The rise and fall of ISIS, 10 years on

June 2024 marks the 10th anniversary of the fall of Mosul to ISIS. The crisis saw more than half a million people displaced in a matter of weeks, as well as genocidal violence against Iraq’s Yazidi minority and others captured by the group – including about 1,700 Shiite air force cadets massacred at Camp Speicher.

Towns and cities in Sunni-majority areas of Iraq, including Mosul, Tikrit, Fallujah and Ramadi, were torn apart.

It was the culmination of years of rising sectarian tensions in the wake of the 2003 Iraq invasion, which up-ended the political order, installing Shiite religious parties to power, largely excluding Sunnis from government.

The ensuing violence was stoked by small but powerful, ultra-violent militias and terror groups on both sides of the divide, often with foreign backing. Many of these armed groups were tied to political parties.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi army and police were either too weak to keep order, or complicit in the killings, a situation that worsened following the withdrawal of US forces in 2011.

The fall of Mosul saw a crescendo of violence, after a brief period of lower level terrorist violence that followed the US exit.

It also marked one of the most humiliating defeats of a modern army in recent history. Two Iraqi army divisions, comprising up to 25,000 men, were routed by a force that numbered, by some accounts, only 1,500.

The war on ISIS, between around 2013 and 2017, cost Iraq about 60,000 lives, according to Iraq Body Count, a war monitor. It also caused about $100 billion in damage, World Bank figures show.

“A decade after ISIS swept through northern Iraq, the legacy of its occupation and the US-led military campaign to defeat the extremist organisation still lives on,” says Shivan Fazil, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Regional and International Studies, University of Sulaimani.

“Around one million Iraqis still remain in displacement, with return conditions continuing to be precarious. Yet an impending camp closure by the federal government of Iraq could force many to return against their will.”

Iran-backed militias meanwhile, mostly under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), strengthened during the war and are becoming the dominant security force in the country. They were legalised by former Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki in June 2014 as Mosul fell.

The PMF contains radical Shiite groups, including Asaib Ahl Al Haq and Kataib Hezbollah. They have been accused of kidnapping and killing thousands of Sunni civilians during Iraq’s post-2003 strife and later, Shiite anti-government protesters in 2019-20. 

They possess cruise missiles and drones, pursue their own foreign policy, and silence critics through murder.

In this special report, we speak to historians and Iraqis on the front line of the crisis, who say it could have been avoided.

Many agree the disaster was the result of bitter politics and state weakness, rather than the strength of ISIS alone - a numerically small group compared to the Iraqi security forces, which could have been crushed before Mosul fell, through stronger political co-operation.

We ask why few Iraqi leaders have been held to account - despite an Iraqi parliament inquiry in 2015 largely blaming former PM Nouri Al Maliki and former Mosul governor Atheel Al Nujaifi for the disaster, and the extent that Iraq’s main security backer, the US, holds responsibility.

Some security force commanders were given prison sentences or fines, but elites remain untouched.

We look at what this says about Iraq today: why ISIS is so weak in Iraq a decade on from Mosul’s fall, and what the future holds.

Accountability remains largely absent, despite the fact that Iraqi military commanders and US intelligence were aware that the terrorist movement was rapidly gaining momentum, between six months to a year before the group took Mosul on June 10 2014.

On January 4, 2014, ISIS took Fallujah, an hour's drive from Baghdad, but Mr Al Maliki’s government did little to change policies widely blamed for exacerbating the crisis.

As this happened, Iraqi security forces were focused on ineffective mass arrests that alienated Sunni communities - in one instance arresting several hundred men after a car bomb exploded.

All the while, the Iraqi army, under near-total control of Mr Al Maliki, was collapsing from endemic corruption.

The mass arrest and harassment of Sunnis at military checkpoints was common during the rise of ISIS – and felt particularly in Mosul.

By December 2013, ISIS were rising militarily, taking advantage of growing chaos around the protests. 

That month, commanders of Iraq’s 7th division of the army in Anbar - seen as one of the most effective units - were killed when a house they were raiding exploded after being rigged with bombs.

ISIS was also being super-charged by the raging civil war in Syria. This was highlighted in March 2013, when ISIS ambushed and killed nearly 50 Syrian soldiers in Iraq who were trying to flee an attack in Syria.

After pleading with his NGO to be allowed to evacuate key staff, Mohsen drove to Ramadi, his hometown.

“I went to my place in the evening. The next morning, the army raided the protest sites and I woke up with the news that they removed all the protest tents. They arrested Ahmed Al Alwani [a protest leader and member of parliament], Al Issawi fled to Erbil and the mess began."

The arrest of Mr Al Alwani sparked more controversy, as his brother and sister were shot dead during the raid.

On the morning of December 25 or 26, Mohsen heard sounds of fighting and the internet and phone lines were down.

