Moving its operations into this region has allowed IS to build its network and carry out attacks that further damage the limited governance in the area. In Iraq, one such space is the Hamrin mountain range, which extends across Diyala, Kirkuk, and Salah al-Din provinces (see figure 1). ‘Ungoverned’ spaces in this sense refers to parts of a state’s territory into which the state does not reach, or where its reach is weak. Spaces are never truly ungoverned and some form of local or informal governance generally occurs, no matter the space. Nonetheless, in the first ten months of 2018, Knights documented 1271 attacks by IS in Iraq. Although IS’ attacks have decreased, security analysts, such as Michael Knights, argue that IS is focusing on higher quality targets as it restructures from a territory-holding to insurgency-focused entity. IS is no different, and as the organisation has previously done, it is once again taking advantage of such spaces in Iraq in order to strengthen its infrastructure and launch attacks. From Boko Haram in Nigeria to al-Qaeda in Yemen, violent extremists have long taken advantage of spaces where the central state’s control has receded and weakened in order to build a base for operations. Long before the territorial defeat of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq there were signs that the group was returning to its insurgency roots, as fighters retreated out of the cities and into rural areas. As the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) launched an operation to target the Islamic State in the Hamrin mountain range in Iraq on the 11 April 2019, it is pertinent to examine the importance of the Iraqi state’s involvement in governance and sustainable security in such isolated spaces.
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