Shafaq News/ The residents of Mosul who witnessed their city being overrun by ISIS are not strangers to conspiracy theories that continue to crop up even eight years later.

According to eyewitnesses, the military and security forces in the city collapsed on June 10, 2014, leaving the city to ISIS for three years, during which they suffered unspeakable violence and destruction.

The dark age

Hathal al-Zuhairi, a resident of al-Zinjili area on the right side of Mosul, said that the city had gone through a period of darkness and crimes after ISIS took control of it.

"The booby-trapped tank explosion near the Mosul hotel was only a few hundred meters from my house. That incident was used as an excuse to flee the city and abandon its citizens in the face of terrorism."

"Everyone knew the situation was deteriorating five days before the city fell on June 9," he continued.

"Mosul's fall continues to astound me. There had been orders to pull out of the city, so it was a conspiracy. The defeat of three well-equipped military teams by 200-300 ISIS militants is impossible."

Hathal al-Zuhairi recalled when he saw federal police officers leave the regiment's headquarters 100 meters away from his home for no apparent reason, siting that when he asked them where they were going, they told him, "It is over, and no one is left here but us."

"I was taken aback by their words and knew right away that something was not quite right. That was before the June 9th afternoon, when a booby-trapped tank exploded near the Mosul hotel."

"That was only the beginning; after that, we endured a series of painful and trying years that lasted until the city's liberation in 2017."

Hathal continued that the price of their freedom was thousands of innocent victims, including his cousins and neighbors, who were killed in the Pepsi factory massacre while trying to escape during the liberation.

Demands for accountability of officials

"Mosul is Iraq's second-largest and most important city in terms of history, geography, and economy. Therefore, those who facilitated its fall or refrained from defending it shall be prosecuted. However, until now, nobody has been summoned to a court for the most flagrant security fail in the country's history," Saad al-Wazzan, a political activist, told the Shafaq News Agency, "some of whom are major actors in the political arena and others continue to serve in high-profile positions."

"We lost thousands of victims, wounded, and missing people, inherited dozens of mass graves, and demolished hospitals. The city now depends on three bridges only as two others are still under reconstruction," Ahmed Waleed stated.

"Only 10,000 of the 100,000 people who completed their transactions were compensated, according to the compensation subcommittee's latest statistics." 

Waleed continued, "The reconstruction of Mosul is too late. Only the main streets and a few services are still available. The strategic and important projects, on the other hand, are still off the table. Mosul will take several years to recover at least half of its pre-2014 state."

Spokesperson to the Nineveh governorate, Raad al-Abbasi, stated, "security and political instability were major catalysts for delayed reconstruction in Mosul, in addition to the chaos in the reconstruction file itself. But, today, we have a clear plan to proceed with. Our priorities are bridges and infrastructure. The work in the airport is underway."

"Some other projects, such as the reconstruction of hospitals, are part of the sovereign ministries' responsibilities, and the Ministry of Health is responsible for the delay in their reconstruction." 

"The local government in Nineveh aspires to render the governorate better than it was prior to 2014, and after the release of Nineveh's frozen funds, there will be a clear change in the level of services and projects across the city and its center," al-Abbasi added.

A century backward..

Abdul Qadir al-Dakhil, executive director of the High Commission for the Reconstruction of Mosul, stated, "The committee, in coordination with the local government and the federal government in Baghdad, has succeeded in acquiring Nineveh's frozen funds, which will all be turned into projects on the ground." 

"The governorate has announced 45 projects, the most important of which are the reconstruction of the riverfront of the Old City, the bridges on both sides of Mosul, as well as the airport."

"The frozen assets amounted to nearly 400 billion Iraqi dinars, and we want to free the city of Mosul of war manifestations." 

"The scale of the destruction sustained by Nineveh, in general, was very large. It took the city a hundred years backward. However, it is only a matter of time for it to recover and become much better than it was," he said.