Will the jihadist tide be stemmed?

TWO weeks after the dramatic fall of chunks of Iraq to Sunni rebels led by the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), a ferocious jihadist group, hostilities have simmered to a lower boil. The heat has spread, however, pulling more forces into both Iraq’s turmoil and the related war in neighbouring Syria. With no hint of progress towards a political solution or a truce, the fighting looks certain to intensify and widen, and along with it the risk of yet another humanitarian disaster on the scale of Syria, where nearly half the population has fled abroad or been displaced.

On the ground in Iraq, regular troops and Shia militiamen loyal to the Shia-dominated government of the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, appear to be holding a rough defensive line north of the capital, Baghdad. Kurdish Peshmerga forces also continue to secure a border that stretches some 1,000km (621 miles) across the north and east of Iraq, separating their autonomous Kurdistan from the rebellious Sunni-majority region (see map).