Islamic State still poses a danger

It is nine months since the battle for Mosul was launched. By Sunday, US-backed forces had made enough progress in crushing resistance from fighters of the Islamic State to enable Haider al-Abadi, Iraq’s prime minister, to visit the city and proclaim victory from its ruins.

The Islamic State is also surrounded in Raqqa, its de facto capital in Syria. Defeat there is only a matter of time and lives sacrificed. The physical caliphate is crumbling. No one, however, should underestimate the dangers that still lie ahead.

Mosul has been under Islamic State occupation since June 2014 when a few hundred fighters forced thousands of Iraqi troops into a humiliating rout. It was from the city’s ancient al-Nuri mosque that leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi trumpeted his global ambitions.

The effect was to unite a combustible mix of Iraqi factions and foreign backers in an alliance to reclaim territory lost. Kurds, Turkish-backed Sunni fighters, Iranian-armed Shia militias and Baghdad government forces have fought a gruelling metre-by-metre battle with US backing, at a cost of thousands of lives. They were driven by a common military goal.

Unfortunately, no such common political objective exists to glue these disparate forces together and prevent them from falling apart and fighting, let alone encourage them to work together in rebuilding the Iraqi state. There does not even appear to be a plan for governance and security in Mosul in the aftermath of a battle that has displaced nearly 1-million civilians and caused untold damage to basic infrastructure.

Islamic State was born out of the chaos that ensued after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. It has been sustained by Sunni minority resistance to a Shia supremacist agenda in Baghdad. No doubt an equally virulent form of jihadi extremism will re-emerge should conditions stay the same. London, July 11.