Isil’s defeat is a lesson in successful intervention

British forces can be proud of the contribution they have made to rolling back the caliphate’s territory

Jeremy Hunt, reporting to Parliament on Monday, was wise enough not to claim victory. But the impending, final collapse of the jihadists’ geographical caliphate marks a milestone in the war against this evil ideology. It’s also a moment to reflect on the lessons for future interventions.

The caliphate was declared weeks before I was appointed defence secretary in July 2014. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) had swept through thousands of square miles of Syria and Iraq almost to the gates of Baghdad. Visiting Iraq shortly afterwards, I found despondent generals, a routed army and an already fragile democracy desperate for help.

That autumn we started to put together a coalition, by the end comprised of more than 70 countries. A dozen or so, including Britain, provided military firepower; others helped with bases, logistics, equipment and finance. From the start, however, we agreed that this was to be a different kind of intervention.

The fighting on the ground was to be done by local troops, but supported by airstrikes and intelligencegathering from above. For three long years, a revitalised Iraqi army, trained and re-equipped by the West and led by younger, tougher commanders, cleared Isil northwards up the Tigris and west along the Euphrates.

The campaign had its heartstopping moments: the plight of the British hostages; the extraordinary courage of the Peshmerga fighters; the potential collapse of the Mosul dam; the bloody battles to liberate Ramadi and Fallujah, Mosul and Raqqa. We saw new weapons of war: drones deployed as short-range bombers and our first use of offensive cyber.

I’m proud of Britain’s contribution, second only to the US. All three services played their part: the RAF mounted its most intensive air campaign since the Second World War; British troops trained almost 90,000 Iraqi soldiers in everything from counter-ied techniques to bridgebuilding; the Royal Navy helped to guard the US and French aircraft carriers flying strikes from the Gulf.

It was also a campaign against an enemy that ignored the laws of war. Isil did not hesitate to kill innocent civilians, even fellow Muslims, and resorted to the most brutal and sadistic methods of execution. Prisoners of war were burnt to death; gays thrown off buildings; women and children deliberately placed in the line of fire.

The coalition, on the other hand, stuck to the international conventions. I set rules of engagement for our strikes to minimise the risk of civilian casualties, to limit collateral damage, and to protect sites such as hospitals and mosques. It was the skill of our pilots and the precision of our weapons, much advanced since the first and second Gulf wars, that helped us to avoid the mistakes made, for example, by Saudi bombing in Yemen.

We also benefited from support at home. Conscious of Parliament’s refusal to intervene against Bashar al-assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria, we sought and won specific authority for airstrikes in Iraq in 2014, and again in Syria in 2015. I and senior commanders briefed MPS every couple of months on the campaign’s

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and I had solid support from successive shadow defence secretaries.

There’s no guarantee that Iraq will enjoy a peaceful future. Tribal and sectarian rifts run deep; corruption is endemic. Military success still needs to be underpinned by genuine reconciliation and reform, especially in the provinces of Anbar and Nineveh. But Iraq, unlike its immediate neighbours, is now a democracy, and so deserves our continuing support.

Meanwhile, the wider campaign against Isil goes on. Its poisonous ideology was strengthened by its geographical reach. But it doesn’t need to control territory: in cyberspace it can direct small scale insurgency or acts of urban terrorism around the globe. We’ve seen that in Europe, Africa, Australia and the Far East.

Its ultimate defeat will require a sustained international effort, not least from within Islam itself.

The history of Western intervention in the Middle East is not a happy one. But this campaign may, in time, be seen as a better approach: yes, we should answer the call from fragile democracies but the fighting on the ground is best done by local troops.