On fifth anniversary of defeat of ISIS: Fears of the organization's return to Baghdad

Despite the announcement of the defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Baghdad’s celebration of the fifth anniversary of the defeat of the terrorist organization, the present threats from the existence of ISIS cells raise fears of its return, especially since the reasons that originally led to its emergence still exist and can be used by it at any time to return again.

Threats of return

Baghdad declared its victory over ISIS at the end of 2017, but after five years, the armed forces continue to confront extremist cells intermittently, especially in the remote rural and mountainous areas in the center and north of the country. The commander of the Combined Joint Task Force, US General Matthew McFarlane, confirmed that what happened in Iraq and Syria is a great victory and the beginning of a prosperous future for Iraq, pointing out that what remains today is the return of all the displaced to their homes and the prevention of the spread of ISIS’s extremist and terrorist ideologies.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani stressed, in a statement on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the declaration of the defeat of ISIS, that the road is still long to cut through all strife and the grave of dreams of extremism and hate speech, and there is also a lot of work for reform, development and achieving a decent life. He added that this great achievement, which was achieved with the help of the International Coalition, requires confronting the organization that has long been disappearing and reappearing due to the reasons that help it do so.

There are successive warnings that the reasons that led to the emergence of the terrorist organization in Iraq still exist and that the organization and its cells can exploit this at any moment to return again, as the real reasons that led to its emergence are still present, from political grievances to societal division, sectarianism and Iraq’s other problems. These reasons are deep-rooted and have increased as a result of the failure to resolve the crisis of the displaced and detainees, the absence of solutions related to the Al-Hol camp full of Iraqi ISIS families, and the continuation of economic and other crises, as the treatments are still satisfied with the security solutions while neglecting the rest of the files, whether economic, ideological, intellectual and political, which has not achieved any significant progress.