Multiple reconstruction projects underway across the city are being funded by the UN, EU, US, but the UN estimated it could take 10 years to clear Mosul of landmines and corpses lie under many streets
Al Majalla_Shelly Kittleson
Multiple reconstruction projects underway across the city are being funded by the UN, EU, US, but the UN estimated it could take 10 years to clear Mosul of landmines and corpses lie under many streets.
Mosul: It’s a sweltering Friday in this city of well over a million people, while thousands of former residents remain displaced elsewhere and unable to return to homes that no longer exist.
Six years after it was retaken by Iraqi government forces in July 2017, the city has not yet been completely demined: in 2019, the UN estimated it could take 10 years to clear Mosul of landmines and decades to clear it of other explosive hazards.
And corpses remain under many streets, residents say.
And yet there is a flurry of building and other activity in Mosul — more subdued than in Baghdad or the Kurdistan Region of Iraq’s Erbil, but one that is clearly changing the heavily scarred city.
A young boy and his bike in an area of the Old City of Mosul undergoing reconstruction. Mosul, Iraq. June 9, 2023.
Kilometres of lorries loaded with grain as well as fuel tankers were parked for days along the side of the road from Erbil to Mosul — less than two hours away — in early June. Shared taxis ply the road at all hours between the two cities, filling quickly with passengers.
The UN estimated it could take 10 years to clear Mosul of landmines and decades to clear it of other explosive hazards. Corpses remain under many streets.
Iraq's second-most populated city after Baghdad, the city of Mosul has long been a melting pot of different religions and ethnicities. Its geographical position in north-western Iraq made it a key centre of trade.
In June 2014, the Islamic State (IS) claimed full control of the city. It would take three years and thousands of deaths before it would come back under the control of Iraqi forces.
A family from newly retaken areas of Mosul walk past wreckage left by a car bomb attack in the southwestern section of the city. March 12, 2017
'Foreign agents' come to Mosul's 'rescue'
The head of the Mosul Social Services Council, Ahmad Salal Agha, told Al Majalla in an interview in Mosul on 9 June that when IS entered the city, "they didn't enter as IS. They came as former Baathists, anti-US resistance, people promising to get rid" of the problems plaguing Mosul in the years following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the ousting of the Saddam Hussein regime.
He said that, during the first few months, "the streets were clean, there was no corruption, and the checkpoints every 500 meters that would ask for bribes, threaten and arrest people for no reason, and make you waste time were gone" and that only later would the strict authoritarian regime be imposed by the international terrorist organisation.
Agha – who said he never left Mosul during the years it was under IS - said IS was part of an "international agenda", claiming that many IS leaders were foreign intelligence agents that were unaware of Islam's basic tenets or practices, as local residents "discovered" when asking them questions about how to pray and similar matters.
The anger apparent in his voice when discussing the matter was not directed so much at IS itself as at those he sees as behind it and the destruction of large parts of the city.
Iraqi forces continue to advance into the remaining IS-held sections of Mosul. May 19, 2017.
Agha claimed some 400 people, mostly women and children, had been killed "in a single US air attack" during the war for Mosul and that US air strikes had destroyed buildings in which "maybe there were a few IS fighters, but they fled before the air strike".
The head of the Mosul Social Services Council said IS was part of "an international agenda", claiming that many IS leaders were foreign intelligence agents unaware of Islam's basic tenets or practices.
Agha went on to voice claims that he said are very common among Mosul residents: the US and other "foreign intelligence services" helped IS and that "the US dropped fresh fruit, milk, and weapons to IS when they were besieged in Mosul" in 2017.
When asked whether he or anyone he knew had seen this or had evidence, he said that "no one saw it because it because everyone was hiding in basements in those times" and that IS "had guns that were made in the US in the same year as they appeared here in the hands of IS. Where and how do you think they got them?".
This Al Majalla correspondent reported from numerous frontlines against IS in Iraq between 2014 and 2017, including from Mosul during the month of July 2017 when Iraq declared defeat against IS in the city, and from many parts of the city in the months prior to it.
In those years, she photographed multiple IS munitions depots found by Iraqi forces just after they retook an area, as well as corpses of armed IS fighters. She has not, however, seen any evidence to support these claims.
During the battle against the Islamic State in northwestern Mosul, Iraq. May 19, 2017.
