US withdrawal won’t end the region’s ISIS dilemma

The U.S. military recently completed its withdrawals from Iraq and Syria, ending a decade of leadership in the counterterrorism fight against the Islamic State in the Levant. The gradual drawdown was meant to avoid a sudden vacuum that proxy militias, malign regional actors, terrorist organizations, and great-power rivals could fill, as happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet ISIS, while greatly reduced, persists in Iraq and Syria, which must now build a sustained regional counterterrorism effort