The Iraqi government and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi appear determined to recapture ISIL's stronghold of Mosul. Abadi had previously said that ISIL in Iraq would be defeated by the end of 2016.
It could be a matter of time before this plan succeeds, however. ISIL is outnumbered and outgunned, but there are growing fears over the human costs of this campaign.
US-led coalition warplanes have been pounding targets in Mosul for months. They have stated that the targets were ISIL positions, but reports from inside the city suggest that civilians are also being killed. [...]
A quick flashback to 2003 reminds us that ISIL had its origins in al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi galvanised many fighters, transformed the group and introduced new insurgency tactics.
After his death in a US military raid in 2006, the group became known as the Islamic State of Iraq, led by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. Baghdadi was killed by Iraqi and US forces in 2010, and the group got yet another leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a former inmate held in a US prison in southern Iraq in 2004 and set free four years later.
He ultimately led the group to fight in Syria's war in 2012 and formed what is the present-day ISIL. Many Iraqis argue that the main reason that such groups exist is the injustice inflicted on Iraq's Sunni Arabs since 2003.
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