A general view shows a destroyed street of East Mosul, Iraq on 3 April 2017, some 2.5 months after offensive to push Islamic State jihadists out of Mosul. NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reserved.The protracted battle against ISIS in Iraq and elsewhere foreshadows numerous challenges in reconstituting the state afterwards. The west has treated the group as enemy number one while local actors see it as a sideshow in a political arena stretching from the Mediterranean to Iran.
Not since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire has there been such a complex and bewildering reordering of the region. At once, everything is on the table, no outcome can be ruled out and paradoxically, the fight against ISIS could equally consolidate Iraq or signal its demise.
Good leaders thrive in times of crisis, as do opportunists. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the charismatic pan-Arab Egyptian leader, would cite Luigi Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author,” as a call to write the script for the Arab World’s future. That he had never read the play was irrelevant. Northern Iraq will need similar fiction if not alchemy to prevent its next conflict from appearing even before the ISIS eulogy can be written.
