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| Iraq | |
| Mosul is being destroyed by, as well as ‘liberated’ from, ISIS | |
| 2016-11-07 | |
The people escaping from the eastern side of Mosul give a convincing picture of what is happening there as the army moves forward. Mehdi, a former metal worker but jobless since Isis captured Mosul in June 2014, said that the shelling had started at 8am and had gone on for an hour. He had put his wife and seven children into their car and driven out of the city without much idea of where they were going, so long as it was safe Mehdi confirmed reports that Isis were withdrawing from the eastern side of Mosul, which is separated from the western side by the Tigris River. “They are leaving some two or three fighting positions behind in every district and the fighters there are being killed,” he said. All the local Iraqi fighters were leaving and those who stayed behind were foreign members of Isis. Asked about their nationality, Mehdi said he did not know because he never went near them. He pointed to a cigarette packet in his shirt pocket and said: “We cannot talk to the foreigners because as soon as they smell cigarette smoke from you, they send you off to be whipped.” There is no doubt that the great majority of people in Mosul will be glad to get rid of Isis with its cruelty, violence, subjugation of women and religious bigotry. But it is not at all clear what comes next. Isis is likely to lose Mosul, but it will not go wholly out of business in Iraq or anywhere else. It is already resorting to guerrilla raids such as one today when a group of Isis fighters took over a mosque and part of the town of Shirqat, 60 miles south of Mosul, and were resisting counter-attack. They did the same in Kirkuk last month when 100 Isis fighters mysteriously invaded the centre of the oil city. But the effect of the recapture of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, on the morale and war-making capacity of Isis should be great. Isis will no longer have the human and financial resources of the self-declared Caliphate, at its peak a powerful administrative machine, to support its campaign of slaughter at home and abroad. The very fact of defeat is likely to be damaging for a movement that claimed its victories were divinely inspired. Isis may be weaker, but this does not mean that it is no longer to be feared. Security may be greater for the minorities living in the Nineveh Plain, the flat land east of Mosul city that was once home to half a million people who might be Christians, Sunni Arabs, Shabak (who speak their own language and mostly Shia), Yazidis or Kakai. The security for these people has improved, but only by comparison with what went before when they were persecuted and driven out by Isis. The chances of restoring any form of security to the Nineveh Plain depends on first of all capturing Mosul from which Isis has destabilised the whole of northern Iraq. It will take time to discover if Mosul is going to be destroyed as well as “liberated”, as has already happened to the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani in Syria and the Sunni Arab city of Ramadi in Iraq. It is also unclear if Isis will be able to revert to guerrilla warfare, to which its tactics of using suicide bombers alongside well-trained and fanatical infantry, are well-suited. It was difficult not to wonder today how soon the Sunni Arabs, who were fleeing Mosul because of a mortar barrage, would be able to go back. It may be that the conflict in Iraq is not going to end with any form of power-sharing, as so often recommended by foreign powers, but because the war has finally produced winners and losers – and the people of Mosul will be among the latter | |
| Posted by:Pappy |
| #1 the conflict in Iraq is not going to end with any form of power-sharing, as so often recommended by foreign powers, but because the war has finally produced winners and losers – and the people of Mosul will be among the latter when isis style, Al Q style, Iran style, etc. Islam ends we might finally have more winners |
| Posted by: lord garth 2016-11-07 09:55 |