Isis caliphate disintegrates

The fall of Raqqa, Isis's self-professed caliphate capital in Syria is the best news since the recapture of Mosul in Iraq. Now this wretched militant organisation and its army of foreign fighters have been reduced to a scattering of mini locations in Iraq and Syria and, hopefully, will soon be driven out of the region altogether. Three years have gone since Isis grabbed huge chunks of territory in Iraq and Syria and settled in for a long, brutal occupation. Three years sounds a long time but there were US commanders who predicted the campaign to defeat Isis would take much longer. Isis is not yet defeted as such, the brand continues to threaten freedom-loving people, but its aim of establishing its own permanent kingdom across Iraq and Syria has failed. As with al-Qaeda, heavy defeats have not destroyed them totally and Isis has sprung up in all sorts of different places, such as Libya and Afghanistan. But, following such mighty losses in their two chosen countries, let us hope that the momentum for the black-flag carrying militants will be brought to a shuddering halt. Foreign fighters from around the world who volunteered to support Isis must surely now be thinking, what's the point! The campaign by the US-led coalition has been quite remarkable. There was much scepticism that the coalition would ever achieve success against such a determined network of fanatics. But the doubters have been proved wrong. Thousands of Isis fighters have been killed and their seized territory has been won back. Obama started it all off, but Trump definitely added firepower and more flexibility to bring the hoped-for defeat of Isis to a more rapid conclusion. The end result, of course, is not just about the slaughter of Isis. Thousands of civilians have died, too, towns and cities where Isis hid behind the Syrian and Iraqi populations have been devastated, and it will take visionary diplomacy to sort out the political future of Syria. But Isis's dreams of a caliphate are finally over.