Even Islamic State can't pretend forever. For now it's trying to convince the world, its cheerleaders, perhaps itself, that the present battle for Mosul is going swimmingly. While American officials were telling us the siege was ahead of schedule, and Kurdish forces were tallying hundreds of square kilometres in reclaimed territory, IS was boasting of "absorb[ing] the momentum" of coalition forces, and even "repelling" them, turning their "offence to defence".
But eventually the facts on the ground outpace them, like they did in Fallujah in June. Back then, the propaganda pretty quickly dried up. Or more precisely, it shifted to spin this as part of some divine plan, presaging a triumphant return.
![Illustration: Simon Letch](/web/20161029051147im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/c/b/a/0/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsab6v.png/1477710955761.jpg)
Inevitably, that will happen in Mosul, too. Already coalition forces are converging on its outskirts. We're probably talking months rather than the weeks that applied in Fallujah's case, but there's little doubt that, after enormous bloodshed, IS will lose the city. The question is: what then? For everyone. What for Islamic State, for Mosul, for Iraq? Because if we've learned anything over the past 13 years, it is surely that the mission is not usually accomplished when we say it is. Winning on the battlefield is often when the problems start.
Indeed, that's how we ended up with IS in the first place. The story is well rehearsed by now: a predominantly Sunni city, whose residents were frequently besieged by Shiite militias unrestrained by the Iraqi government, prepared to let IS stroll in and claim the city because at least they'd defend the Sunni population. It was, in short, a story of a city whose politics were so dysfunctional in a country so dysfunctional that Mosul's people – even those in the Iraqi army - were hostile to the government in Baghdad.
![A boy pauses on his bike as he passes an oil field that was set on fire by retreating IS fighters ahead of the Mosul ...](/web/20161029051147im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/8/9/n/a/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsab6v.png/1477710955761.jpg)
It's different now, of course. Two years living under one of the world's most nihilistic, fascistic groups tends to change your perspective on things. Iraqi and Kurdish forces are far more likely to be received as liberators this time, as they have been in other IS-held cities. The current Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi is striking far less sectarian (especially anti-Sunni) poses than his predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki. But that doesn't mean the politics of this aren't still devilishly complex, or consequential.
For now, the Kurdish forces and the Iraqi army are united through a common enemy. But beyond that, they hardly have a common vision. The Kurds want what they've always wanted, and what both Iraq and Turkey have always fiercely denied them: an autonomous homeland. For the Iraqi government, vanquishing IS is a way to reunify the country under Baghdad's control; to bring Iraq back into meaningful existence. But once Mosul falls, there will simply be no denying the Kurds' contribution. Not when they've seized villages and recaptured vast lands. What, exactly, is the plan for the land the Kurds have taken? They're already running a de facto state in northern Iraq, financed partly by oil exports. Is the Iraqi government planning to take all this back? Or does it now accept a divided Iraq?
Meanwhile, Turkey is desperate to get involved – about as desperate as the Iraqis are to keep them out of the fighting. That's because Turkey's main fight here is with the Kurds, whose independent state would, if fully realised, take chunks out of Turkey as well. Turkey has already been prepared to bomb Kurdish fighters in Syria for example. But it might also be because Iraq fears that the Turks might want to claim parts of northern Iraq for itself. Already it is behaving in violation of Iraq's sovereignty, having troops stationed near Mosul in defiance of Iraq's wishes, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has started speaking cryptically about how Turkey "did not voluntarily accept the borders of [its] country" after the Ottoman Empire fell.
Then there are the Shiite militias who caused so many of Mosul's problems last time and who the coalition will want to ensure stay as far away as possible. Then we read reports of those militias' flags being seen on the outskirts of the conflict. This, in turn, makes Turkey even more eager to join the fight, to help resist growing Shiite (read Iranian) influence. If this were to happen, the whole offensive against IS would become not so much the work of a team of rivals as a team of enemies.
All this matters because whatever happens to IS in Mosul, it will not simply disappear. Indeed, that would remain true even if the coalition were to move on to seize IS's capital, Raqqa. It will simply revert to being a more typical terrorist group, launching waves of terrorist attacks against whoever controls these cities. That's what they did after 2007, when IS was last thought to have been vanquished. Most of its fighters – especially its foreign fighters who won't be allowed to return home – will probably retreat to the desert where it's simply too hard to track and police them. And that's where they'll regroup, recruit and if the opportunity arises, relaunch. That'll be the plan, anyway.
Whether it works will depend almost entirely on the political strength of the Mosul the current war leaves behind. If the Iraqi government can establish control through (rather than over) Iraqi Sunnis, then the city stands a chance. If instead Mosul descends into a series of political rivalries between the Kurds, the Sunni Arabs and various Shiite groups, then it will resemble the state of social and political fracture that made it so ripe for IS's picking in 2014. At that point, IS won't need to stretch the limits of its propaganda anymore. It will simply proclaim the fulfilment of its own prophecy. Meanwhile to the rest of us, it will look simply like history repeating.
Waleed Aly is a Fairfax Media columnist.
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