Iraq’s fight to defeat the Islamic State won’t end with the military defeat of the group.

As the US-backed Iraqi Security Forces liberated Mosul and Tal Afar this summer, retreating fighters continued to leave behind scores of complex improvised explosive devices (IEDs), deliberately hidden in populated areas to kill and injure civilians. US officials tell Al-Monitor that American support for the Herculean effort to clear those vestiges of the three-year war might be needed for decades.

“If you’re looking at the scope of contamination in these areas that have been liberated from [IS], it’s analogous to Europe after World War II [where] they’re still finding stuff today,” Jerry Guilbert, deputy director for programs in the State Department’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, told Al-Monitor. “This is ultimately going to have to be viewed as a long-term problem that’s in need of a local solution. It’s going to take years and years and hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up all of it.”

"It’s going to take years and years and hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up all of it."