ABSTRACT
While the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had been expelled from all Iraqi urban centers by the end of 2017, an examination of Iraq’s future security is ever more salient, as the Iraqi State faces daunting challenges in this post-conflict scenario. This matter is contingent on how the Iraqi Government and sub-state actors interact to deal with security issues, such as ISIS terrorism, or its numerous militias and para-military actors. State-centric strategies have prioritized dealing with hard security issues, but no sustainable strategy has been articulated by the Iraqi political elite to deal with human security issues, ranging from internally displaced peoples to employment and environmental crises. Government failure to ameliorate the human security dilemmas outlined in this chapter contributes to the underlying conditions for alienated Iraqis to join extremist groups. However, Iraq’s government lacks political unison and state capacity to address this matter in the future.
