IRAQ: Faisal Jeber arrested and interrogated suspected Daesh militants during the battle for Mosul. Now he is taking up a new fight that could be just as crucial to the city’s future.
The 47-year-old geologist is trying to restore historical sites damaged during the militant Islamist group’s brutal three-year rule over the northern Iraqi city.
By piecing back together buildings which he says gave Mosul its soul and identity before the war, Jeber hopes also to help rebuild its social fabric.
But the city’s renaissance could take a generation, if it happens at all, he says, and it is uncertain how Mosul and other Iraqi towns and cities recaptured by government forces will look afterwards.
How Mosul’s identity is reconstituted will help determine whether Iraqi leaders can pacify a country dogged by jihadists and sectarian bloodshed for the past decade.
“ISIS (Daesh) tried hard to destroy Mosul’s identity by demolishing everything and making it monochrome,” Faisal told Reuters in Mosul. “I am using this to unite my city and then maybe the whole country.”
Before the war, Mosul was Iraq’s second-largest city, known for its diversity, religious conservatism and nationalism. After the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, it became a base for Al-Qaeda and the Sunni insurgency.
Since Daesh seized Mosul in 2014 in the face of the Iraqi army’s collapse, the militants have blown up monuments, evicted communities that had lived together for centuries and turned neighbors against each other.
Following the group’s defeat in Mosul this month in a U.S-backed offensive, billboards have gone up on a main road hailing the city as the cradle of civilization and showing landmarks dating back to the days of Mesopotamia.
It is, Jeber says, a unique moment to rebuild Mosul’s multicultural identity and combat radical Islamism.
“It’s an opportunity and it’s just the right time to do it because if you talked to any Mosulawi about that before (Daesh), nobody would accept it. But now people came out of a radical Muslim experience, they are in shock,” he said.
“Either we do it this year and we use this opportunity or else we lose it forever. We have a very narrow window.”
“FOUR LEVELS OF CIVILISATION“
Jeber was detained by Daesh in 2014 on suspicion of spying and threatened with execution, but escaped and went on to use his knowledge of Mosul to help Iraqi forces target the insurgents.
He formed a government-backed militia last year to arrest and interrogate suspected militants in areas retaken from Daesh but now intends to use it to secure heritage sites. He also runs a non-governmental organization tasked with restoring antiquities.
Jeber wants to start rebuilding at the site of the Mosque of the Prophet Jonah, which was constructed on top of a Christian monastery. The site marks Jonah’s mythical burial place and also contains the remains of a Zoroastrian temple and an Assyrian palace.
“The site is four levels of civilization,” he explained during a visit to the site this month.
Daesh blew up the mosque and dug tunnels in search of valuable antiquities, destabilising the base.
Muslim clerics want to rebuild the site as a mosque. One has already set a cornerstone but Jeber says that restoring it as a heritage site honoring its multiple historical identities would do much more to turn the page on Daesh.
There is, however, no guarantee Mosul will be the same as it was before Daesh arrived. Some exhausted residents have stopped attending mosque and are looking for an alternative to the religiosity that was once central to their lives.
Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, was less strictly observed this year in eastern Mosul after the Iraqi military forced out Daesh. Some restaurants stayed open and people smoked in public, acts prohibited even before the militants’ takeover.
A MATTER OF TRUST
Reviving Mosul’s historic traditions will depend partly on whether Iraq’s Shiite-led government can win the trust of Sunnis, many of whom welcomed Daesh when it stormed the city because they felt marginalized and mistreated.
In eastern Mosul’s poor Intisar district, a long-time Islamist bastion, buildings are covered in bullet marks and raw sewage flows past recently reopened storefronts. Army and police checkpoints fly Shiite flags that irk Sunni residents.
Abu Abdullah, sitting on a plastic chair outside his shop, says many men joined IS not because they were convinced by its ideology but because of disaffection with government corruption.
“Daesh gained popularity because of injustice. If the injustice remains, maybe these youths will revert to that,” he said. “There could be a new Daesh which would be more intense.”
