Raqqa liberated, but Middle East remains a cauldron of chaos

RAQQA, the Syrian city captured in 2014 by fighters affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) and declared as a capital of its "caliphate", was liberated last week by Syrian-Kurdish forces backed by the US.

The five-month-long fight over Raqqa marks a major advance in the long military campaign against the IS aimed at ejecting it from its territorial bases in Syria and Iraq. In July, a coalition of Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds had retaken the Iraqi city of Mosul - a central bastion of the radical Sunni Islamists where the caliphate had been proclaimed - back from the jihadists.

It is clear that the military momentum is now with the forces fighting the IS and that it is only a question of time before the remaining jihadist pockets in Syria and Iraq would be routed and the IS and its leaders would be vanquished. But the defeat of the IS forces in Syria and Iraq should not create a sense of false expectations. Without a coherent strategy to rebuild and stabilise Iraq and Syria, these countries and other parts of the Middle East could continue to experience growing ethnic and sectarian tensions that would have the potential to ignite military conflicts between the regional powers.