Journey through the ISIS badlands

ISIS has dominated headlines for nearly a decade. Even as the groups power has waned the fear it instils has remained. In 2019 ISIS saw its last pocket of territory wiped from the map, ripped from its dying hands by Kurdish forces in Eastern Syria. In October, US special forces managed to chase down the group’s elusive leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi. He killed himself by detonating a suicide vest. US president Donald Trump may have declared ISIS defeat. But are they are really? The National sent Journalists Willy Lowry and Jack Moore into Kurdish controlled Iraq to investigate the state of the world’s most feared terrorist organisation.