"One swears he sold chickens in Syria; another that he was a doctor, not a killer; a third that he was kicked out of the Islamic State jihadist group because he was too lazy; a fourth that he managed to get a salary as a fighter without actually doing anything," writes Sarah Benhaida, Baghdad bureau chief.

"But the stories of these Frenchmen who had traveled to the Middle East to join the IS extremists don’t seem to move the Iraqi judge hearing them in Baghdad."

"One by one, he condemns the men to death."

"What I slowly absorbed after a few days in post-IS Mosul -- and its Syrian twin city Raqa a few weeks later -- is that what comes (war) after is infinitely more complex to chart out and to report faithfully," writes Maya Gebeily, who has covered the conflicts in Iraq and Syria over the past several years.

"There is no step-by-step strategy to rebuild a city's spirit. There's no unified command-and-control center.  It's usually not even clear what victory is supposed to look like or when it can be declared."