What about post-ISIL Syria?

The defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), or DEASH, has started to seem certain, after the impending fall of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

It is likely to take some more time, loss of life, destruction, and trial-and-error by the Americans, Russians, Syrians, Iranians, Iraqis, Turks and other forces on the field, but there are signs that the end is near for the most violent terrorist movement of modern times.

But the end of ISIL as an organization does not necessarily mean that the militants forming ISIL - other than those killed in clashes and military operations - will simply evaporate. After all, ISIL grew like a snowball after declaring itself in January 2013 with the flow of jihadi militants largely coming from other jihadi organizations in the Syrian civil war. 

The cross-border nature of al-Qaeda, from which ISIL split, enabled this new and most radical entity to attract jihadists from all over the world: From Vahabis in Chechnya to Uighurs in China, to digitally-radicalized Muslim fanatics in France, Germany, Canada and Britain. All were fueled by Saudi and other Gulf money over decades, and their return to their countries of origin has introduced the problem of "domestic terrorist foreign fighters" to international security experts.

Those who survive the anti-ISIL operations will not merely evaporate, and many will probably join other organizations. Still, the threat posed by them having control of a territory with oil fields will hopefully be gone.

But what is going to happen to Syria and Iraq after ISIL?

There are a few serious problems on the horizon. The first one is the future of the Syria regime. Despite having the support of Russia and Iran, Bashar al-Assad is obviously unable...