IS makes last stand
Iraqi and Kurdish fighters corner terrorists in Mosul
ON JUNE 29, 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi stood in the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in the Iraqi city of Mosul and declared an Islamic caliphate, a religious land which recognised no borders, across swathes of Iraq and Syria.
Sharia law would govern the caliphate, Mr al-Baghdadi said, and God would rule it. God’s deputy, or caliph, would be Mr al-Baghdadi himself.
The statement came when the terror group led by Mr al-Baghdadi, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria was at its zenith, controlling millions of citizens across the two countries.
Iraqi troops had fled when Islamic State swept into Mosul 19 days earlier, causing 500,000 citizens to flee within 24 hours, contributing to the greatest refugee crisis since World War II.
There were routine beheadings and torture, filmed for social media.
The invaders hoisted their black flag and established a basic working government, taxing people, and providing services such as hospitals, while brutally enforcing strict Islamic law.
IS established a logistics base and set up Mosul as their Iraqi headquarters.
Now, three years later, Iraqi troops are within 500m of retaking the al-Nuri mosque, in Mosul’s Old City, and Islamic State has been herded into a small area just 13sq km, forced back by determined Kurdish fighters and newly-motivated Iraqi troops, backed by a western coalition of countries including Australia.
It is estimated that fewer than 1000 militants remain in the IS-controlled part of the Old City, along with around 100,000 civilians.
The terror group has begun fortifying the area around the mosque and closing off streets as it prepares for its final stand.
Mr al-Baghdadi – an Iraqi whose real name is Ibrahim alSamarrai – fled Mosul months ago, and Syrian state TV reported yesterday he had been killed in an airstrike in the Syrian city of Raqqa, although this was unconfirmed.
Dr Haroro Ingram, from the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague, said it was only a matter of time before Mosul, one of Iraq’s major cities, was retaken by Iraqi forces.
“Mosul has been the crown jewel in ISIS’s so-called caliphate,” he said.
“ISIS used its control of one of Iraq’s largest population centres to demonstrate its not only supposed politico-military prowess … but the credibility (and) legitimacy of its socalled caliphate.
“The Global Coalition Against Daesh recently reported that ISIS have lost over 60 per cent of the territory they once held in Iraq and over 30 per cent of what they once held in Syria, which represents the freeing of many hundreds of thousands of people,” he said.
“This is not only great from a humanitarian perspective, it means an important source of resources and manpower has been taken away from them.”