But the predicted victory may be short-lived for Western countries, which will be forced to confront the problem of what to do with their citizens who went to Syria or Iraq to join the militant group.
Hundreds of Western ISIS fighters are being held in refugee or detention camps by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria. Many others may still be ensconced in ISIS's last bastion -- which is shrinking by the hour -- in the town of Baghouz Al-Fawqani.
Experts say few countries have embassies or extradition treaties with Syria, let alone with the Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria. Nor have they shown any desire to go to the areas where ISIS fighters and families are being held, and put their government representatives in harm's way.
So what options are open to Western countries when it comes to dealing with their homegrown militants?
Citizenship-stripping
Despite urging Western governments to "take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial," US President Donald Trump instructed his administration not to allow the return of Hoda Muthana, an Alabama woman who left the United States in November 2014 to join ISIS.
The US is now contesting her American citizenship, even though a family representative told CNN that Muthana, who is of Yemeni heritage, was born in the US and had a US passport.
A similar situation has played out in the UK, where the Home Office announced its intention to strip Shamima Begum, who joined ISIS in 2015, of her citizenship even though she is not a dual national -- a move not accepted under international law.
In 2014, then-Home Secretary Theresa May (now Britain's Prime Minister) was given the power to deprive someone of their citizenship if there were "reasonable grounds to believe that the person is able to become a national of another country or territory under its laws."
Begum's family is of Bangladeshi origin. However, Bangladesh's foreign ministry said the 19-year-old was not a Bangladeshi citizen and would not be allowed entry to the country.
Rebecca Skellett, head of the strong cities network at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISR), an anti-extremism think tank in London, told CNN that citizenship-stripping is a policy used largely on people from minority backgrounds.
She warned that it "suggests two different tiers to crimes" and "risks feeding into extremist narratives, that if you are Muslim or not part of the mainstream of society you will always be a second-class citizen in Western society."
Begum's husband, a Dutch ISIS fighter, has suggested a way out for his wife. Yago Riedijk, 27, who is currently in a Kurdish detention center in Syria, told the BBC on Sunday that he would like his wife and son to return to the Netherlands with him.
While refusing to comment on individual cases, a spokesman for the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security told CNN that the Dutch government is not inclined to help Dutch ISIS fighters in Syrian territory. But if a Dutch ISIS member "reports at a Dutch embassy or consulate, that person will be transported to the Netherlands, arrested and prosecuted," he said.
And in line with other European countries, the spokesman added that "foreign fighters with two, or more, nationalities, who are deemed a threat to our national security, can have their Dutch citizenship (or) passport revoked."
Guantánamo Bay
There have also been suggestions from Trump and some Republicans that Guantánamo Bay could make a comeback. The camp was repurposed from a migrant detention facility to hold detainees in the war on terror -- in response to the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001, and subsequent military operations in Afghanistan.
During the George W. Bush administration, the US argued that Guantánamo Bay detainees were not on US soil and therefore not covered by the US Constitution, and that "enemy combatant" status meant they could be denied some legal protections.
Its population consisted of a mix of nationalities, including Canadian, British and Chinese citizens.
Guantánamo was intended to be a place where suspects in the war on terror could be interrogated. But prisoners were indefinitely detained, many without charges or trial and subjected to reported abuse. As the war dragged on, Guantánamo became an international symbol of US rights abuses in the post-9/11 era.
The last detainee was sent there in 2008, according to advocacy group Human Rights First. But during his State of the Union speech last year, President Trump signed an order to keep the detention facility in Cuba open and signaled his interest in sending new prisoners there. The facility currently holds 40 detainees, according to Human Rights First.
"I am asking Congress to ensure that in the fight against ISIS and al Qaeda we continue to have all necessary power to detain terrorists wherever we chase them down, wherever we find them. And in many cases for them it will now be Guantánamo Bay," Trump said.
As ISIS' territory shrinks, Republican Senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Cornyn wrote a letter to Trump on January 22 warning that with "the rapidly shifting dynamics in Syria, it is possible that these terrorists may escape or be released from SDF custody."
They urged the President to transfer "the worst of these Islamic State fighters (currently in Syria) to the detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, where they will face justice."
When asked by CNN on February 19 whether ISIS members like Muthana could be sent to Guantánamo Bay, a State Department spokesman would only say: "The US government is considering various alternative disposition options, for foreign terrorist fighters who cannot be repatriated."
Guantánamo presents a "terrifying prospect" for practitioners who work on de-radicalization programs and "hear their motivation to radicalize" was Guantánamo Bay, said Skellett from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
"US foreign policy was used and cultivated by al Qaeda recruiters and sympathizers as an entry point [to radicalize people], and so we could enter this same cycle again if we start abandoning the justice system," she said.
International courts
The idea of putting ISIS fighters in front of a special tribunal or international court has been floated by international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney and Nadia Murad, an Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist and joint winner of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.
Clooney hoped to gather enough evidence against ISIS leaders who could face justice at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
Others, like the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), a Europe-based non-profit focused on conducting criminal investigations during armed conflict, have been pushing for the establishment of a specialized ISIS tribunal in northern Iraq. But exactly where and how these cases would be heard is tangled up in the complexities of politics and differences between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil.
Neither Iraq nor Syria ratified the Rome Statute that created the ICC, which means the court has no jurisdiction over crimes committed in those countries.
It also means the chance of prosecuting ISIS's leadership, many of whom are Syrian and Iraqi, "appear limited," ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensourda said in a 2015 statement.
In any case, Simon Palombi, an investigation, intelligence and security consultant in London, told CNN that the ICC was "designed for large cases dealing with genocide and other human atrocities." It primarily charges the leaders of such movements, not the thousands of foot soldiers like ISIS fighters.
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, whose country in 2016 had the highest per capita number of foreign fighters in Syria, suggested to local media a special tribunal, similar to the one suggested by CIJA, to prosecute Belgian and other ISIS fighters in Syria or Iraq.
To get an international tribunal up and running can be a very slow process. Palombi, a former international security consultant for Chatham House, pointed to the UN-backed tribunal in Cambodia, which ruled in 2018 that the Khmer Rouge committed genocide -- 40 years after the collapse of Pol Pot's tyrannical communist regime, which was responsible for the death of 1.7 million people.
"It would take time for every individual case to be heard and ensuring those processes are fair and meet Western standards of judicial review," he said. "If you are dealing with returning jihadis, the time pressure is a lot more immediate as they are in jails which are not the most secure."
"In terms of an immediate solution, it falls on individual countries to work out how they want to deal with their respective citizens."
Repatriation
Human rights advocates and terrorism experts all point to repatriation as the best option for Western countries.
However, there would be hurdles to prosecuting returning fighters. In many countries, traveling to ISIS-held territory is not a crime in itself -- although the UK has just passed a law making travel to a terrorist hotspot illegal -- nor is it illegal to marry an ISIS fighter.
And while many countries have laws against aiding or abetting terrorist organizations, finding evidence to secure convictions will be difficult.
In the UK, for example, the government estimates that more than 900 British citizens traveled from the UK to Syria and Iraq. Of that number, around 200 have died, and nearly half have returned to the UK, according to Skellett from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
She said around 80 of the returned jihadists are in the Home Office's Channel program, which is the central plank of Britain's strategy to combat terrorism, while another 80 are believed to have already been put to trial and sentenced.
"Which leaves quite a large number of people who have traveled to Syria and Iraq" left to their own devices in the UK, said Skellett.
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