The Nuri mosque in Mosul was constructed in the 12th century. “Since its construction in the second half of the 12th century CE, Al-Nouri Mosque was invested as Mosul’s Great Mosque. It has been a core site in the urban life and development of the Old City of Mosul,” UNESCO says. Central to the mosque was a leaning minaret called Al-Hadba. It was one of the symbols of Mosul. In 2017, as ISIS was about to be defeated in the city, it destroyed the minaret. Now, the minaret has been reconstructed. This is a symbol of the lasting defeat of ISIS.
The repairs to this site which is in the old city of Mosul on the western bank of the Tigris river that runs through the city, is an important accomplishment. The National in the UAE described the restoration of the minaret as bringing hope to “war-weary Mosul.” However, the war is now becoming a memory. ISIS was defeated in 2017. It has now been seven years since that time. The fact that ISIS has not been able to infiltrate the city again and that terrorism has become a thing of the past is an important achievement.
It wasn’t always like this. Mosul is Iraq’s second-largest city. It sits on the Tigris River, splayed out on both sides of the river. Rather than describing the city as “east” and “west” of the river, some speak of the city’s “right” side and “left” side, referring to how you encounter the city if you are flowing south down the river. The right side is where the old city is. It was the site of ISIS’ last stand.
Mosul was once a center of terrorism, insurgency
Mosul is an important city. It was also a diverse city with Muslims, Jews, Christians, Yazidis, Kurds, and many other groups calling it home over the years. During the 1980s, the city was supportive of Saddam’s regime. Many people from Mosul not only were called up to the Iraqi army but also became officers. When the regime fell, many men found themselves out of work. Mosul became one of the centers of terrorism and insurgency in the 2000s. Minorities fled.
ISIS entered Mosul in this context in 2014. It drove into Mosul with captured Humvees and Toyota trucks with machine guns mounted on the back. Mosul fell without much of a fight in about forty-eight hours. Iraqi divisions that were tasked with defending Mosul and the Nineveh plains around it evaporated in June 2014. Mosul then became a heart of ISIS operations in Iraq as it expanded south toward Baghdad and the Sunni heartland between Mosul and the capital.
The fall of Mosul and the ISIS massacre of more than 1,000 Shi’ite Iraqi cadets at Camp Speicher on June 12, 2014, caused a crisis in Iraq. The Iraqi army was disintegrating. The road to Baghdad was open for ISIS. The Shi’ite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani issued a fatwa calling young men to arms to fight ISIS. The call-up helped stop the ISIS advance.
With ISIS checked before Baghdad, it turned to carrying out more massacres. It expelled Christians and minorities from Mosul. In August, it attacked the Yazidi heartland of Sinjar, massacred Yazidis, and sold them into slavery. At the same time, it attacked the Kurdistan region. It is here that ISIS bit off more than it could chew.
Backed by a US-led coalition, the terrorist group soon found it could simultaneously manage a war in Syria and Iraq, as well as fighting the Iraqi army, Kurdish Peshmerga, and more than 100,000 Shi’ite militias who had joined Sistani’s call to arms. From 2015 to 2016, the Iraqi army, Kurds, and Shi’ites slowly strangled ISIS like a giant anaconda encircling Mosul. By October 2016, the Iraqis were ready to retake the city.
ISIS holed up in Mosul with 5,000 fighters. It festooned the city with tunnels and blasted holes through walls of buildings so it could move easily out of sight of American drones. On the plains of Nineveh, its fighters waited in makeshift trenches for the Iraqi army to make the first move. The challenge for the Iraqis was that there had been two million people in Mosul before the war. Many of them had fled to IDP camps, but more had to flee the coming battle. I was in Iraq before the battle began and when it started. Iraqis came in long lines of vehicles and on foot, fleeing the battle. Smoke from burning ties blanketed parts of Nineveh plains.
Once Mosul was largely empty of civilians, the Iraqi army pressed into the “left” or eastern side of the city. By the spring of 2017, the Iraqis were closing in on the old city on the right bank of the Tigris. It was at this point that ISIS waited around the Nuri mosque and its leaning minaret. In June, three years after ISIS had waltzed into the city, the last remnants of the group blew up the mosque and died in its ruins.
At the time in 2017, it seemed Mosul was in ruins. It was also questionable if the city could recover. This city welcomed ISIS in 2014; wouldn’t it welcome more extremists in the future? The people here had turned their backs as Christians were expelled and Yazidis were sold into slavery in the streets. Could this place recover and be renewed? What the last six years have shown is that Mosul can recover and that extremism can be defeated. ISIS seems far away now.
The group still exists in remnants, but the extremism it fed and the insurgency that were its building blocks between 2004 and 2014 seem to have evaporated. This is a model of how to defeat extremism and terrorism. When Israel first faced the complex challenge of fighting Hamas in Gaza, some compared it to the war on ISIS. Unlike the defeat of ISIS, in Gaza, the civilians have been asked to flee to areas of Hamas control, meaning Hamas continues to control most of Gaza. In Mosul, the civilians were able to flee from ISIS. ISS was crushed slowly. In Gaza, the IDF goes into areas and then leaves, and Hamas returns. In Mosul, the Iraqi army went in, and ISIS never came back. In Mosul, the historic Nuri mosque and minaret have risen again. In Gaza, it remains to be seen who will reconstruct the cities. Mosul is an inspiration. The region might look to it for lessons.
