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Raqqa rolls: The Islamic State takes a hit, but isn’t out

Raqqa rolls: The Islamic State takes a hit, but isn’t out

The fall of the Islamic State’s ostensible capital, Raqqa in Syria, and the previous fall of another of its strongholds, Mosul in Iraq, both after long campaigns, were significant defeats for it and could be seen as the beginning of the end of the movement.

That should be the interpretation that Washington’s national security chiefs should put on those developments in terms of withdrawing American troops from the two countries. The miserable, expensive experience of occupying Iraq after the U.S. invasion there in 2003 should have taught America that lesson clearly. We have now been involved in Iraq for more than 14 years and we still aren’t having any fun.

The city of Raqqa is in shambles, its landscape like something from a “Mad Max” movie. From a population of 300,000, roughly the size of Pittsburgh, only some 25,000 remain.

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The IS is certainly back on its heels, but is that the end of it? To answer that question requires a look at what the IS is. It is mostly a violent, cross-national, anti-American, Sunni Islamic organization. Those characteristics pick up for it friends and fighters, and enemies. It also means that it is difficult to extirpate entirely, particularly given its spiritual content. 

It also, by the way, has an effective public affairs element as part of it. A speech by its spokesman Abu Muhammed al-Adnani last year, before he was killed by U.S. drones, shows the group’s focus on a continuing fight that transcends holding territory. “True defeat is the loss of willpower and desire to fight,” he said. “We would be defeated and you victorious only if you were able to remove the Quran from the Muslims’ hearts.”

It is also flexible in terms of leadership. It has been claimed several times that its caliph, spiritual and political leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been killed, but he appears in fact still to be around. U.S. drones and others have killed many IS leaders, but someone else appears always to take the places of the fallen.

As far as the United States and the Islamic State are concerned, almost certainly the vast majority of the killing it has carried out has not been on American soil. It is important to remember that the IS did not exist when either the 9/​11 attacks on the United States nor the U.S. invasion of Iraq took place. 

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It is arguable that its creation and evolution were a result of developments in the Arab world, including the Arab Spring. It is also arguable that if we had not taken a baseball bat to the Iraq beehive, with its toxic mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, there would be no IS to fight.

What we could do now is bring our soldiers home from Iraq and Syria, ease back on the anti-Islamic rhetoric, and let the other enemies of IS in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East deal with it as a declining force. The victories in Mosul and Raqqa were real, but they were costly, including to the United States, and the aftermath should be dealt with carefully. In particular, we should stay away from the post-war restructuring of Syria and the Kurdish independence issue.

The quick defeat of Saddam Hussein was followed by the rise of bloodthirsty IS from the ashes. IS’s losses in Raqqa and Mosul should not have the same result for the United States.

First Published: October 20, 2017, 4:00 a.m.

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