if you look at the middle east over the last five years, or the last 10, the one thing you see is the breakdown of old orders and equill ibry ums and efforts to create new ones. we saw it with the arab springs and the push back, and in the sunni, shi'a divide. we see it in the rise of

organizations like i.s.i.l. while having a horrible ideology, and being brutal, it's seeking a new kind of equilibrium. everything we do in the short term has to be tailored in such a face that we are seeking a new equilibri equilibrium, not just in iraq, but syria and the region as a whole. sometimes work can do that. sometimes it has the opposite effect. >> thank you all. that brings us to the end of this edition of "inside story", thank you for buying with -- for being with us, in washington, i'm ray suarez.

>> ferguson missouri, the spark for what would become daily street protests was the killing of an unarmed african american teenager. 18-year-old michael brown was gunned down by a white police officer on august the 9th. in the days that followed, the police responded to the demonstrations with massive force. >> it's an uprising. we are tired of the police. >> we're sick of being tear-gassed. we're sick of being shot at. all of these young people