Survivors of last major ISIS battle in Iraq beg for food
On a scorching August afternoon, an angry crowd surrounds a small lorry loaded with the meat of two slaughtered cows amid the ruins of what was the last ISIS bastion in Mosul.
They grab beef from a man standing on the back of the lorry and, after it pulls away, some wait for the next lorry to arrive.
Part of Eid Al Adha tradition, the deliveries did little to satisfy people living in the rubble of Mosul’s Old City more than a year after ISIS was driven out in a battle that reduced inhabitants to penury.
“There are many residents who need aid in getting food and rebuilding their houses,” said Ali Sharif, 24, after taking a bag of meat. “Everyone here was affected by war.”
Since Iraqi forces celebrated victory over ISIS, life for the Sunni inhabitants of ancient west Mosul, some of whom welcomed the extremists in 2014, has hardly improved. That has left them no happier with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad who they have long accused of treating them like second-class citizens.
“We will give this to the poor people here to help them and we ask God to bless us,” said Ali Aga, a logistics specialist, as he headed into a labyrinth of alleyways to knock on doors and hand over packets of fresh beef. “Our government doesn’t do anything to help them.”
To help towns laid to waste by months of fighting, Baghdad set up the Reconstruction Fund for Areas Affected by Terrorist Operations.
The plan for Mosul and Nineveh province included 78 projects for 2017-2018 worth 75.5 billion Iraqi dinars (Dh234 million), supplemented by a €135m (Dh659m) loan from Germany, figures published by the fund last week showed.
But experts say rebuilding Mosul, which had a pre-war population of 2 million and now has 646,000 homeless, is expected to cost billions of dollars.
Early this month Hazem Mohammed, 52, and his family returned to a ruin that used to be their home. He pitched a tent next to it, affording the family a little shade in the 43°C heat.
“I decided to live with my family in this tent to encourage the Iraqi government and humanitarian organisations to rebuild my house and other destroyed houses in the Old City,” Mr Mohammed said.
“We are a poor family. We don’t have money to live in dignity. We suffer from lack of food and we don’t have enough furniture because it is under the ruins of our house now.”
A passing car stopped at the tent and the driver, who gave his name as Mohammed Saleh, handed out a bag of Eid meat.
“I’m afraid that the government’s failure to rebuild infrastructure could bring a return of extremism,” Mr Saleh said.
Mosul municipal officials and western donors are concerned that the slowness of reconstruction might rekindle sectarian grievances that ISIS exploited.
Even a walk through an upmarket district of eastern Mosul, which escaped the worst fighting and where life has largely returned to normality, can be dangerous.
An explosion on Tuesday night in the Hay Al Arabi neighbourhood injured no one but left a roadside crater next to what residents said was the makeshift grave of an ISIS militant killed in battle.
The blast might have been an old grenade or part of a suicide vest, one resident suggested.