Mosul counts economic, cultural cost of insurgent rule

Sally

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Mar 22, 2012
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The economic and cultural losses will keep on going up as long as this savage Sunni group continues with their barbarism.

014 | 12:13 AM

Mosul counts economic, cultural cost of insurgent rule


Agence France Press

MOSUL, Iraq: When militants from the Al-Qaeda splinter group ISIS first seized Iraq’s city of Mosul, life improved for many residents. But some now say the economic and cultural cost of jihadist rule is beginning to bite.

The bomb attacks, shootings and kidnappings that kept many residents of Iraq’s second city in a constant state of fear all but stopped when ISIS took control six weeks ago.

The many streets closed off by Iraq’s Shiite-dominated security forces, despised by many in the mainly Sunni city, were reopened. Checkpoints were dismantled and heavy-handed policing toned down.

“When the army left and the gunmen came it was the first time we could breathe. Before I had to wait two hours in traffic just to get to work because of all the checkpoints. Now I can get to my shop in 10 minutes,” said Mohammad Azhar, 32.


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Mosul counts economic, cultural cost of insurgent rule | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR
 
Gettin' ready to re-take Mosul...
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Carter Announces 560 More US Troops to Iraq to Recapture Mosul
Jul 11, 2016 | The United States will send 560 more troops to Iraq to help establish a newly retaken air base as a staging hub for the long-awaited battle to recapture Mosul from Islamic State militants, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Monday on an unannounced visit to the country.
Most of the new troops will be devoted to the build-up of the Qayara air base, about 40 miles south of Mosul, and include engineers, logistics personnel and other forces, Carter said in Baghdad. They will help Iraqi security forces planning to encircle and eventually retake the key city. "These additional U.S. forces will bring unique capabilities to the campaign and provide critical enabler support to Iraqi forces at a key moment in the fight," Carter said, according to prepared remarks. He revealed President Barack Obama's decision during a talk to troops at the airport in Baghdad. The increase brings the total U.S. force authorization in Iraq to 4,647, and comes just three months after Obama's last announcement of additional troops.

Carter told reporters earlier that U.S. advisers are prepared to accompany Iraqi battalions if needed, as those units begin the siege of the key northern city. It's not clear when exactly that will happen. U.S. officials said a team of American troops went into Qayara for a quick site assessment Sunday and left. One potential job is helping Iraqi troops use highly technical bridging capabilities to get across the river into Mosul. Carter called this weekend's recapture of Qayara a key strategic victory. Speaking to reporters before he arrived in Baghdad, he said the air base will be one a hub from which "Iraqi Security Forces, accompanied and advised by us as needed, will complete the southern-most envelopment of Mosul. That's its strategic role, and that's its strategic importance." He likened the air base to how forces used the eastern city of Makhmour. There, U.S. troops set up a fire base for artillery to support advancing Iraqi units. Marine Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin was killed at the fire base in March in an IS rocket attack.

Iraqi forces retook the air base from the Islamic State group on Saturday. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi hailed the success as a key step toward Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. Residents there should "get ready for the liberation of their areas," al-Abadi said. U.S. officials said American advisers are already working at brigade level with Iraqi special operations forces, but they have not yet accompanied them on operations. They weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly and demanded anonymity. Obama in April allowed U.S. troops to assist Iraqi forces at brigade and battalion levels, where they could be at greater risk closer to the battle. They would still be behind front lines. They previously had been limited to advising at headquarters and division levels, further from the battle. Carter is expected to meet al-Abadi and minister of defense Khalid al-Obeidi, and Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the top U.S. military commander for the Islamic State fight. The main topic, he said, will be the next steps in the military campaign, with a particular focus on Mosul.

IS captured Mosul in the summer of 2014. It has used the city as a main headquarters since. Carter's daylong visit to Iraq comes on the heels of the two-day NATO summit where allies agreed to expand their military support for the war. In addition to Qayara, Iraqi government troops recently have retaken Ramadi, Fallujah and a number of towns along the route to Mosul. But Islamic State militants still control large swaths of the country and continue to launch deadly attacks, including a massive suicide bombing last week at Baghdad's bustling commercial area of Karada. As many as 186 were killed.

Carter Announces 560 More US Troops to Iraq to Recapture Mosul | Military.com

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Carter: US Will Use Iraq City as Base to Retake Mosul
Jul 11, 2016 | U.S. and coalition forces will use the newly retaken air base in Qayara as a staging hub, as Iraqi security forces move forward in the long-awaited battle to recapture Mosul from Islamic State militants, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Monday as he arrived in Iraq.
Carter, who landed in Baghdad on an unannounced visit, said U.S. advisers are prepared to accompany Iraqi battalions if needed, as those units begin to encircle the key northern city. A senior defense official said it's not clear when U.S. advisers would begin accompanying the battalions closer to the battlefront. But it could be in the coming weeks and months. The U.S. officials said a team of American troops went into Qayara for a quick site assessment Sunday and left. One job they could do would be to help the Iraqis troops use highly technical bridging capabilities to get across the river into Mosul.

