Raqqa is a victory, but not the end of Islamic terror

The capture of Isil’s capital city gives the West cause for celebration. However, the battle is far from over

The official declaration that the Syrian city of Raqqa, the one-time capital of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), has been captured would, in normal circumstances, be a cause for celebration for all the coalition nations, including Britain, that have contributed to this remarkable achievement.

And yet, while Isil’s dreams of establishing its self-governing caliphate in northern Syria and Iraq now lie in tatters, the resilience of its warped ideology means that, as MI5 chief Andrew Parker warned in his speech yesterday, the extremists have simply adapted, and developed a new strategy for attacking the West.

Mr Parker, who believes the scale of the terrorist threat facing Britain today is the highest he has experienced during his 34-year career, said MI5 has identified a noticeable “dramatic upshift” in the Isil threat, with Islamist cells making marked improvements in their ability to carry out attacks quickly and effectively.

It is easy to forget that when, in the summer of 2014, Isil militants seized control of large swathes of northern Syria and Iraq, there seemed little prospect of dislodging them from their self-proclaimed Islamist fiefdom.

The militants’ success owed much to the West’s weakness in tackling Islamist-inspired fanaticism. In Washington, Barack Obama’s preference for “leadership from behind” undermined US efforts to maintain its traditional leadership role in the region, while David Cameron’s failure to win Commons approval in 2013 for launching military action against the Assad regime in Syria severely limited Britain’s options.

Another factor that inhibited the West’s response was residual antipathy in Britain and America towards launching any further military interventions, which followed the unhappy experience of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Us-led coalition therefore deserves credit for overcoming these obstacles and devising a winning formula, one whereby the brunt of the ground fighting has been carried out by indigenous forces, with the US, Britain and other Western allies providing support in the form of sophisticated military hardware and specialist training.

The result, after a difficult and faltering start to the campaign, has been to inflict a comprehensive defeat on Isil, with hundreds of militants being killed and thousands more taken into captivity.

Now that the Syrian Democratic Forces – the Western-backed militia which has borne the brunt of the fighting – have retaken Raqqa, all that needs to be done is eliminate any Isil sleeper cells and clear the city of mines.

If the fall of Raqqa, therefore, represents a significant breakthrough in the long-running battle against Isil and its affiliates, it is important to remember this is by no means the end of the campaign.

Apart from improving their ability, as Mr Parker has warned, to carry out terror attacks against Western targets, the survivors of Isil’s ill-fated caliphate will seek to regroup, and find new territories to use as terror hubs. Abu Bakr al-baghdadi, Isil’s terror mastermind, remains at large, and there have already been reports of Isil remnants linking up with al-qaeda in Afghanistan, as well as establishing new bases as far afield as the Philippines. The devastating truck bomb in the Somali capital Mogadishu, which killed an estimated 300 people this week, is a reminder of the deadly potency of Islamist terror groups.

The other factor Western policymakers must bear in mind is that, in the wake of Isil’s defeat, much work still needs to be done to prevent further conflicts emerging from the ruins of Isil’s “caliphate”. The confrontation between Iraqi government forces and Kurdish fighters over the disputed northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk is an illustration of the many political rivalries that remain in the wake of Isil’s collapse.

It is vital, therefore, that, to prevent these tensions from escalating into a new round of regional conflicts, the Us-led coalition maintains the same level of commitment to supporting its Middle Eastern allies in post-conflict reconstruction as it did during the military campaign against Isil.

We know only too well, from the conclusions reached by the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, of the problems that arise when insufficient attention is paid to what happens once the fighting is over.

More recently, the Obama administration’s decision to cut its losses and abandon Iraq to its fate in 2011 was a significant factor in Isil’s emergence.

With the stakes so high, the US, Britain and its allies simply cannot make the same mistakes again.

The liberation of Raqqa might mean the Us-led coalition has won a significant battle. But it is also abundantly clear they still have a long way to go before declaring they have won the war.