“We went out three days later, I opened the door, everything was calm, it was January 1, 2014.

"People started running towards the main road, and I stood and saw the first vehicle pass with people covering their faces and carrying medium weapons. The second pick-up truck passed - I called it at that time an Al Qaeda flag, we didn’t know it was ISIS. We didn’t know who they were; everyone was calling them tribal fighters. But it was obvious, they were wearing black with the black flag.

“Everyone was cheering for them, ‘oh look the tribal fighters, they defeated the police, they defeated the government.' People were either innocent or idiots. But they said 'these guys are the survivors, the ones who’ll help us to get free.'

Mohsen’s gut feeling about the return of extremists would prove prescient. ISIS would go on to brutally crush protest groups under its caliphate project - even fighters linked to the Baath party, which it previously allied with.

“Having lived through Saddam’s time, survived Al Qaeda – I consider myself lucky to be alive – and survived the US-Al Qaeda clashes, we got displaced several times in our life, including this time. I took the decision to leave immediately," he says.
"My wife was against that, I said ‘no you need to listen to me, Al Maliki will bring the military and they will bring the city down on our heads.’"

Fallujah, a city of more than 300,000, one hour away from Baghdad, fell to ISIS on January 4. Mr Al Maliki had decided to crush the protest movement, only exacerbating the security chaos.

In a nod to US demands, Mr Al Maliki launched a “New Awakening,” but these groups fell under Sheikh Wissam Al Hardan, a Maliki loyalist.

Within two months, Mr Al Maliki would ally with Sadiqun for elections, the political wing of Asaib Ahl Al Haq, one of the most notorious Iran-backed militias that protesters wanted dissolved.

Meanwhile, the raids on the Sunni protest camps brought an end to a short-lived negotiation effort between the government and protest leaders, which might have seen new economic projects in Anbar, pushed for by Shiite authorities in Najaf, who were calling for calm.

“I had to get out of Ramadi,” Mohsen says.

“When we drove, there is the bridge called Al Qasim bridge which is next to the railway. I had to drive past hundreds of ISIS men who were patrolling and gathering there. And I told my wife, because she was sitting next to me, to hold one of the babies because it was our safe passage, so they didn't stop me.

“I thought to myself, ‘do you think they are those innocent people?' They clearly weren’t just reacting to the government, they had been getting ready for that moment. You could see they were heavily armed."

He arrived under the cover of darkness, but didn't feel safe. "Alhough you might think that I'm stupid, only when I was on the highway, and there was one of the Iraqi army’s military tanks on the bridge above, did I say to myself ‘Okay, now more or less I can make my way'," Mohsen says.

Much of Mohsen’s hometown, Ramadi would be destroyed by fighting in the ensuing months, with 3,000 buildings and its main hospital destroyed.

With his family, he fled from warzone to warzone, eventually settling as a refugee in the Kurdish region.

Experts say the rise of ISIS was enabled by dysfunctional politics and extreme corruption within the Iraqi security forces. This left Iraqi soldiers and police vulnerable to a group that could exploit Sunni sentiment against the government.

By many accounts, the rise of ISIS tells a story more of Iraqi army weakness than the terror group’s strength.

Military factors, including security forces’ harsh crackdowns on Sunni protests, and political factors, are entwined. 

Experts say Mr Al Maliki was paranoid and controlled the Iraqi Security Forces, placing loyalists in key roles rather than the most qualified generals.

His policies – viewed by many in Washington, including US president at the time Barack Obama, as sectarian and divisive – ate into American willingness to send more military support to Iraq. 

This was critical, says Frank Sobchak, who co-wrote the 1,600 page official US Army operational study of the Iraq War.

“In 2011, at the time of the full withdrawal decision, uniformed US military officers, civilian defence officials, the State Department and the intelligence community all said, ‘Hey, the Iraqi Security Forces really are not ready to stand on their own yet'," he says

"There were competing ideas on what exactly the size of a residual force would be, but the proposal from General Austin, who was the commander in Iraq, was a full division’s worth of Americans to stay, approximately 10-14,000 strong.

"The challenge was, I think, that for political reasons, a series of American administrations - and I think we frankly, saw this later in Afghanistan - transmitted to the American public and to the world and to journalists, ‘we're almost there, the Iraqi Security Forces are ready to stand up on their own.’”

Mr Sobchak also says Iraqi officers were aware of the risks of being alone against ISIS.

“Behind closed doors, those military officers gave their best military advice that the ISF were not ready. Senior Iraqi uniformed personnel were also saying that they wanted the Americans to stay, that they were not ready, such as the former head of ISOF Gen Fadhil Barawi.”

After the US departed Iraq, following failed talks on a small, stay-behind security co-operation force, corruption ran wild in Iraq’s army. 

