President, in national address, declares victory over militants
BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq declared victory over the Islamic State on Saturday, announcing the end of more than three years of battles to regain control over nearly one-third of the country that had been under the terrorist group’s dominion.
Abadi’s carefully calibrated statement came months after armed forces had wrested back control over Iraq’s major urban areas, notably its second-largest city, Mosul, and had shifted focus to mopping up remnants of the militants who had escaped or gone underground in the vast desert border areas between Iraq and Syria.
“Our forces fully control the Iraqi-Syrian border, and thus we can announce the end of the war against Daesh,” Abadi said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.
The prime minister’s announcement heralded a significant turnaround for the nation’s armed forces and political leadership from the summer of 2014, when the military, hollowed out by years of corruption and inept political decisions, crumbled under the juggernaut of the Islamic State’s once-formidable fighting force.
By June that year, the terrorist group had seized control of Iraq’s Sunni-dominated north and west, putting more than 4 million Iraqis under its control. At first, some of those Iraqis were willing supporters of the insurgent force, in large part because of the years of sectarian violence and abuse they had experienced from Iraq’s Shiitemajority politicians. But the puritanical punishments and cruelties of the militants soon made the group a feared and unwelcome overlord.
Still, security analysts and military commanders warned that the end of large-scale military maneuvers did not mean the end of the Islamic State threat.
Among the urgent challenges officials now face to ensure security and stability are reconstruction plans for cities like Mosul, which was destroyed by the fighting, as well as reconciliation programs for the country’s Sunni and Shiite communities, said Hussein Allawi, a professor of national security at Al Nahrain University in Baghdad.
Some 3 million Iraqis remain displaced by the war, and municipal services have yet to be restored in many liberated areas.