Displaced Iraqi children, who fled Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, after it was seized by the Daesh terrorist group, play outside tents at a makeshift camp for internally displaced persons (IDP) in Ameriyat Al-Fallujah, 30 km south of Fallujah. — AFP 

 

 

Baghdad — A year after the Daesh (the so-called IS) terrorist group launched a brutally effective offensive, Iraq is struggling to survive as a unified nation, gripped by seemingly endless violence, sectarianism and humanitarian tragedy.

 

Daesh began the offensive on June 9, 2014, and overran a third of the country, carrying out atrocities from beheadings and mass executions to enslavement and rape.

 

The militants have been driven out of some areas, but still hold much of western Iraq and remain able to defeat Baghdad’s forces and gain new territory despite a year of heavy fighting and some 4,000 strikes carried out in a 10-month US-led air campaign.

 

“The underlying causes of (the) Daesh rise are still there,” said Patrick Skinner, an analyst with the Soufan Group intelligence consultancy.

 

“And that means Daesh will remain, perhaps kicked out periodically from place to place but still in the national bloodstream like a septic infection,” he said.

 

Daesh overran Iraq’s second city Mosul in less than 24 hours last year, despite being heavily outnumbered, then pushed south with allied militant groups, raising fears that Baghdad itself could fall.

 

The militants swept aside multiple Iraqi divisions, seized thousands of armored vehicles, weapons and other equipment in a disaster that exposed the full scale of the incompetence and corruption within the security forces.

 

Daesh is known for the horrific abuses it has carried out — including highly-choreographed beheadings recorded on video — as much as its territorial gains.

 

In northern Iraq, the militants targeted members of the Yazidi faith in a campaign of kidnappings, enslavement and rape that the UN denounced as an “attempt to commit genocide.”

 

And Daesh massacred hundreds of mostly Shiite military recruits along the Tigris River in Tikrit, killings that ultimately rallied support for Baghdad.

 

The borders, boundaries and demographics of Iraq have been drastically changed over the past year. As Daesh advanced and security forces fled, Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region seized some disputed areas and consolidated its grip on others, helping it realize long-held territorial goals that Baghdad will find extremely difficult to reverse.

 

And widespread displacement — nearly three million people since the beginning of 2014 — has altered Iraq’s demographic map, with Sunni Arabs fleeing to predominantly Shiite and Kurdish areas.

 

The conflict has drawn Washington back into a quagmire it thought it had escaped, making a mockery of its goal of Iraq being a stable, democratic ally in the region and leaving it with little to show for a hugely costly nearly nine-year war.

 

The US is carrying out airstrikes against the militants and has sent thousands of soldiers to train Iraqi forces, and an international coalition has followed suit.

 

But the militants have proven highly resilient and last month even seized the city of Ramadi, the strategically important capital of Anbar province, which Iraqi forces had defended for over a year. — AFP