The recapture of Mosul
IRAQ is declaring victory over Isis in Mosul as the Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, wearing black military uniform, arrived in the city to congratulate his soldiers at the end of an epic nine-month long battle. Elite Iraqi government forces raised the Iraqi flag on the banks of the Tigris River early this week, though Isis snipers are still shooting from the last buildings they hold in the Old City.
The magnitude of the victory won by the Iraqi government and its armed forces, three years after they suffered a catastrophic defeat in Mosul, is not in doubt.
A few thousand lightly equipped Isis fighters astonished the world by routing in four days an Iraqi garrison of at least 20 000 men equipped with tanks and helicopters. The recapture of Mosul now is revenge for the earlier humiliation.
The devastation in the city is huge: the closer one gets to the fighting in the centre, the greater the signs of destruction from airstrikes. Wherever Isis made a stand, Iraqi forces called in the US-led coalition to use its massive firepower to turn whole blocks into heaps of rubble and smashed masonry.
A volunteer medical worker, who wished to remain anonymous, said that on bad days “some 200 to 300 people with injuries had turned up at my medical centre. I hear stories of many families dying, trapped in basements where they had been sheltering from the bombs.”
Isis gunmen have slaughtered civilians trying to escape from areas they held.
Jasim (33), a driver living behind Isis lines in the Old City, died when an Isis sniper shot him in the back as he tried to cross the Tigris over a half-destroyed bridge.
Two months ago, he was in touch with The Independent by phone after he had been wounded in the leg by a coalition drone attack.
“After a while, I felt a severe pain on my leg, and after few moments I realised I was injured,” he said. “I partly walked and partly crawled to a small temporary clinic nearby, but they could not treat my leg properly.”
Abdulkareem (43), a construction worker and resident of the Al-Maydan district, where Isis is making its last stand, spoke to The Independent last week about the dangers facing him and his family.
“We can hear the roar of the bombing and the mortar fire,” he said. “But we don’t know whether it is the Iraqi army, the coalition airstrikes or Daesh [Isis].”
A few days later, an airstrike hit his house and friends say that he was badly injured,
Away from the present battle zone in Mosul, many districts are deserted and only passable because bulldozers have cut a path through the debris.
In a side street in the Al-Thawra district, where some buildings were destroyed, a crowd of people, mostly women in black robes which covered their faces as well their bodies, were this weekend frantically trying to obtain food baskets donated by an Iraqi charity.
“These women are from Daesh families, so I don’t have much sympathy for them,” said Saad Amr, a volunteer worker from Mosul who had once been jailed by Isis for six months in 2014.
“I suffered every torture aside from rape,” he recalls, adding that men from Daesh families had been taken to Baghdad for investigation, but evidence of their crimes is difficult to obtain so most would be freed.The prospect made him edgy.
Asked about popular attitudes in Mosul towards Isis, Saad, who works part-time for an Iraqi radio station, says that three years ago in June 2014, when Isis captured Mosul “some 85 percent of people supported them because the Iraqi government forces had mistreated us so badly. The figure later fell to 50 percent because of Isis atrocities and is now about 15 percent”.
Ahmed, Saad’s brother who lives in East Mosul, said later that he was nervous because so many former Isis militants were walking about the city after shaving off their beards.