Carter laid out the U.S. vision for Qayara for the first time, describing its recapture as a key strategic victory. Speaking to reporters before he arrived in Baghdad, he said the air base will be one of the hubs from which "Iraqi Security Forces, accompanied and advised by us as needed, will complete the southern-most envelopment of Mosul. That's its strategic role, and that's its strategic importance." Carter compared the role of Qayara to how forces used the eastern city of Makhmour. There, U.S. troops set up a fire base for artillery to support advancing Iraqi units. Marine Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin was killed at the fire base in March in an IS rocket attack. "The point of seizing that (Qayara) airfield is to be able to establish a logistics and air hub in the immediate vicinity of Mosul," Carter told reporters. "So, there will be U.S. logistics support."

Iraqi forces recaptured the air base from the Islamic State group on Saturday, in a victory hailed by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi as a key step ahead of the Mosul fight. Residents of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, should "get ready for the liberation of their areas," he said. U.S. officials said that American advisers have already been working at the brigade level with Iraqi special operations forces, but they have not yet accompanied Iraqi Army brigades, U.S. officials said. The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, so spoke on condition of anonymity.

President Barack Obama in April approved plans to allow U.S. troops to assist Iraqi forces at the brigade and battalion level, where they could be at greater risk, closer to the battle, but still behind the front lines. They had previously been limited to advising at the headquarters and division levels, which are further from the battle. Carter is expected to meet al-Abadi and minister of defense Khalid al-Obeidi, as well as Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the top U.S. military commander for the Islamic State fight. The main topic, he said, will be the next steps in the military campaign, with a particular focus on Mosul. Mosul is considered crucial. It was captured by IS in the summer of 2014 and the extremist group has been using it as a main headquarters since.

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Massive exodus expected ahead of re-taking of Mosul...
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Up to 1 million people could flee battle for Iraq's Mosul - ICRC
29 Jul 2016 : Up to 1 million people could be driven from their homes in northern Iraq soon as fighting intensifies in a government offensive to retake Mosul from Islamic State, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday.
U.S.-backed Iraqi forces have stepped up their campaign against Islamic State militants in an expected push on Mosul, Iraq's second largest city and the militants' biggest bastion, later this year. "Up to a million more people could be forced to flee their homes in Iraq in the coming weeks and months, posing a massive humanitarian problem for the country," the Geneva-based ICRC said in an statement. It said 10 million Iraqis already require assistance, including more than 3 million internally displaced (IDPs) - about one-tenth of the population, and that their numbers could swell with fresh uprooting.

Robert Mardini, ICRC regional director for the Near and Middle East, said the aid agency had drawn up contingency plans to pre-position food, medicines and other supplies under several possible scenarios. An estimated 3 million people live under Islamic State rule in Iraq, he said. Mosul has 1.2-1.4 million, while another 825,000 live in the Nineveh plain and provinces of Kirkuk and Salahuddin, and 250,000 are in Anbar province, he said. "Be it a massive influx of IDPs out of Mosul city towards the south, or the civilian population being caught up in the fighting inside Mosul, we will try to develop a meaningful humanitarian response that will address needs wherever they are," Mardini told reporters.

As Iraqi authorities screen people on the run, they must ensure civilians are well-treated, he said. Those detained and investigated for possible links to Islamic State must still be allowed to contact their families. ICRC officials have visited 33,000 people held in Iraqi detention centres so far this year, but has no contact with Islamic State, Mardini said.

"MANAGEMENT OF THE DEAD"

Suicide bombings in Baghdad, claimed by Islamic State, and other cities in July have killed hundreds, overwhelming morgues, Mardini said. "The management of the dead is pushing the country's limited forensic capacity to the bring of collapse," he said, speaking on return from a three-day trip to Iraq. "The medical legal institute in Baghdad has a capacity to store 150 dead bodies; today they have within their premises 1,000 dead bodies. So you can imagine under temperatures over 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) what the challenge looks like." The ICRC is seeking a further 17.1 million Swiss francs for its programme in Iraq, its third largest worldwide, which would bring its budget for the country to 137 million Swiss francs (US$140.28 million).

Up to 1 million people could flee battle for Iraq's Mosul - ICRC
 
Sore loser tactic - set the oil wells ablaze...
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Oil wells south of Mosul burn days after key town retaken
Aug 29,`16 -- The skies above this small northern Iraqi town are black with smoke and ash rains down from around a half dozen oil wells that Islamic State group fighters set ablaze as Iraqi troops moved in to retake Qayara last week.
The apocalyptic scene underscores the sort of destruction that the militants are likely to wreak as Iraqi forces move toward Mosul, the biggest prize still held by IS in Iraq. Unlike previous ground assaults against IS in Iraq that left entire cities and villages emptied of civilians, thousands of civilians remained in Qayara as militants inside quickly folded up and fled, a sign of their weakening morale and damaged supply lines, commanders say. That means residents did not join the ranks of hundreds of thousands of people displaced by recent fighting with IS and now languishing in camps around the country. But the situation for the some 9,000 civilians still in Qaraya is precarious. The battle left the town without electricity and little running water, and the large international aid groups who normally help the displaced say they cannot deliver aid to people so close to frontline fighting.

