Streets crowded with pedestrians and cars. Markets busy, clothing and household provisions shops open, and vegetable and fruit stalls in their spots of old. The smell of fresh bread wafting from the bakery. Women and men shopping or going to work. A strange sense of time and place. People no longer late for work because of the blocked streets and military checkpoints choking them and the whole city over the last 10 years. There is the sense of confusion of a prisoner that has just been released taking his or her first steps outside the prison walls. How does one move in this city without military checkpoints? Without recruits or mercenaries who cover their ignorance and inferiority complexes by humiliating the people at every turn? Is this the capital Baghdad, protected by the “democratic government” which provides its citizens with reassurance and stability? Keeping the heart of Iraq, with its unity and diversity of different ethnic groups and religions and doctrines, safe? Is this the Baghdad that has seen the promise of freedom and democracy fulfilled? Is this the Baghdad where we heard at the time of the US-led invasion that it would “take us six months to get rid of the occupation as we got rid of the tyrant”? Is this the Baghdad where life has been reduced to staying alive, in the hope of waking up one morning without the fear of assassinations, arrests and the torture of someone near or dear? This is not Baghdad, a city that is supposed to be living in safety, with security guarding the headquarters of the ruling party and its special forces next to the largest US embassy in the world in the city's famous Green Zone. Instead, this is the city of Mosul, as described by the Mosul people themselves, who had passed on their experiences in recent days to the few courageous media services that have dared to break the barriers of censorship and global accusations of aiding ISIS terrorism. Why would the people of Mosul, the second-largest Iraqi city and a city of culture, science and history that gave Iraq so many of its doctors, academics and historians, welcome ISIS terrorism? Has their moral compass been damaged to the extent of expressing satisfaction with the presence of members of organised barbarism in their midst? We must look carefully at what has happened, and is happening now, in the city of Mosul with its population of nearly two million. The ISIS attack was extraordinary to everyone. Senior army officers shed the uniforms they were wearing to signal their defence of the homeland and its people in just a few hours. Soldiers, on seeing their generals fleeing, asked what they should do. The reply was “deal with it yourself” (dabber halek), and so the soldiers looked after themselves and fled, leaving behind them modern weapons and equipment for which the Iraqis and Americans had paid millions of dollars. According to the testimonies of many Mosul people who fled the city during the first two days of the attack, they fled because of the reputation of ISIS for barbarism and the flight of soldiers and expected shelling of the city. But the refugees decided to return after hearing how calm life was and that the ISIS fighters had encouraged residents to return to their jobs. These fighters had carried out in days what the Al-Maliki government and the occupiers before it, with their huge resources, had not managed in ten years: the provision of electricity, water and rubbish-collection in the city. Another point underscored by the people of Mosul, contrary to what is commonly heard, was that there was calm in the city and that they had not witnessed any assaults on people because of their ethnic or religious affiliations. How can ISIS, these terrorist, barbaric, brainwashed throat-cutters and eaters of human hearts, behave in this civilised and efficient way and in one rarely seen even in the armies of the civilised world? Compare their behaviour to that of the US and British armies in Iraq, with their records of massacres, arrests and the rape of men and women during the occupation of Iraq. How could Mosul “fall” in hours to a few hundred ISIS fighters? Does not this in itself raise questions about the truthfulness of the story promoted by the Al-Maliki regime and the US administration and its allies in the media who have now suddenly rolled up their sleeves to defend Iraqi citizens against terrorism? Al-Maliki is selling the same goods manufactured in Washington and labelled “war on terror.” The hallmark of this war was the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Under the same banner stand the rulers of scores of countries seeking to shield themselves and their age-old corruption. The “war on terror” has become a stick used to terrorise their peoples. The media and intellectuals are ready to oblige these rulers either because they are scared by the stick or because of the carrots that are offered to them. As a result, even seeking the truth behind appearances is labelled terrorism, and an investigative reporter is seldom proven innocent. The Iraqis have long lived with this suffocating situation. Those who dared to raise their voices in protest were either called insignificant or parts of the “nests” of the terrorist ISIS, in the words of Al-Maliki. He has often regurgitated such phrases in his weekly broadcasts, repeatedly humiliating decent people and provoking their anger. And all this has come as if the arrests, torture, executions and indiscriminate shelling were not enough. You have to wonder why the people of Iraq should need ISIS to come with foreign fighters from across the border in order to rid themselves of a sectarian and unjust system. Was it really ISIS that liberated the city and was then welcomed by the locals? Or was it the people of Mosul themselves who liberated the city, having exhausted all other avenues of reasoning with a corrupt sectarian system? According to credible reports, several local and national resistance factions, together with local tribal fighters, worked with former Iraqi army officers to form the General Military Council of the Revolutionaries in Iraq. The media has ignored it, but the Council has been spreading its message through Websites and social networking. ISIS, with its low numbers, is a double-edged sword. Used by the Al-Maliki regime to get US support, it has also been used to terrorise the regime and its army. This is what happened in Mosul. Inflating ISIS terrorised the military command and the soldiers of the Al-Maliki army, hastening their flight. On the other hand the General Military Council of the Revolutionaries in Iraq has distanced itself from ISIS, especially those Council members who previously fought Al-Qaeda. The overriding fear today in various parts of Iraq is of the use that Al-Maliki and the US may make to destroy without discrimination, especially after the regime resorted to a request for assistance from America. This points to the possibility of airstrikes and the use of drones, as well as special operations teams. In this way the “war on terror” is being legitimised, discarding the right of the oppressed and humiliated people to rebel. The realisation of democracy in Iraq must be carried forward by the Iraqis themselves without foreign or regional intervention and without ISIS. The lesson of Iraqi politicians inviting in the intervention of the US or the UK for regime change should now be clear to all. The writer is a Kurdish-Iraqi novelist and political activist who has advised the UNDP and the Brussels Tribunal.
