Mosul has fallen. What happens now? Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi arrived in recent hours in his war-ravaged nation's second-largest city to declare victory over the largely home-grown insurgency of Islamic State. The route to military victory was paved with international cobblestones, including from Australia. How might we help humanity prevail?
Perspective can help. As we sit here in Australia and, rightly, debate education, wages, tax rates, energy and housing affordability, immigration, infrastructure and other issues, we should perhaps consider, too, the state of the rest of the world, particularly conflicts in which we have been involved and that have caused many deaths.
As the smoke clears in a shattered city, more than ever the questions of human rights, governance and equality will be posed for Iraq and its allies in the community of nations.
As the war effort in Iraq and neighbouring Syria is showing, there was never really a question of whether Islamic State's militancy and terrorism could be defeated. The real issue is whether the internal and external tensions that have beset Iraq since the US-led and Australian-backed overthrow of Saddam Hussein could be addressed in a way that contributed to peace and progress in Iraq, the region and the world.
The discord between Iraq's Shiite and Sunni Arabs and their Kurdish, Christian and Yazidi compatriots is unabated. We have a compelling call to help manage the peace. The crucial question to ask when a military conflict is poised to end or a popular uprising is poised to grab power from a dictator is: what happens the morning after?
There is reason for grave concern that a plan for managing peace and rebuilding Iraq's second biggest city has not been properly formulated. An even bigger challenge is rebuilding trust between communities. Only a few months from now, the Kurdish population, which has been pivotal to defeating Islamic State, is likely to vote to secede from Iraq.
These divisions, combined with the agendas of outside powers, augur poorly for peace. There is a strong argument that the US, Australia and other nations that see liberty as intrinsic to justice should help ensure stability after the fall of Mosul. Several years ago, the world celebrated what it thought was an incipient uprising against dictators in the Middle East. But the Arab Spring, as it became known, fizzled – because the question of what happens next had not been properly addressed.
This time, we cannot afford to leave a vacuum for extremism to fill.
- A note from the editor – to have Age editor Alex Lavelle's exclusive weekly newsletter delivered to your inbox sign up here: www.theage.com.au/editornote
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