The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) took control of the city of Fallujah, Iraq on January 4, 2014. The ISIL is one of the latest sects of an Al Qaeda affiliate that lost ground in 2006 as Sunni tribesmen and former insurgents joined U.S. troops against jihadists and jihadi ideals. Parts of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, have also fallen to the militants in the ISIL.

According to an unnamed journalist in Fallujah, most residents do not support the Al-Qaeda fighters, but they lack any means to oppose them. Some local tribes have challenged their presence with scattered firefights. The Iraqi army also fired shells into Fallujah from bases outside the city, killing at least seventeen people as of late-January.

Fallujah, which fell to militants that resurged after the U.S withdrew from the country, was declared an Islamic state by Al-Qaeda. The resurgence of Al-Qaeda militants in Iraq is a result of many factors, including the US strategic rebalance in the Asia-Pacific region as well as the chaos brought by the Arab Spring.

This upheaval has confirmed the increasing capabilities of the ISIL, created a decade ago to confront U.S troops and has expanded into Syria last year while heightening its activities in Iraq. The ISIL has been increasing its control in the Sunni-dominated desert provinces bordering Syria with a bid to create a Sunni Muslim state. Al-Qaeda’s influence in Syria has given militants control over the desert territories on the Iraqi-Syrian border. This enables them to easily transfer weapons and fighters between both areas.

Over the past few years, Al-Qaeda bounced back violently, with a new brutal leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is responsible for thousands of deaths across Iraq. Al-Baghdadi has called for all Muslims except for the Shias, whom Al-Qaeda sees as apostates, to join him and Al-Qaeda in order to wrest control of Sunni-dominated western Iraq from the Shia majority Iraqi government in Baghdad. As the leader of the terrorist organization, he launched a savage campaign of bombings that killed more than 8,000 people in 2013 according to the United Nations. The death toll in Iraq is still on the rise due to a campaign started by al-Baghdadi with orchestrated bombings that have pushed Iraq’s death toll back up to around 1,000 a month.

United States Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters that the U.S. would provide assistance to Iraqi forces in their battle against the militants but was not considering sending troops back to Iraq. The city of Fallujah was one of the most crucial areas that U.S. troops fought to pacify before withdrawing from Iraq two years ago.  In 2004, Marines fought the bloodiest battle of the Iraq war, where nearly 100 U.S. troops were killed fighting for control of Fallujah, a city which was once an insurgent stronghold. This battle is said to be the site of America’s bloodiest confrontation since the Vietnam War.

The reassertion of control by Al-Qaeda militants calls attention to the extent to which the Iraqi security forces have struggled, and failed, to maintain and sustain the gains made by U.S. troops before they withdrew in December 2011. The takeover has also raised questions about the legacy of the war.

Javier Ergueta, upper school History teacher, believes that the war, as well as the legacy that it left, was in fact a failure and a waste of American lives and dollars. “[The Iraq invasion] was an invasion that, by the latest estimate, at over three trillion dollars, cost 150 times more than President Bush originally estimated and resulted in mostly the opposite effect to the most modest goal he set for it. [Was] shutting down Al-Qaeda’s influence in Iraq a failure? Only in our current hyper-partisan, impervious-to-facts, dysfunctional political culture can anyone doubt it.”

President Obama has faced accusations that he squandered U.S. sacrifices in Iraq through his decision to withdraw troops two years ago. These accusations have been led by Senator John McCain, who drew attention to the hundreds of U.S. troops that died during operations to keep Fallujah and Ramadi free of Al-Qaeda. “Now we see people driving around Fallujah with black flags. It’s a disgrace,” said Senator McCain on the subject. The United States has officially been out of Iraq since 2011, but the legacy and effects from the war are still controversial to Americans today.