"In 2018 the market basket is empty": this man attends a speech by the general secretary of the Tunisian General Labour Union during the Tunisian revolution's 7th anniversary, 2018. Chedly Ben Ibrahim/PA images. All rights reserved.Two recent columns in this series examined ISIS's future after the loss of its caliphate. The group, it was suggested, might in future pursue a threefold course: build on its affiliations with paramilitary groups across the Middle East, north Africa and south Asia; increase its attacks in the “far enemy” countries of the west; and transition towards a new insurgency in Iraq (see "The next war: ISIS plus expertise", 21 December 2017); and "ISIS: the comeback", 4 January 2018).
The Iraqi part of this strategy is already well under way. A grim series of attacks in and around Baghdad has taken hundreds of lives in the past year, even during the coalition assaults on Mosul and Raqqa. The latest hit the capital early in the morning of 15 January, when two suicide-bombers detonated their devices at Tayaran Square where day-labourers gather for work. The results were terrible: at least thirty-five people killed and ninety injured. Some of the Shi’a dead were carried off for burial that day in the holy city of Najaf.
Such operations confirm that ISIS paramilitaries remain active and are able to strike, including in the heart of Baghdad. In this respect the intense military campaign to dislodge the group from its former areas of control is double-edged. The United States-led coalition's aerial pounding inflicted huge damage on Iraqi urban centres, with hardly any sign of reconstruction so far. That risks the further marginalisation of the Sunni minority that contributed to ISIS's rise in the first place. In doing its utmost to encourage that process, ISIS is intent also on targeting districts mainly populated by Iraq's majority Shi’a population.
