It descended upon the Middle East like a dark cloud, killing thousands, seizing land, wrecking the fabric of societies, and leaving in its wake burning cities and destroyed lives. As the dust settles — from Sirte in Libya to Mosul in Iraq — the sheer scale of the madness that Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) visited upon the region, and indeed other parts of the world, is becoming clear.
After the Iraqi army and its allied Shiite militias launched their massive, grinding operation with air support from Unite States-led coalition to oust the group from its ‘capital’ in Mosul, and as Daesh suffered a similar assault from the western-backed Syrian militias and the Syrian regime and its allies in its other ‘capital’ Raqqa, it was finished as a real military force. Its total annihilation is now only a matter of time. Anti-Daesh forces of all varieties are making massive gains against the terrorist group every day; bases are being recaptured, cities and villages are being retaken.
But military defeat doesn’t imply the defeat of the Daesh ideology. The group’s apocalyptic worldview is the starkest brand of extremism that even the Middle East — which has been the victim of terrorism for too long — has experienced. Through its stated policies and actions, it managed to unite just about the entire world against it. And combating its ideology in the coming years and months will also require a joint effort by all right-minded people.
Only now is the scale of the devastation the group has left behind beginning to emerge. Tens of thousands of Daesh members have been killed in aerial and ground attacks by the international coalition and local forces on the ground. Alongside them, tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Syria have also perished. At one level, Daesh is just one of the hundreds of terrorist groups of all varieties that have come and gone before it. All these groups believed they could change societies and upset the established order of the nation-state. Just like Daesh, none of them succeeded. But none in the past left scars as deep as Daesh has on societies it claimed to protect.
As it takes back lost territory, the Iraqi government must end its dependence on sectarian Shiite militias, which have contributed to the sense of loss and despondence felt in Sunni areas of Iraq. One way that countries like Iraq can avoid the emergence of a group like Daesh in the future is by ensuring that all citizens of the state are treated equally and given a stake in the country.