‘ISIL is losing’: Iraqis optimistic for 2015 thumbnail Iraqi security forces backed by Shia militias, Kurdish forces and Sunni Muslim tribesmen will drive the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) from all Iraqi lands before the end of 2015, Iraqi security officials and analysts say. Iraq has been witnessing its worst security crisis since the 2003 US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. In June, ISIL fighters overran Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul without any real resistance from Iraqi troops. A few days later, ISIL seized the neighbouring province of Salahaddin and swaths of Kirkuk and Anbar provinces. Thousands of civilians and troops have been killed since then in direct clashes or mass executions carried out by ISIL. About two million people have been displaced from the conflict zones. The dramatic collapse of Iraqi troops in the northern and western provinces and the rapid advance of ISIL […]