In Iraq's Fallujah, broken remnants of IS's 'state'
The Islamic State group flag flying over Iraq's Fallujah is in tatters and its fighters are dead or gone, leaving behind a broken city of bomb-rigged buildings and empty streets. Only scattered signs of IS's self-declared "caliphate" remain in Fallujah, a city west of Baghdad that was seized by anti-government fighters in early 2014 and later became a key jihadist stronghold. The story of Fallujah's de facto independence from Baghdad, which some Sunnis initially hailed as liberation from a discriminatory government, has ended in mass displacement and destruction from which it will take years to fully recover.