Confronting the Coming Terrorist Diaspora

Islamic State has held Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, for more than two years. The IS forces now face an imminent assault by the Iraqi military, bolstered by American advisors. Presumably the government troops will, after much death and destruction, retake the city. The news media are already predicting this as the inevitable outcome, followed - also inevitably - by sectarian political struggle about the future of the city and its oil-rich neighborhood.

Assuming Mosul is taken, what kind of victory will it be? It is dangerously unwise to assume that if IS loses Mosul it will be "defeated" in the sense of being unable to continue to wreak havoc. IS fighters number in the many thousands. They have been trained in battlefield skills such as bomb-making and small-unit combat, but also in their ranks are those skilled at mounting terrorist attacks and communicating the angry recruiting gospel that has proved so successful during the past few years.

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