Iraq faces vast challenges despite victories over IS: experts

Iraq's victory over the Islamic State group in Tal Afar was the latest in a string of gains against the jihadist group, but Iraqi forces still face massive challenges, experts say.

In 2014, IS staged a rapid advance across northern Iraq, with police and military personnel abandoning their posts to the jihadists with barely a fight.

That allowed IS to seize nearly a third of the country's territory including Mosul, which was fully recaptured by Iraqi forces in July, three years after IS declared its self-styled "caliphate" from a mosque in Iraq's second city.

Today, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who took office three months after the 2014 military debacle, says the Iraqi state is back -- stronger and better organised.
 

Under the Shiite premier's command and backed by a US-led multinational coalition, Iraqi forces have retaken Tikrit, Ramadi, Fallujah and, after a gruelling nine-month battle, Mosul.

Today, Abadi announced the recapture of the town of Tal Afar and surrounding areas, bringing the whole of Nineveh province of which Mosul is the capital under government control.

With support from foreign military trainers, Iraqi forces have "gained a lot of combat and coordination capacity in just a year", said a French military official, asking not to be named.

"Relatively well-organised and trained but also well- supported, (they) have been able to stop the jihadists organising along coherent lines of defence," he told AFP.

During the fight for Mosul, described by an American general in Baghdad as "the toughest urban battle since World War II", Iraqi troops suffered heavy losses.

But they have now forced IS out of all its Iraqi territory except the town of Hawija, 300 kilometres (190 miles) north of Baghdad, and a few pockets of territory near the border with Syria.

In doing so, they have regained "the confidence of their fellow citizens and internationally", said Jassem Hanoun, an Iraqi military expert, after the loss of face of three years ago.

Coalition officials say Iraqi-led decision-making and better sharing of intelligence between Baghdad and the US-led coalition have allowed for quicker, more targeted attacks.

But Iraq's Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari warned on August 26 that "victory in Iraq will not mean an end to the danger posed by IS".

He said Iraq would continue its military cooperation with the coalition, saying it needed "preventive security" against "terrorist cells working in the shadows".

Hanoun said IS would likely go back to its "original mode of operation", attacking targets such as residential districts and markets.

But a lack of coordination and organisation means the security services struggle to cope with such attacks, he said.

The question of whether and how the coalition will continue to operate in Iraq is a hot political topic both for Baghdad and for Washington, which in 2011 finally withdrew its troops eight years after leading an invasion in 2003.