Almost a year after the Islamic State's shock capture of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, the black flags of the jihadis have been raised over Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province to the west of Baghdad, seat of Iraq's increasingly theoretical central government.
Nobody talks of Mosul or recapturing it from Islamic State forces. It is a forgotten city. Now it is all about the fall of Ramadi, the neighboring ancient Syrian city of Palmyra in central Syria and beyond — the Libyan city of Sirte, hometown of former leader Moammar Gadhafi.
To the eyes of many in the region, the real strategic loss behind the Islamic State's seizure of two Sunni cities in Iraq and Syria in a week is the evaporation of any Sunni alternative to the jihadis.