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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.

gislation 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.

he 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.

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.

osul is an almost wholly Sunni city with a population of about two million.

Some residents may still see IS - about 85% of whose fighters in Iraq are believed to be Iraqi - as their protectors against an Iranian-backed, Shia-dominated Baghdad government.

When the Iraqi army collapsed like a house of cards in the face of the IS eruption in June 2014, it was a motley array of hastily-assembled Shia irregulars, loosely banded into the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) that prevented the militants reaching Baghda

Ramadi gave a boost to the embattled Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi.He has scant support even from his own Shia Daawa party, and is seen across the board by Sunni, Shia and Kurdish politicians as weak, hesitant, lacking in leadership and unable to stand up to the militias.But there was a down-side to the Ramadi victory too: heavy destruction, and the displacement of the entire population.

Nor can the formula that finally and slowly worked in Ramadi simply be applied at Mosul. It took government forces with coalition backing seven months to regain Ramadi. Mosul is 10 times bigger.

He omitted to mention coalition air support, which would also clearly be crucial to the campaign.Some Iraqi analysts believe outside ground forces would also be needed. US military leaders, while reticent, clearly want to up the pace and have not ruled out more boots on the ground. In the absence of serious moves towards national reconciliation, one senior government figure also saw a campaign to retake Mosul as a vital way of forging national unity.

A UN commission of inquiry,

Western powers,

said it could only have been carried out by Syria's government.

regime and its ally Russia blamed rebels.

More than 3 million people have fled Syria since the start of the conflict,

A further 6.5 million people, 50% of them children, are believed to be internally displaced within Syria,

the total numbe

half the country's population.

rebel groups are also deeply divided

most prominent is the moderate National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces

Iran and Russia have propped up the Alawite-led government of President Assad and gradually increased their support,

support of Lebanon's Shia Islamist Hezbollah movement.

The Sunni-dominated oppositio

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Arab states along with the US, UK and France.

rise of radical Islamist militia in rebel ranks and the arrival of Sunni jihadists from across the world has led to a marked cooling of international and regional backing.