Fallujah: The Secret War That Decapitated Daesh, The Islamic State

The Islamic State exploded into the world's consciousness during the Syrian civil war in the early 21st Century. It has been variously called IS, ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh - this latter an unflattering acronym hated by its leaders. By 2014 Daesh had announced a "Caliphate" and had attracted many disaffected young men from all over the world. It had driven - actually scared - the Iraqi army out of Mosul. Daesh then proceeded to loot the banks, and capture almost the entire nearby non-Muslim Yazidi population. The Yazidi men were killed, and the women and girls were forced into sexual slavery in the name of Islam. Internet videos of gruesome beheadings of Christians, Shi'a, Syrians, Iraqis, and Europeans became a crude means to terrify and subdue the local population. By 2015, ISIS had reached the outskirts of Baghdad, and ruled a territory the size of Ireland. At that point a coalition of international forces, Muslim and non-Muslim, banded together and slowly uprooted Daesh and obliterated their "Caliphate." The overt military aspects of this reversal are well-documented, but there is another story that is often overlooked. This is the story of the secret war that decapitated the Daesh leadership. In this war, the Superheroes were women.