It seems such a long time ago: the brazen defiance of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on the pulpit of the Mosul Grand Mosque on 4 July 2014, declaring a caliphate; military parades through the streets of Raqqa; the slick videos; the flood of foreign fighters and Muslim sympathisers into Syria and Iraq, the beheading of British and American hostages. Across the two major cities that Islamic State (IS) once controlled – Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa, its de facto capital, in Syria – all that remains today is mostly rubble and ruin.
For a period, it seemed inconceivable – even impossible – to imagine how IS would be overcome. At its height, the terror group was believed to have almost half as many soldiers as the British army, controlled a territory larger than the size of the United Kingdom, and had access to sophisticated weaponry that had been seized from Iraqi forces after they were routed in the campaign to take Mosul.
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