Mr Sobchak says the US organised a payment system for Iraqi generals – the electronic fund transfer – to distribute salaries. But after the US withdrawal, the generals replaced it with a basic accounting system that allowed them to falsify payment records. 

This gave rise to the infamous “ghost soldiers,” who were absent from duty, pocketing a part of their salary in return for their commander pocketing the rest. 

“There were reports coming from the embassy of different percentages of ghost soldiers, showing the hollowing out of the Iraqi security forces, reaching 60 per cent in some units. So there was writing on the wall, but no one wanted to really talk about it,” Mr Sobchak says. 

As a result, the real size of the force defending Mosul from ISIS may not have been 25,000, but closer to 10,000, and the US warned many of those were a “checkpoint force,” rather than hardened fighters like ISIS.

This has led some to suggest Mr Obama should have put more pressure on Mr Al Maliki to make political concessions to Sunnis in exchange for more US support. By 2013, Mr Al Maliki was requesting more US military help, while defying US calls for restraint. 

The US responded in January 2014, rushing small missiles for light aircraft and unmanned drones, among other weapons, but it was far from enough to hinder ISIS. 

One month later, Lt Gen Michael Nagata, who led US Special Forces in the Middle East, visited Iraqi security forces in Baghdad and was alarmed to find they were barely in control of the airport road.

More military support at an earlier junction - perhaps including air strikes - with a political deal could have stopped ISIS columns of vehicles moving on towns such as Mosul in 2014, Mr Sobchak argues.

“There was a period - and it was not a short time period -  where there were almost no US or coalition air strikes going on, the Iraqis were on their own. If US forces had been there, and particularly US Special Forces, which was a huge component of a proposed residual force with the elite Counterterrorism Service, you would have had individuals who could have called in air strikes and who could have helped better advise the Iraqi Security Forces,” Mr Sobchak says. 

But he also singles out Mr Al Maliki for much of the failure.

“So many things that Al Maliki did in the three years between 2011 and 2014 damaged the fragile ISF: of the 14 division commanders, he replaced 11. And of those 14, there was only one Sunni commander, and he was an Al Maliki sycophant, who was just totally supportive of Al Maliki's initiatives. Al Maliki appointed individuals, like Mahdi Gharawi, who had been in West Baghdad in 2006 during the Civil War, killing Sunnis, as the commander in Mosul. Shia generals were in charge in Anbar and in Mosul, and Al Maliki created an environment that was ripe for ISIS coming in and saying, 'Hey, we're gonna we're gonna save you from him.'”

Kirk Sowell, who runs an Iraq-focused political risk consultancy, says it is difficult to blame US policy for the disaster.

“If you are writing a retrospective on how Obama handled Iraq, then I think it matters when you start your narrative. If you start from the beginning of Obama's term, there was a disengagement by the Obama administration that, at a minimum, did not help. I don't know how much blame can really be attributed given limited ability by any US admin to shape events, but there is something to that criticism,” he says. 

Even at the height of US financial and military support for Iraq, Mr Al Maliki launched raids against political rivals - including a deadly assault on a provincial council in 2008 - and allied himself with Iran-backed politicians.

“However, if you start from January 2014, I don't blame Obama one bit for not bailing out Al Maliki. If Al Maliki, with his strong result in that year's election and strong American support, had somehow been able to hang on, tensions could only have gotten worse.

"I am confident that - bar the fall of Mosul and the disintegration of the army in the north - Al Maliki would have been re-elected for a third term, and then the next election would have been in 2018.

"People forget that Al Maliki gained seats in 2014 despite being a terrible prime minister. What if there had been a similar event two months after Al Maliki began his third term? He might have held on like [Syrian President Bashar] Al Assad and allowed the Iraqi state to disintegrate.
"There were Shia seriously talking about having a Shia-dominated state Samarra to the south and letting the Sunnis go their own way, creating a Dune-like dystopia from Anbar to Lebanon. That was the true worst-case scenario for the region and the world, and it was Haider Al Abadi who prevented it from happening.”

Mr Al Abadi, prime minister for most of the war on ISIS, had worked closely with Mr Al Maliki in the past, but supported tribal outreach efforts to Sunni leaders, although Shiite radicals gained strength on his watch. But his approach helped rebuild international backing for Iraq in the war.

Today, little has changed on the political scene, but experts and Iraqis say Sunni communities are virulently against ISIS or similar extremists. That, combined with a better Iraqi army that has combat experience from the war, is holding ISIS down.

Yet despite losing office in 2014 as Iraqis and Baghdad’s allies lost confidence in Mr Al Maliki, Mr Sowell says the former prime minister continues to hold significant power.

“I'd emphasise the fact that the political elite running things beforehand were able to entrench themselves during and afterward.

