The Barack Obama administration is using the current crisis in Iraq’s Anbar province to try to push Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government to take steps to shore up the country’s tattered unity, including reaching a new oil agreement with the Kurds.

Comments made in recent days by Vice President Joe Biden and by a senior US official in a conference call with a handful of journalists on Jan. 9 suggest that the Obama administration — accused by critics of being hands-off since US forces left Iraq three years ago — is trying to shape Baghdad’s response to extremist Sunni forces in Anbar in proactive ways. How successful the United States will be in the current polarized environment in Iraq and throughout the region remains to be seen, however.

“There’s a real sense [in Iraq] that this is a critical moment in the country,” the US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. Iraqis want to deal with the crisis in Anbar on their own but are accepting US “help and advice” based on “hard lessons learned” during the US battles with al-Qaeda elements in Anbar in 2004 and during the surge of 2007-08, the official said.

Members of what is known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) — many of them foreign jihadists — have been flowing into Anbar from Syria for more than six months, initially setting up camps in remote desert regions. On New Year’s Day, they took over two key cities in Anbar — Ramadi and Fallujah — in a massive armored assault. The group’s declared aim is to link territory in Syria and Iraq into a new Islamic state.