Roving Reporter
“The Land Rover’s blue bodywork has been torn open by an IS explosion”
Now the final phase of the Mosul battle against the Islamic State is underway, I’m back in Iraq. Formerly IS’S Iraqi stronghold, the city is split into two parts by the River Tigris which winds through it. Backed up by coalition air power, Iraqi forces liberated the east side of the city in three months of intense fighting and now the battle is on for west Mosul.
From the east of the city, we could see the historic centre of west Mosul on the opposite bank. Amongst its densely-packed houses tumbling down an elongated mound – weirdly reminiscent of a Cornish fishing village – was the curious leaning minaret of the Al-nouri Mosque, which is Iraq’s version of the leaning tower of Pisa. Unsure about the range and reach of IS snipers, we didn’t hang around too long for photos.
Once famous for its historic origins as well as its wonky minaret, in recent years the mosque has become known as the place where selfproclaimed IS ‘Caliph’ Abu Bakr Al-baghdadi announced the establishment of IS. Within a year, the group had seized unprecedented swathes of Middle Eastern territory, while its terror tactics spread fear across the globe.
West Mosul is now reached by an interminable detour through outlying countryside and crossing an ‘army’ pontoon bridge, a temporary construction erected after IS attacks and airstrikes destroyed Mosul’s five bridges that once connected the east and west sides of the city.
The route into the city skirts around what was once an airport and is now an extraordinarily vast expanse of rubble. The airport is lined with units of Iraq’s Federal Police, who move in to hold newly-gained territory after special forces have made ground advances. As our Toyota bumps over the track that runs alongside the river, I see a Land Rover sporting the dark and light blue ‘ camouflage’ colours of the Federal Police – hardly an effective choice of colours in Iraq’s arid landscape – parked up.
It is the first military Land Rover I’ve seen in Mosul, an urban conflict which is characterised by Humvees, a gigantic American vehicle called an MRAP and armoured bulldozers for making sand berms. I suggest stopping to check it out but the disconsolate photographers sitting in the back, who have so far not even removed their lens caps due to the length of the drive, complain vociferously. “We have to get to the frontline,” they insist. “It’s already nearly midday.”
So we drive on into west Mosul, to see where the Iraqi forces have reached, exploring a grim 2 km (1.2 miles) train tunnel used by IS to train jihadis for suicide missions and taking photos of the burned-out wreckage of IS car-bombs and IS corpses left rotting in the streets. With coalition forces apparently carrying out near constant aerial surveillance operations, monitoring for terrorist activities and incoming car bombs, IS has started painting the thick bullet-proof metal sheets of their lethal VBIEDS in a range of pastel shades to make them look more like ordinary civilian cars from the air.
On the latest vehicles IS has sent hurtling towards Iraqi military positions, a windscreen, windows and wheels have been painted onto the thick metal in black paint. It is creative and looks almost comic but there is nothing funny about this awful repurposing of vehicles as bombs that can wreak immense destruction and devastation, and have killed and hospitalised countless young Iraqi men battling IS on the Mosul front lines.
By the time we head back out, dusk is falling and it is too late to stop and hang out with the Federal Police. The next day when we’re navigating the same route, the Land Rover’s blue bodywork has been torn open by an IS explosion of some sort. Apparently armour-plating only really offers protection against snipers and sporadic gunfire.
We engage in a near-identical dispute as the day before about pulling over. The war photographers’ chant of “frontline, frontline” is starting to get me down but as a freelancer I do not have the financial freedom to work alone. To be fair, they are often patient when I’m doing interviews, and I do understand that a group of Federal Policemen eating rice and beans beside an armoured Land Rover on a Mosul riverbank is hardly going to make it onto the front page of any publication other than LRM.
It’s another few days until we are back and I’m determined that it’s time for the photographers to compromise. As we approach the Federal Police base, the translator announces that the Land Rover has gone. Exhibiting patience I never used to have, I swallow my annoyance. The Iraqi Army still has a lot of West Mosul to go, so I guess we’ll catch up with that nice armoured Land Rover at some point further inside the city.