The last Isis-held town in Iraq, Rawa, has fallen; across the border in Syria, the Russians declared a ‘total rout of the terrorists’. But this tough fight, which has taken three-and-half years, could all be in vain: the coalition which has driven Isis out now faces the gloomy prospect of winning the war and losing the peace. While Isis has been defeated, the next big challenge – how to address the Iranian drive for dominance in the Middle East – goes unanswered.
By ignoring this issue, the West is failing to learn one of the key lessons of the last three years: don’t treat each country as a vacuum. Isis’s ability to spread quickly and snatch territory across the region was a direct result of the weakening of state power in Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut. This allowed Sunni jihadists to use the Euphrates valley to spread throughout Syria in 2014. At the same time, Isis was able to gobble up mostly Sunni cities such as Mosul, Tirkit, Ramadi and Fallujah in Iraq.
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