Decade since ISIS launched bloody and depraved reign

30 June 2024 , 15:32

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Islamic State militants captured swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014 (Image: Pictures from History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

It took a year for Iraqi and Kurdish infantry to drive Islamic State out of Mosul, after starting their attack from 10 miles outside the city.

From the Battle of Bashiqa, Islamic State’s lunatics fought to the very end in Iraq’s second city. We witnessed the opening shots heralding the beginning of the end of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s brutal Caliphate back in 2016. This month marks a decade since the most feared terror kingdom launched its bloody and depraved reign in Mosul.

For several years Islamic State was entrenched in Syria and Iraq, plotting wider attacks far beyond Iraq’s borders. Kidnapping women and using them as sex slaves, extorting banks and businesses and launching a black market of stolen booty built up a war chest of several billion dollars.

IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in 2019 (Getty Images)

They even stole oil to sell at cut prices in Turkey, making the group a fortune to feed its endless thirst for warfare on the rest of the world. Even now Iraqi Special Forces are fighting Islamic State in their caves and secret hideouts as they plot terror attacks, their militant tentacles stretching all the way to the UK.

Only last year the head of Special Forces there Abdel Wahab al-Saadi told me in Baghdad: “We know ISIS have been talking to UK-based terrorists and we know what they are planning. It is a big attack.” Thankfully that plot to attack a major gathering in the UK was thwarted by MI5 and police after Baghdad officials tipped them off.

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An offensive by the Iraqi army cleared IS from its stronghold in Mosul (Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)

A few hundred Islamic State junior commanders and their fighters are believed to be hiding in the desert – with sleeper cells also in Syria. But it may be years before their threat is wiped out, having spread all the way to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Africa and into Europe.

Islamic State was an offshoot of al-Qaeda, made up of jihadists thrown out of Osama bin Laden’s group as they were too violent. Spawned amid the chaos of post war Iraq, their leader and beheader- in-chief was Jordanian thug Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Iraqi forces were aided in their campaign by Kurdish groups (MDM)

He was killed by US forces in 2006 after running a brutal campaign against Iraqi Shia, Christians and western forces. Then the group was known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, former drug dealer al-Zarqawi having met bin Laden during a stint as a jihadist in Afghanistan. Iraqi-born hate cleric al-Baghdadi took over and in 2010 was announced as the group’s “emir,” spearheading one of the bloodiest-ever waves of killings in Iraq. In 2013 al-Baghdadi changed the Al-Qaeda in Iraq name to Islamic State in al-Sham, a reference to his desire to make a land-held caliphate across the Middle East.

IS sought to create a new caliphate in the Middle East (AFP/Getty Images)

Thousands of Iraqi police were slaughtered as ISIS rampaged across Iraq’s Sunni triangle. ISIS then streamed north to Mosul, where al-Baghdadi had his big moment. In June 2014 he stood in Mosul’s al-Nuri Mosque and announced himself the Caliph of Islamic State, which governed the city and its Syrian HQ Raqqa. Anyone associated with the Shia sect was slaughtered.

Scores of terror plots were hatched in the Middle East, including knife and car-ramming attacks in Westminster and London Bridge. A year after we covered the Battle of Bashiqa, 10 miles outside Mosul, Iraqi and Kursih troops, backed by western special forces, reached the city’s outskirts. Photographer Rowan Griffiths and I entered Mosul old town as the remnants of ISIS were wiped out and RAF jets pummelled the jihadists with bombs.

A teenage boy carrying ammo to the frontline told us: “We’re taking 10,000 bullets to the troops every hour. This is the final battle. These terrorists won’t die.” The ISIS sleeper cells that remain in the region are trying to gain a new foothold. An Iraqi counter-terror source said: “They still dream of launching an attack against western targets and yes, they will try to do something in the UK. Any attack in the west serves as a recruiting tool for ISIS, so they have to be stopped.”

Chris Hughes