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A defeat for Islamic State — but it leaves a legacy of decades of fear

As Islamic State loses its last stronghold at Baghouz in eastern Syria it retains the ability to spread terror because memories of its past atrocities are still fresh.

Abdel Salaam, a survivor of the three-year-long IS occupation of the city of Raqqa, which served as its Syrian capital, told me that “Daesh [IS] is in our hearts and minds. Five-year-old children have seen women stoned to death and heads chopped off and put on spikes in the city centre.” Other survivors spoke of sons who killed their fathers, and fathers who had done the same to their sons to show their loyalty to the self-declared caliphate.

Some of these atrocity stories may be exaggerated but most are unfortunately all too true. IS had a strategy of spreading fear among its enemies — and it saw the whole world as full of hostile forces — by publicising its savage cruelty through the internet.

It was an effective approach: I was in Iraq in June 2014, just after IS had captured the northern capital of Mosul and was advancing swiftly on Baghdad. To spread terror, its executioners took 1,700 young Shia Iraqi Army recruits and shot them amid the ruins of some old palaces of Saddam Hussein on the banks of the Tigris river. Videos of the mass slaughter were uploaded to terrify anybody planning to resist the IS attack.

Later on, the killings were in revenge for IS defeat or setbacks. The movement’s first big failure was in 2015, when it was unable to capture the Kurdish city of Kobani because of heroic Kurdish resistance backed by US air power. Months later, IS fighters disguised in Kurdish uniforms infiltrated the town and launched a killing spree in which 146 civilians were murdered.

The prospect of similar revenge attacks by IS to show that it is still in business after losing the battle for Baghouz will worry many governments. Already an IS spokesman has threatened retaliation for the bombing of Baghouz, as well as revenge for the killings of Muslims in the mosque attacks in New Zealand.

IS will certainly want to show that it remains capable of guerrilla and terrorist actions. But this should not detract from the magnitude of the defeat it has just suffered: the self-declared caliphate that once stretched from the outskirts of Baghdad to the Mediterranean — an area the size of Great Britain — is no more.

The significance of this is very great. What made IS terrorism so menacing was the fact that it was backed by the resources of a well-organised de facto state that, at its peak, ruled eight million people. It had armies totalling tens of thousands of experienced soldiers and could arm, train and finance IS cells almost anywhere in the world.

"Islamic State has permanently now lost some of the most important advantages that let it to win spectacular victories"

Movements inspired by the IS caliphate emerged in countries from Afghanistan to Libya, though they were never as powerful as in Syria and Iraq. From an early stage, IS leaders foresaw that their territories might one day be overrun but made plans for their fanatical cult to survive elsewhere.

I was once told by a former IS fighter that he had heard “from my emirs [commanders] that Isis would win even if it had been defeated militarily in Iraq and Syria”. At first he thought they were saying this to keep up the morale of their men after many defeats, but he later found that they were sending veteran fighters to other countries where they would be at the core of movements pledging loyalty to the caliphate.

Could this plan succeed, and can IS live on in other parts of the world despite the extinction of the original caliphate? It is important here to keep a sense of proportion and to take a realistic view of IS’s future capabilities.

The group will still be able to carry out terrorist attacks on civilians and ill-defended military targets in Iraq and Syria. Its remaining fighters can hide out in the vast deserts of the region where they were previously operating, and where they have hideouts with stocks of weapons and other supplies.

But one should not overestimate IS capacity: it has permanently lost some of the most important advantages that enabled it to win spectacular victories five years ago. At that time, its explosive expansion caught everybody by surprise, but today nobody is going to underestimate its potential for demonic violence.

At one time, IS could also count on the tolerance or covert support of neighbouring states. Between 2012 and 2015 jihadis and their supporters had no problems in crossing the Turkish border into Syria, as Shamima Begum discovered. But IS soon showed that it wanted no friends and was a danger even to those who allowed it to operate.

IS may have lost its caliphate but many commentators suggest that it will have the ability to resurrect itself, so long as it has true believers and the military pressure against it has relaxed. IS itself would certainly like to believe this. But it also knows it can no longer claim that success on the battlefield shows it is divinely inspired, since for three years it has known nothing but defeat.

Sadly, IS has left the territories it once ruled physically devastated and its people psychologically damaged. Many have lost their lives and many more their homes and their livelihoods. The inhabitants of ruined cities such as Raqqa and countless other towns and villages all have the same stunned look, as if they cannot believe their nightmare is finally over. IS may have been defeated but it leaves behind a legacy of fear that will take decades to pass away.

  • Patrick Cockburn is the author of The Age of Jihad: Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East