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Iraqis celebrate victory over Islamic State in Baghdad on Saturday. Photo: Xinhua

Iraqi Prime Minister declares ‘end of war against Islamic State’ with Syrian border under complete control

It draws to a close a three-year conflict to expel the militant group, but in Syria reports of fresh insurgencies

Iraq

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Saturday declared victory in the three-year war to expel Islamic State jihadists, which at its height endangered Iraq’s very existence.

“Our forces are in complete control of the Iraqi-Syrian border and I therefore announce the end of the war against Daesh,” Abadi told a conference in Baghdad.

“Our enemy wanted to kill our civilisation, but we have won through our unity and our determination. We have triumphed in little time,” he said, hailing Iraq’s “heroic armed forces”.

As the authorities announced a public holiday on Sunday “to celebrate the victory”, Abadi said in a speech at the defence ministry that Iraq’s next battle would be to defeat the scourge of corruption.

IS seized vast areas north and west of Baghdad in a lightning offensive in 2014.

With Iraq’s army and police retreating in disarray at the time, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, spiritual leader of the country’s majority Shiites, called for a general mobilisation, leading to the formation of Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary units.

Iraqis celebrate the victory of the battles against Islamic State after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the group officially defeated. Photo: Xinhua
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declares victory in Baghdad. Photo: Reuters

Iraq’s fightback was also launched with the backing of an air campaign waged by a US-led coalition, recapturing town after town from the clutches of the jihadists in fierce urban warfare.

The US State Department hailed the end of the jihadists’ “vile occupation” but cautioned that the fight was not over.

“The United States joins the government of Iraq in stressing that Iraq’s liberation does not mean the fight against terrorism, and even against ISIS, in Iraq is over,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said, using another abbreviation for the militant group.

The coalition, meanwhile, tweeted, using an Arabic acronym for IS: “Congratulations to the government of Iraq and the Iraqi security forces on the liberation of all Daesh-held populated areas in Iraq.”

Hisham al-Hashemi, an expert on jihadist groups, warned that IS still posed a threat by retaining arms caches in uninhabited desert zones.

Iraq’s close ally Iran already declared victory over IS last month, as the jihadists clung to just a few remaining scraps of territory.

But Abadi said at the time he would not follow suit until the desert on the border with Syria had been cleared.

Members of the Hashed al-Shaabi watch the televised statement of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in the southern city of Basra. Photo: AFP

The jihadists’ defeat is a massive turnaround for an organisation that in 2014 ruled over seven million people in a territory as big as Italy encompassing large parts of Syria and nearly a third of Iraq.

On the Syrian side of the border, IS is under massive pressure too.

On Thursday, Russia’s defence ministry said its mission in support of the Syrian regime to oust IS had been “accomplished” and the country was “completely liberated”. But reports on Saturday revealed a fresh insurgency in Syria by the militant group.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said IS had captured the village of Bashkun in Idlib province after clashes with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a force dominated by a former al-Qaeda affiliate.

The capture comes after days of fighting between IS and HTS in neighbouring Hama province, during which IS captured a string of villages in the northeast of the region, the Observatory said. It also puts IS back in Idlib nearly four years after it was first expelled from the northwestern province.

Members of the Imam Ali Division, one of the groups fighting within the Hashed al-Shaabi, celebrate after the Iraqi Prime Minister declared victory in the war against the Islamic State. Photo: AFP

The head of Iraq’s Joint Operations Command set up to fight IS, General Abdel Amir Yarallah, gave an update on Saturday to announce that the desert valley of Al-Jazira was under the control of Iraqi troops and the Hashed all the way from Nineveh province in the north to Anbar in the west.

Federal forces “now control the border with Syria from Al-Walid border crossing to that of Rabia”, covering a distance of 435km, he said.

Despite the victory announcements, experts have warned that IS retains the capacity as an insurgent group to carry out high-casualty bomb attacks using sleeper cells.

Abadi’s victory announcement came the same day as Iraqi forces said they killed 10 IS members in a tunnel near the northern city of Kirkuk and recovered armaments.

IS also retains natural hideouts in the deep gorges of Wadi Hauran, Iraq’s longest valley stretching from the Saudi border up to the Euphrates River and the frontiers with Syria and Jordan.

The fightback in Iraq kicked off with the “liberation” of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, that had been under IS control for nearly 10 months.

The operations have involved both Tehran, through Iranian-trained Shiite militias in the Hashed al-Shaabi coalition, and Washington as head of the anti-jihadist coalition.

The western cities of Ramadi and Fallujah followed in 2016 before the turning point of the recapture of Iraq’s second city of Mosul in July this year after a nine-month offensive led by a 30,000-strong federal force.

Abadi said the battle for Mosul that left the city in ruins and thousands of its residents displaced marked the end of the jihadists’ “caliphate”.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: it’s all over for islamic state, iraqi pm DECLARES
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