Over 80 suspected Islamic State militants are packed into a makeshift cell close to Mosul, Iraq, 07 June 2017. Suspects were told by Iraqi forces to face away from the camera to protect their identities. Andrea DiCenzo/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved.Mosul's impending fall and Raqqa's ongoing siege highlight ISIS's slow loss of control of the much-vaunted caliphate it declared exactly three years ago, on 29 July 2014. The costs to the movement have been huge: over 50,000 of its supporters have been killed during the coalition’s three years of intensive airstrikes, and many thousands of civilians across Iraq and Syria have died as a direct result of the war.
But ISIS can claim to have seriously damaged the Iraqi army’s special forces, making it much more difficult for Haider al-Abadi's government in Baghdad to stabilise Iraq. This will in turn help ISIS to transform itself into a guerrilla force and, it would hope, a long-term insurgency.
ISIS's self-image is enhanced by the level of force used against it by the “crusader states” of the “far enemy”.
