How ISIS Survives the Fall of Mosul
Long after the city is back in the hands of the Iraqi government, it will continue to be a prop for the Islamic State—although an altogether different one.
Eight and a half months into the to liberate Mosul, Iraq’s second city looks like it is finally on the brink of freedom. After launching the last phase of the battle in mid-June, the Iraqi security forces slowly but surely penetrated the Old City, one of the final ISIS redoubts in Mosul. And, on Thursday, just after recapturing —at which ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ” in June 2014, and which ISIS one week ago—the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi the “end of the Daesh [ISIS] state of falsehood.”