Many people simply do not feel safe, including Sunni Arabs whose neighbors supported Daesh and members of minority groups such as 30-year-old Christian schoolteacher Kindi Majeed.
He fled Mosul with his wife but his mother stayed behind and died in a hospital 10 days before Iraqi forces recaptured it.
He now lives in a camp an hour’s drive from Mosul housing 5,000 Christians. He has no plans to return to the city.
“Daesh militants have been eliminated but the Daesh idea remains,” he said. “How can I live with my neighbors who branded me an infidel? How can my daughter live with them?“
After Daesh, Mosul rebuilds monuments, mosques — and society
After Daesh, Mosul rebuilds monuments, mosques — and society
Israeli Druze leader says Syrian community ‘besieged’ months after clashes
- “They aren’t allowed to bring in any humanitarian aid, including the aid we’re trying to deliver,” Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif told AFP
- Clashes erupted last July in southern Syria between Druze fighters and Sunni Bedouin tribes
JULIS, Israel: Seven months after deadly clashes between Syria’s Druze minority and government-backed forces, the spiritual leader of Druze in neighboring Israel said members of the community across the border remained in peril.
“They’re still besieged — completely encircled. They aren’t allowed to bring in any humanitarian aid, including the aid we’re trying to deliver,” Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif told AFP in an interview this week.
The cleric spoke in Julis, a quiet Druze village in northern Israel, where the community has set up an “emergency room” to coordinate aid efforts for Druze in Syria.
Israeli and Druze flags hang on the walls of the room, alongside posters in Hebrew and Arabic calling for an end to the killing of Syrian Druze.
The Druze are followers of an esoteric religion that split from Shiite Islam centuries ago. Its adherents are spread across parts of Syria, Israel, Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Clashes erupted last July in southern Syria between Druze fighters and Sunni Bedouin tribes.
The Syrian authorities said their forces intervened to stop the clashes, but witnesses and monitors accused them of siding with the Bedouin.
Israel bombed Syria during the violence, saying it was acting to defend the minority group.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting left more than 2,000 people dead, including 789 Druze civilians who were “summarily executed by defense and interior ministry personnel.”
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that some 187,000 people were displaced by the violence.
- ‘Why not let them return?’ -
“There are still more than 120,000 people displaced from their homes,” Sheikh Tarif said.
“Thirty?eight villages have been captured, and residents aren’t allowed to return. There are more than 300 captives, including children and women.”
AFP was unable to verify those claims.
Although a ceasefire was reached in July, access to Sweida remains difficult.
Residents accuse the government of imposing a blockade on the province, which Damascus denies. Several aid convoys have entered since then.
“Why not let them return to their villages? We’re in the depths of winter and that is a mountainous area. It’s very cold,” Tarif said.
With Syria’s government and Kurdish-led forces agreeing last month to integrate Kurdish fighters and civil institutions into state structures, Sweida is the last major area outside Damascus’s control.
Tarif said the community did not need government security forces in the region.
“The Druze have forces capable of defending themselves and maintaining order,” he said, referring to Syrian government forces as jihadists and “Islamic State members.”
Many in Syria remain wary of Sharaa, given that the jihadist group he once led started out as an Al-Qaeda affiliate and many of its former members are in his government.
Israel’s leaders have repeatedly referenced Sharaa’s jihadist past in calling for the West not to legitimize him.
Nevertheless, Israel and Syria, which have no official diplomatic ties, have held several rounds of direct talks in recent months.
Following negotiations in January, and under US pressure, both sides agreed to set up an intelligence?sharing mechanism as they moved toward a security agreement.
One issue under discussion is the possibility of Syrian Druze working in Israel.
Sheikh Tarif confirmed “that is something we have heard” and added that he wished any Syrian could come to work as a daily laborer “because the (economic) situation in Syria is very difficult.”
He also called for Druze across the Middle East to be able to visit their religious sites in neighboring countries, “just as our Christian and Muslim brothers visit their holy places” in states with which they may not have diplomatic relations.
“The Druze also deserve to access and pray at our holy sites in Syria and Lebanon and for them to come visit our holy places” in Israel, he said.
