VICE

This week, on the season finale of Vice:

the dramatic fall of ISIS in Iraq.

He just got shot through the shin,

running across this... this street.

And then, the child soldiers

ISIS left behind.

How many other boys were you with?

All your age?

Do you think that he'll ever be able to forget

what he's been through?

Go, go, go!

We are not animals!

Ever since ISIS first swept across Syria

and Iraq three years ago,

they have dominated the international news cycle.

And over the last ten months, they have faded from headlines,

as they continue to lose physical territory in the region,

including where they first declared the caliphate,

Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul.

For the past year, Vice has been on the ground,

reporting on what actually happens

as the caliphate fails.

So, we've been told that at least two soldiers were killed today

and were just carried out, and dozens were injured.

The battle for Mosul lasted almost a year.

Its outcome will have global repercussions,

defining the future of Iraq and ISIS.

It's the biggest city in their territory,

and ISIS held it for three years.

Someone who knows this all too well

is Dr. David Kilcullen,

the former senior advisor

to General David Petraeus

and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The Battle of Mosul is...

the largest urban battle

that we've seen anywhere on the planet since the Second World War.

And I think people will be studying

what happens when you fight a modern war

with satellites and drones and smart phones

and IEDs, in an ancient city

that still has 1.2 million people living in it.

What are the ISIS fighters saying

to people who might want to flee?

And they would do this in front of everybody,

even in front of the children?

We rejoined the Iraqi security forces

as they prepared for the final push against ISIS in Western Mosul.

As they moved forwards,

clearing one building at a time,

terrified families fled,

knowing they could be killed at any moment.

It's just... shells like that are just landing...

sometimes every few minutes.

This is what clearing an area looks like.

Not only is there not a building that's not pretty much destroyed,

there's not even a window or a door

that isn't completely destroyed.

So you can imagine what it's like

for the something like 200,000 civilians

who are living in the Old City over there.

So this is... as far forward as they've been so far.

And it's not far from here to the Old City,

which is probably where ISIS

is gonna be forced to make their,

their last stand.

So they're really trapped in a very, very...

small area now.

The sniper, who pushed them back,

is now getting shots into this building,

which is their base. This is where they sleep.

So, they're now having to circle around the back of their own base

to, um, avoid the sniper fire. That's a seriously bad sign.

Oh!

That was the airstrike they've been calling for for about the last hour.

I think it hit the school, where they think there were ten ISIS fighters

who were the ones who were shooting very actively down the street.

They were saying that once the airstrike hit,

they were gonna then storm the school.

Amidst the chaos, the Iraqi soldier who fired the rocket

has killed three of his own men.

Every day was the same.

The fighting never stopped,

and the soldiers barely slept.

Go, go, go, go, go, go!

The plan now is to clear

all of these buildings up to the river.

And that would cut off the hospital from the Old City.

Take the hospital, and then all that's left of the Old City.

But there was a church and a mosque side-by-side here?

So this is the... the Tigris River just here.

There's an Iraqi flag in front of us.

Another Iraqi flag here.

So, they've... they've made it,

they've pushed all the way to the river,

and separated the hospital from the Old City,

which means however many fighters are left in the hospital

are now cut off and completely surrounded.

So it's taking much longer than everyone thought.

It's much harder than everyone thought,

but very slowly, bit by bit, building by building,

they're, uh, they're taking Mosul.

The prime minister came sounding triumphant.

In the heart of a free and liberated Mosul, he said:

"We announce absolute victory."

What was the cost to Mosul, the city,

and the civilian population of Mosul?

There are still bodies under the rubble in some parts of the city.

There's, if you like, a societal level

of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

of people there that lived through ISIS

and then lived through the fighting,

and now are going back and trying to rebuild their lives.

If, you know, key leaders are killed,

and if key terrain is held by the Iraqi security forces,

what do you think ISIS becomes?

This is the point at which we need to be asking ourselves

whether there's a better way, or a different way.

I mean, we've been fighting these guys for 15 years.

Hundreds of billions of dollars,

if not trillions of dollars, into the fight.

We've lost 8,000 people just from the US military alone.

Probably half a million civilians have been killed in that time,

and now we are dealing with not one,

but two global terrorist organizations,

each of which is as big as Al Qaeda was on 9/11.

Do you think we've made the situation,

not just worse, but twice as bad?

At least twice as bad. We now have,

groups that are operating in something like 70 countries.

We've got a really significant threat in Europe

which didn't exist on 9/11.

I don't think we're gonna deal effectively with this

in a matter of months or years.

This is a generational thing, and I know it's depressing to say that,

but I think we're probably closer to the beginning

than we are to the end.

ISIS has lost the physical battle in Mosul,

but the hardest part may have just begun.

Because now, as ISIS and other extremist groups

splinter and diffuse into international terrorist organizations,

there is a growing concern

that a larger problem is at hand,

as people who were indoctrinated by the group,

especially children,

are now re-entering society.

Isobel Yeung went to report on this burgeoning story

in the aftermath of the fall of ISIS in Iraq.

The city of Mosul has been liberated,

but rebuilding remains an enormous task.

We sat down with Governor Hammadi,

who's responsible for this entire province,

and whose job it is to oversee the reconstruction efforts.

What is the situation in Mosul right now?

Finding these ISIS sympathizers is a daunting task.

The fighting has caused

mass displacement throughout the country,

with the Battle of Mosul alone

forcing almost one million Iraqis

to flee their homes.

Thousands more continue to seek refuge.

These guys have just arrived in the camp from Tal Afar,

which is an ISIS-controlled area nearby.

This is one of several IDP camps

that have been set up in the last couple of months

to deal with the huge influx of people arriving

from ISIS-controlled areas all around here.

A lot of the children and a lot of their families

have lived under ISIS control for several years.

Many of these children exhibit signs of PTSD

after spending their formative years growing up under ISIS.

Like this 15-year-old, who agreed to speak with us

under the condition that we hid his identity

for fear of ISIS retaliation within the camp.

Do you remember what it was like

when Daesh first got to your town?

You watched that happening?