Is ISIS Coming Back To Iraq?

A view of a part of western Mosul during the battle to remove Isi from the city taken on 29 May 2017 REUTERS

Arwa Damon, Ghazi Balkiz, Muwafaq Mohammed and Brice Laine, CNN: Iraq defeated ISIS more than a year ago. The group's revival is already underway

There is a different feel to the atmosphere in Baghdad these days, as if the chokehold that has gripped the Iraqi capital for the better part of the last decade and a half has started to ease.

On the main road cutting through the Karada district, the sidewalks are crowded with vendors hawking designer knock-offs and sticky sweets. Restaurants lining the boulevard grill masgouf, a butterflied carp considered to be Iraq's national dish, over open flames. People sit at outdoor cafés, sipping tea and smoking shisha.

Two and a half years ago, ISIS plowed a truck packed with explosives into a busy shopping area down the road during Ramadan, killing hundreds of people.

Now, young men sporting skinny jeans, funky jackets and what we're told is the new "spikey" hairstyle hang around in groups. It's a look that once would have gotten them killed, back in the years of Iraq's sectarian bloodletting when Baghdad was a patchwork of brutal militias.

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WNU Editor: Iraq is a textbook example on what happens when centuries of sectarianism, religious conflict, and ethnic conflict are not resolved in a nation where all of these groups must live and work together.