The bigger battles ahead
The last IS fighters in Raqa have been killed or surrendered, and the terror group that once held territory the size of the United Kingdom and ruled over ten million people has been pushed back to a few dusty towns straddling the Syrian border with Iraq.
The campaign to eradicate the Islamic State has taken three years and nearly 25,000 coalition airstrikes, in addition to thousands by Russian, Iraqi and Syrian aircraft.
In the process, dozens of towns and cities in Syria and Iraq have been pulverised.
The cost of reconstruction -- running into hundreds of billions of dollars -- is far beyond the capacity of whoever rules either Syria or Iraq. The cost to humanity is worse still.
In Iraq, the advance of IS -- followed by the operation to destroy it -- displaced more than three million people, according to the UN. Nearly 600,000 Iraqi children have missed an entire year of education or more; thousands have been warped by IS indoctrination.
In Syria, the results of the country's brutal civil war are more shocking: 6.5 million people, including 2.8 million children, have been displaced, according to the UN. A further 5 million have left the country altogether.
The caliphate is gone and IS's totalitarian ideology is stained, even among Sunni Muslims who first welcomed it. But extremism will find new breeding grounds in countries where sectarian loyalties dominate, where there is no work, where distrust is endemic and the "middle ground" doesn't exist.
ISIS began as an insurgency; now it's returning to its roots, which are spread deep across the region. And it goes far beyond the Iraq and Syria. The recent attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and around around the world prove that. Experts are fearing more IS-inspired attacks in Europe and elsewhere.
As IS loses ground, al-Qaeda is eyeing opportunities in Syria. Within the last few weeks a new group has emerged from among jihadi factions in the northwest Syrian province of Idlib: Ansar al Furqan. Brett McGurk, the US envoy for the anti-IS coalition, has dubbed Idlib as the largest al-Qaeda haven since the days of Osama bin Laden.
Al-Qaeda also has a new flag-bearer: Hamza bin Laden, son of Osama, whose appeal to a new generation of jihadis is growing.
Sunni militants have long seen the western democracies -- and, by extension, the Gulf monarchies -- as their adversaries. But they have a new enemy: the Shia coalition powered by Iran, which has recruited militias from Lebanon, Iraq, even Afghanistan to fight in Syria.
These contests for recruits and resources play out against the background of a region in turmoil, where alliances are shifting amid overlapping disputes.
And, even though the IS ideology is weakened significantly, its appeal among frustrated and disillusioned youths has not diminished. And realizing the importance, G7 countries and tech agreed to work together to block the dissemination of Islamist extremism over the internet.
Iran, Shia militias are playing a big part in wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Despite a hostile administration in US, the Iranian dream of linking Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut in an arc of Shia influence has come a few steps nearer.
The deepening rift among Gulf monarchies and their conflicting aims in the region won't help the situation either.
Wherever one looks, from the Gulf to the Mediterranean, governments and the multitude of groups they support or oppose are jockeying for advantage as IS shrinks.
At its zenith in 2015, IS was the common enemy. Two years later, the face of terror and the places it inhabits have changed. But across the Middle East, and among the great powers, there's little sign of the political will needed to turn swords into plowshares.
As long as the void created by economic crisis and political rifts in the region, insurgency and turmoil are very much likely to remain.
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