Agha, the head of the Mosul Social Security Services Council, is in his early fifties and a member of the Hashimi tribe. He is very well connected both in Mosul and across the country. Just prior to the interview with Al Majalla, he had been meeting with a minister at an office in the city.
He stressed to Al Majalla that "the Iraqi people in general and people from Mosul especially love the American people but they hate the parties" in the US.
"We didn't like Saddam. But it's different if you punish your own son and if your neighbour comes and whacks him," he said, stressing that a "million" had been killed in Iraq following the 2003 American invasion and subsequent "occupation".
There are no reliable statistics for the number of people killed in Iraq during the war and of war-related causes in the post-2003 period – nor for those who died in the 2014-2017 war against IS in Iraq.
The US dropped fresh fruit, milk, and weapons to IS when they were besieged in Mosul.
The head of the Mosul Social Services Council, Ahmad Salal Agha
However, on the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq in March, Human Rights Watch wrote: "Almost half a million people lost their lives, millions lost homes, and countless civilians suffered abuses by all parties to the conflict".
Saddam Hussein, Agha claimed, "only killed the people who tried to hurt Iraq and Iraqis or those who tried to take him out of power – and killed their families, too. But Iraqis had money then. Everyone had large homes, help from him if we asked for it. We lived well."
Poverty and corruption now plague Iraq, which he implied also contributed to the rise of IS.
Many mosques have since been rebuilt, mostly with the money of local wealthy families, according to city residents. Some streets that have been rebuilt are notably in better shape than many in Baghdad.
The Grand Mosque of Mosul is being reconstructed. Mosul, Iraq. June 9, 2023.
Multiple reconstruction projects underway across the city are being funded by the UN, EU, US, and other foreign governments.
A university professor and the imam al-khatib who leads the prayers of one mosque in the Old City that had been restored, Dr. Omar Akram, told Al Majalla in an interview at the mosque that its upper floor was being used for lessons for children, both boys and girls, including in "mathematics, chemistry and physics".
His smiling and bubbly 16-year-old daughter Altaf told Al Majalla that the family had never left the city during the entire time that Mosul had been under IS but that "I was young, I don't really remember that much".
A young woman from Mosul who never left the city during the time it was under the Islamic State, in a rebuilt mosque.
During that time she had studied "a bit of the Quran and some words of the Turkish language" since she had relatives that had fled to Turkey before, and in the years since the liberation she had developed a passion for computers.
"She always fixes mine," her imam father said proudly.
Many families "with a long history here never left", Agha added when driving Al Majalla past the Aghawat mosque and madrasa that he said he and his "extended family" – "well over a thousand of whom live in Mosul" – paid for.
The reconstruction of the Mosul airport, which was heavily damaged during the battle to retake the city from IS, was inaugurated in August last year under Iraq's former prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.
The reconstruction is expected to take about two years.
A recently built women's hospital is just down the street from the Oprah Beauty Centre, named in honour of a popular American talk-show host. Nearby are murals of American entertainment stars and other well-known foreigners.
At sunset on this Friday in June, as the temperature finally began to drop, families picnicked in a park in the city on the eastern side, which suffered less destruction than the Old City on the western part of the city, divided by the Tigris River.
The Tigris River and the West Bank in Mosul, Iraq. June 9, 2023.
Some women in abayas sat on the grass among children, while others in tight jeans, stiletto heels and brash makeup strolled down the sidewalk. Police posed smiling for a photo, while others took selfies near a bright 'I LOVE MOSUL' sign.
Along the main roads leading out of the city, both to the east towards Erbil and to the west towards the border with Syria, dozens of billboards and signs bear the visages of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and former senior Popular Mobilisation Units commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The two men were killed in a US air strike in January 2020 in Baghdad.
"They overdo it, of course," one resident said in commenting on the signs, noting that "ok, so they (Soleimani and Muhandis) took part in the liberation operations. One sign would be fine. But so many? It's an attempt to intimidate. But we don't really care."
After nightfall, the Kurdish drivers of the shared taxis stop to pray alongside the Mosul inhabitants heading to Erbil for a few days.
Though IS is often said to have damaged the faith of many who suffered oppression from the terrorist organisation, Islam still seems to bind much of the Muslim-majority community here together as it seeks to heal.