"Mr Al Maliki left office - with the caveat of still being a strong player - but the same factions still run things; the fact that current prime minister [Mohammed Shia] Al Sudani was Al Maliki's Human Rights Minister is worth noting. There are changes in form, the abolition of the Human Rights Ministry being an example, but the substance is the same.

"The Shia have evolved toward collective leadership ... but it is the same parties. This Shia elite entrenchment helped lead to the Tishreeni protest movement [a Shiite majority movement that was largely crushed by the Popular Mobilisation Forces] but that movement struggles to make an impact."

Mr Sowell says that, in Shiite majority Iraq, the next election is likely to be dominated by Iran-backed, mostly Shiite groups and those loyal to nationalist Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr.

“Among the Sunnis it is different because the pre-2014 Sunni leadership entirely lost credibility and were replaced by former parliament speaker Mohammed Al Halbousi, and Al Halbousi's basic approach of Baghdad-centric politics is not challenged by others contending for the speakership. Even if Al Halbousi fails to stay on top in Anbar or nationally, his politics will be followed by whoever takes his place.

“The key difference between the Shia and Sunni establishments is that while both were incompetent, corrupt, and to blame for the 2014 catastrophe, the Shia were able to wage the war and come out on the winning side. If, when the war ends, you hold the guns and institutions in your hands, you win.”

Joel Wing, a California-based Iraq researcher, says it was inevitable that no senior leaders would face accountability for the rise of ISIS. 

“The Iraqi elite do not believe in rule of law or accountability. They are a group of unscrupulous oligarchs who will double-cross each other and then turn around and make deals with those same people because holding onto power is all that matters,” he says. 

Experts say ISIS today is at a historically low ebb, making only a few attacks per month and only occasionally managing to kill any Iraqi soldiers at all, compared to hundreds of attacks per week in 2014.

“I think significantly the army has been improved, the capabilities now are significant, Iraqi forces are restoring the national credibility and people are gaining great confidence in their national forces,” says Ismael Al Soldani, a retired Iraqi brigadier. 

“ISIS no longer has social support in the areas that it formerly controlled. And that's really significant because people would like Iraqi forces to be their protectors rather than ISIS. The narrative that ISIS promoted at that time was that they were protecting the Sunni people against the Shiite government. 

“And it turned out that ISIS started humiliating them, persecuting them and treating them brutally . So, in general, public opinion in Mosul, Salahuddin, Tikrit, Kirkuk, Hawija and Ramadi is rejecting ISIS. Anyone who would say that he is part of ISIS, they start reporting them to the Iraqi security forces. That is significant.”

But Mr Al Sodani has a warning for the future, amid widespread criticism that Iraq’s political class is failing to improve the lot of ordinary communities across the country.

“Security forces can create peace and security for a very limited time. If there is no government strategy that includes the economy, and social integration and diplomatic efforts from the regional and from the international players, it won’t last.”

Although the rise of ISIS in 2014 ultimately led to the dislodging of Mr Al Maliki as prime minister, that did not mean the end of his impact on Iraq’s politics.

"Iraq’s elite can at times be more powerful than the simple position of the prime minister. In this case Mr Al Maliki and the State of Law coalition had considerable influence over Iraq’s state institutions even though Mr Al Maliki was no longer prime minister,” says Renad Mansour, senior research fellow at Chatham House.

“He is able to maintain his social power, he’s able to maintain his influence over the Iraqi state, even when he is no longer prime minister. Over his eight years as prime minister he was able to embed in the Iraqi state allies across the system, many of them who still exist and still work in the Iraqi state. This is just the story of how elite politics works in post-2003 Iraq. Mr Al Maliki is certainly a survivor, and is certainly a strong political operator over these years,” he says.

Mr Mansour says that one legacy of 2014 is that it showed how Iraq can be united by a common goal, but this has also proven fleeting as the threat dissipated.

“The Shiite groups, the Kurdish groups, the Sunni groups, but also the Iranians, the Americans, and others, everyone was against ISIS.

"But of course as soon as ISIS was defeated territorially, questions came up of who had influence in the immediate term in post ISIS areas – and here you begin to see competition between different groups looking to gain influence in the vacuum that comes out of the fall of ISIS in Mosul and other cities of Iraq.”

In the years that followed, Mr Mansour says, the competition and tension between the US and Iran also increased.

Hamzeh Hadad, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, says that brief moment of unity defied many expert predictions that Iraq would permanently fragment.

“Many - and at the time I thought it was exaggerated - were questioning the existence of the modern Iraqi state, and today not only is that state still there, it is stronger than it has ever been since 1980.

“In 2014, people were questioning what the Iraqi state would look like; that is not a question in 2024. Even with regard to Iraqi Kurdistan, the threat of secession is non-existent after the failure of the 2017 independence referendum.”