Najim al-Jobori, the commander of military operations in Nineveh Province where Qayara and Mosul are located, said Iraqi forces are increasingly trying to keep civilians in place while pushing IS fighters out. The Qayara operation, he said, raises his hopes that the approach on Mosul will become increasingly easier as morale among IS fighters crumbles He said that previously when an airstrike hit an IS unit, the survivors would stay and keep fighting. "But now, you never see that anymore, they all just run." Hundreds of civilians poured out into Qayara's main street Sunday as a convoy of Iraqi officials pulled into the town just days after the military retook it. Some children rushed to cheer on the Iraqi army Humvees, other families peered cautiously from behind garden gates in the town, which before 2011 had a population of 79,000.

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Oil wells on the edge of Qaraya Sunday August 28, 2016 burn days after the key town south of was retaken from the Islamic State group by Iraqi ground forces backed by U.S.-led coalition airpower. Iraqi forces retook the militant-held town Thursday as part of a number of operations Iraqi forces are carrying out around Mosul in an effort to isolate the city. Iraq’s prime minister pledges Mosul will be retaken this year.​

Walls still painted with colorful Islamic State group instructions and warnings were only partially obscured with hasty swipes of paint. IS banners at the town's entrance stood shredded. Salim Atiyya, a government employee, said that initially in the lead-up to the military's assault on the town, planes dropped leaflets on his neighborhood telling residents to flee along a road leading west. But IS fighters immediately mined the road with roadside bombs. A few days later, leaflets were dropped telling residents to stay put. "At the beginning of course we were so scared," the 33-year-old Atiyya said. "We found the smallest room in our house away from windows and doors and we all moved into there," he said. Extended family members also moved in, seeking safety, and eventually "18 of us were all in that one small room," he said.

Warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition bombed militants in the town for three days, and then Iraqi forces moved in, recapturing Qayara with only minor clashes. The militants set fire to the oil wells initially to try to thwart airstrikes, but then as they realized they were losing ground they set as many wells alight as possible in an attempt to leave behind a ruined prize, residents said. After the militants fled, Atiyya said he and his family emerged and found the bodies of three IS fighters killed by an airstrike in the street in front of his home. "We took them and threw them in the garbage dump," he said, adding, "if you go there now you'll see it's filled with the dead from Daesh" - using the Arabic acronym for IS.

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Up to a million people to be displaced in battle for Mosul...
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Humanitarian Consequences of Seizing Mosul: 'Up to 1 Million People Forced to Flee,' Administration Says
September 30, 2016 | As Iraqi troops, with U.S. assistance, prepare to forcibly remove ISIS from Mosul, the Obama administration says it is preparing for the "humanitarian consequences" of the city's liberation.
Part one of U.S. strategy is military -- to liberate the city that ISIS has claimed as part of its self-declared caliphate. "Part two is making sure that we have in place all of the capacity we need to deal with what are likely to be the humanitarian consequences of seizing Mosul and in particular, internally displaced persons," Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress on Thursday. "The U.N. is projecting that there could be up to 1 million people forced to flee Mosul as a result of the effort to liberate it. "We are working very hard with the U.N., with the Iraqis, to put in place everything that they need to care for these people. With food, with shelter, with medicine, and that also is on track. It's challenging but it's on track. We've raised the money to do it, we're pre-positioning resources."

Blinken said part three of the strategy is "stabilization" of Mosul, so displaced people can return home as soon as possible. ISIS is known to devastate and booby-trap the cities it flees. But Blinken said the U.S. has a plan to "restore basic services, basic security" in Mosul. The final part of the strategy is governance -- "because unless the basic governance structure is in place and everyone agrees to it, we're going to have problems after the liberation." Blinken said the U.S. has worked very hard with the Iraqi government, with the Kurds and others to agree on "what governance will look like in Mosel and Nineveh (province)" after the liberation.

The goal is to make sectarian and ethnic antagonists work cooperatively and inclusively, making decisions that reflect the will of the various factions they represent. "We've also tried to learn lessons from the past," Blinken said. "In Fallujah when it was liberated, as you know, we saw some reprisal atrocities committed by the Shia PMF, Popular Mobilization Forces. We have made sure that for Mosul, there will be no southern or Shia PMF going into Mosul city. Similarly, no Kurdish Peshmerga going in."

Blinken said the security forces and police sent in to "hold" Mosul will be comprised of members of Sunni tribes from the region. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee called Thursday's hearing to discuss another humanitarian crisis -- the six-year civil war in Syria that -- in Blinken's own words -- has "killed at least 400,000 people, triggered the worst humanitarian displacement crisis since World War II, put neighboring countries of first asylum under enormous pressure, exacerbated regional tensions, helped swell the ranks of violent extremist organization, most notable Daesh and al-Qaeda."

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