NBC News: The Battle for Mosul Won't End with Ouster of ISIS

The battle to oust ISIS from the Iraqi city of Mosul is shaping-up to be long and bloody and brutal, but in the end somebody will declare victory.

And when that happens, experts say, it will likely be a mirage.

There will be no way of knowing for sure whether ISIS has been completely vanquished because it's a guerrilla group that's not going to wave the white flag, they say. And dislodging the jihadis could lead to more problems — like a holy war for control of this multi-ethnic, multi-religious city of 1.5 million.

"The real question is not about the fight itself but what happens the day after," Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat and former Marine who served four tours in Iraq, told NBC News. "I have yet to see a serious plan to establish and maintain the peace...If they just go into Mosul and declare a military victory, this effort will fail."

Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies agreed.

"Whether any of that goes as planned is unclear,"said Alterman who serves as a vice president and director of the Middle East Program at the center. "But I think everybody anticipates that there will be a sustained effort to keep Mosul from settling down. There will be several sectarian actors that want to ensure that the new sheriff in town cannot do his job."

Right now, the Sunni and Shia Muslims, the ethnic Tajiks and Kurds, are all — more or less — opposed to ISIS.

"But the people doing most of the fighting have their own sectarian agenda," Alterman said. "The forces on the Iraqi side are not trying to create a kaleidoscope of diversity in Mosul. They are trying to keep another hostile group from establishing control once ISIS is out of the way."

Dan Goure of the Lexington Institute, another Washington-area think tank, echoed Alterman.

"We know the sectarian divisions in Iraq have not been fixed," said Goure who serves as a vice president with the think-tank. "It's a largely Sunni city, but it's got Kurdish and Tajik and Shia militias."

And after two years of resisting the ISIS occupation, they could just as easily turn on each other, Goure said.

The experts weighed-in after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced that the battle to liberate Mosul was underway. The Iraqis and Kurds will do the fighting on the ground. The U.S.-led coalition is providing the air power.

"Mosul will be a hard fight, but the Iraqi security forces are ready," U.S. Army Major General Gary Volesky, the top Coalition general in Iraq, said. "They've been waiting to liberate Mosul for two years."

Full article here.