article: Militants from the group swept virtually unopposed into large swathes of the country, including the second city Mosul, in June 2014. Their gradual expulsion from Iraq seems at the moment to be almost a matter of time, albeit a good deal of time. Territory that was lost in a day or two is taking many months to claw painfully back. If that process continues and the militants are defeated, the way Iraq fits together - if it does - will be decided by who pushes them out, and how the resulting vacuum is filled. The IS fighters were able to lodge so easily in the Sunni Arab heartlands because the people there had been largely alienated by the sectarian policies and practices of the Shia Arab-dominated Baghdad government under Nouri al-Maliki, who was finally prised out of the prime minister's office in August 2014. Precious little has been done since then to foster national reconciliation and make the Sunnis, a powerful minority under Saddam Hussein, feel they are full partners in a national project. Legislation to empower the Sunnis by devolving security and financial responsibilities to the provinces has not happened. Nor have measures to reverse the persecution of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, or the random arrests, detentions, and to assuage other Sunni grievances. While slow progress is being made to drive IS back, many argue that military victory alone is not enough. "Unless there's political reconciliation, we'll have IS back again five years down the line," a senior diplomat warned. It happened before, so the historical lesson is there, and not so long ago. The predecessor of IS, al-Qaeda in Iraq, was driven out of the mainly Sunni western province of Anbar from 2006, after the local tribes were induced to switch sides and fight alongside the US and Iraqi militaries against the militants. But promises of employment and empowerment were not kept. Mr Maliki's policies so angered many Sunnis that the terrain was soon ready for the militants to move back in from refuges in Syria. The US, who have about 3,500 military personnel training and advising Iraqi government forces on the ground, also seems to be aware that military muscle is not enough. "We can't just kill our way out of this one," said Col Steve Warren, spokesman in Baghdad for the US-led international coalition against IS. "We need good governance, a peace settlement in Syria, and other things to fall into place." Neither of those elements is currently available. But the fight against IS goes on, and looks set to be stepped up. There is a strong feeling that the Americans are pushing for a major victory such as the recapture of Mosul and possibly Raqqa in Syria - IS's self-declared "capital" - as a legacy item before President Barack Obama bows out in January. But even if initially successful, such an ambitious project, indeed, any further moves to oust IS, could go badly wrong if the foundations are not sound. Mosul is an almost wholly Sunni city with a population of about two million.
summary: More than in any other country, Iraq's future is intimately bound up with the fate of self-styled Islamic State (IS).