Iraq’s New War Against Islamic State: Halting the Group’s Budding Rural Resurgence by Nabih Bulos - LA Times
… The attack, one of the deadliest since Iraq declared military victory over the extremist group in December 2017, was the clearest sign yet that the war isn’t over.
It has merely shifted to a new phase: Islamic State is trying to mount a comeback, and the Iraqi military is trying to root out sympathizers and sleeper cells still embedded in the extensive territory the group once controlled.
By many accounts, the government is failing to contain a budding insurgency, the sort of resilient, underground enemy that has outlived governments around the world.
Stripped of its territory — which once encompassed a third of both Iraq and Syria — Islamic State has reverted to its roots, using small, self-contained teams of operatives to conduct small-scale attacks and assassinations and rebuild its smuggling and ransom operations.
“We’re not talking about the networks they used to have. Now it’s cells of five or six people,” said Shamkhi Mansour, a colonel in the intelligence branch of Iraq’s Counter-Terrorism Service.
Iraqi military officials, security experts and the U.S. government said that Iraq has failed to develop the extensive intelligence network that would offer the best chance of rooting out the militants…