The US-backed "Democratic Syria" said it had seized control of the last enclave of the Islamic state in the eastern province of Baguoz, ending the state of the "caliphate" that the organization had declared and once spanned up to a third of Iraq and Syria.

Despite Syria's democratic declaration of defeat, and previous declarations by President Donald Trump, there is almost a general agreement that the organization remains a threat.

What did the defeat of the organization achieve?
It was the organization's control over an area of ​​land in Iraq and Syria that distinguished it from other similar organizations such as al-Qaeda, and that control became central to his message when he declared the succession of the Caliphate in 2014.

The elimination of this entity deprives the organization of the most powerful propaganda and recruitment tools in its arsenal and of a logistical base that can train combatants and plan coordinated attacks abroad.

The defeat also brought his former subjects to death without trial and harsh penalties for violating his hardline laws and freed some minorities from sexual slavery and murder.

Thousands of fighters were killed by the war. The defeat also deprived him - financially - of resources greater than any resources available to other modern jihadist movements, including taxes imposed on residents of areas under his control and revenues from oil sales.

The remaining threat in Iraq and Syria?
The organization, in its former form - a branch of al-Qaeda in Iraq about 10 years ago - managed to avoid adversity by clandestine work, and the time was right to attack.

Since he suffered massive losses on the ground in 2017, he has once again turned to such tactics. Sleeping cells in Iraq have launched separate campaigns of kidnappings and killings to weaken the government.

It also carried out many bombings in northeastern Syria, which is controlled by US-backed Kurdish forces.

Kurdish and US officials say the threat of organization in the region remains. In Syria, there are still fighters in a small enclave west of the Euphrates River in an area controlled by the Syrian government.

A Pentagon internal oversight committee issued a report last month saying state organization was still an active militant group regaining its capabilities and functions in Iraq faster than Syria.

"In the absence of continued pressure (on the fight against terrorism), the state organization will most likely be reviving in Syria within six months to 12 months and reclaiming limited territory," the report said.

Where did the leaders and fighters disappear?
The fate of the organization's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, remains a mystery. US sources said recently that senior US government experts strongly believe he is still alive and may be hiding in Iraq.

Other leaders of the organization fell dead by air strikes. Thousands of his fighters and civilian followers have been killed and others have been captured, and an unknown number are still at large in Syria and Iraq.

Iraq is working to bring detainees from the organization to trial and imprisonment and often executed some of them.

Syria's democratic forces - backed by the United States - are holding hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters and their followers, but the numbers have increased as they advance and control a region near the Baguz.

Over the past two months, more than 60,000 people have left the Baguoz enclave, including 29,000 al-Qaeda supporters who surrendered, including 5,000 fighters, the Syrian Democratic Forces said.

Many of the residents who cooperated with the organization were released at the local level in Syria.

Syria's democratic forces complain that Western countries refuse to accept the return of foreign fighters, who are widely regarded as a security threat, but it may be difficult to bring them to trial according to law.

Can the organization launch attacks?
While the organization was clinging to the last piece of land it had seized, the head of Britain's MI6 warned that the organization would launch a variety of attacks.
Even after the organization began to inflict military losses on the ground, it still claimed responsibility for attacks in different countries, although these attacks were often attributed to individual operations without guidance.

The organization had begun years ago to call on its supporters abroad to plan attacks rather than focusing solely on attacks by trained members supported by the organization's structure.

In early 2018, the commander of the US Central Command said that the state organization was flexible and was still able to "suggest attacks across the region and beyond the Middle East."

What does the fall of the organization mean to violent groups?
Although the main territory on which the organization stood was in Iraq and Syria, there are others - individuals and groups - in faraway countries, particularly in Nigeria, Yemen and Afghanistan.

The question remains unanswered. Will these groups continue to wear the mantle of organization, especially if Baghdadi is captured or killed, but there is little chance that these groups will stop their campaigns soon.

Al-Qaeda maintains many branches around the world, and other Islamist groups are described as militant in the countries where the regime has collapsed.

It has been long established that the ideas of militancy can mutate as circumstances change, and that wars, injustice, oppression, poverty, sectarianism and even religious hatred all fuel the organizations of violence and give them a new life cycle.