Rivalries threaten in post-ISIS Mosul

Iraqi Federal Police at Mosul University’s campus (March 2017) Matthew Schweitzer

The highway into Mosul bears the scars of battle to dislodge ISIS from Ninewa. Deep craters, ruined buildings and the distant sound of airstrikes mark the steady advance of Iraqi security forces into militant-held territory. All this also highlights the immense task Baghdad faces as it looks to restore infrastructure, essential services and institutions to those living in Mosul and the towns scattered across the surrounding Ninewa plains.

Read also Akram Belkaïd, “The battle for Mosul”, Le Monde diplomatique, November 2016. Troublingly, beyond the emergency humanitarian context, neither Iraqi policymakers nor their international partners have outlined a clear strategy to rebuild Mosul or other liberated areas. Baghdad’s efforts to devise a comprehensive reconstruction plan have thus far been handicapped by ongoing economic crisis and political competition between armed groups inside areas cleared of ISIS. In Mosul, these conditions are fostering waste and a lack of transparency that affects reconstruction work; they are also fuelling the growth of non-state providers of essential services to fill the void left by the government post-ISIS. If local and national Iraqi planners cannot overcome financial and political challenges, reconstruction delays could create new grievances and instability among liberated populations.

On a visit to liberated areas in eastern Mosul and environs, I interviewed security officials, provincial administrators and civil society leaders who said that political stability is impossible without securing essential services, sources of income and safety. They all stressed that any reconstruction plan must address both medium- and long-term development in addition to emergency needs.

‘Coming to life, but in fits, starts and tremors’

The task they identify is daunting. While nearer to Mosul’s centre there are signs of repairs to roads, water and sewerage systems, Iraqi officials have not indicated how far into liberated neighbourhoods they will extend their efforts, or whether there is funding to complete current projects. As one administrator at a medical clinic in eastern Mosul put it, ‘our city is coming back to life, but in fits, starts and tremors.’

This haphazard process is complicated by the loss of Mosul’s institutions. Mosul University was used as an ISIS chemical weapons factory and subsequently targeted by Iraqi and coalition warplanes. Today it is rubble. Reconstruction efforts have been hampered by the presence of numerous IEDs (improvised explosive devices) just beyond the main gate. Some 50-75% of government buildings have been lost, as well as university, public directorate and public utility infrastructure.

In many cases, ISIS field commanders established logistical coordinating centres at teaching hospitals and other medical facilities — attracting airstrikes that have severely reduced treatment capacity and created new biological hazards for nearby residents. At the Ibn Sina medical complex in eastern Mosul, the UN warned that repeated bombardment may have released radioactive medical waste from the facility’s unsecured septic tanks. Without immediate reclamation work, these substances could seep into groundwater and eventually the Tigris River.

A group of local men take a lunch break while reconnecting water lines in eastern Mosul (March 2017) Matthew Schweitzer

Destruction of essential service infrastructure highlights deeper institutional loss. The Ninewa Provincial Council estimates that some 1,000 civilian homes in eastern Mosul have been destroyed by airstrikes, urban combat and ISIS actions since October 2016. Other assessments conclude that 25-40% of the city’s eastern half has suffered irreparable damage. Majed Shinkali, a member of parliament from Ninewa, later declared that 80% of Mosul’s critical infrastructure had been destroyed during combat operations, including 60-75% of the city’s industrial capacity. Primary water, sewerage and electricity systems have suffered particularly intense damage since this January: in March, retreating ISIS militants destroyed Quba Pump Station, cutting water to 39 eastern Mosul neighbourhoods.

The combined destruction of essential service infrastructure and public administration facilities needed to manage its recovery is a challenge for postwar planners. While it is impossible to put a precise price tag on Mosul’s reconstruction, some estimates are in the tens of billions of dollars. Iraq’s prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi, explained in March that the combined cost for post-ISIS stabilisation in Ninewa and Anbar provinces could reach $50bn, with much of that going to Mosul. The situation in Ramadi, a third of Mosul’s size, offers some insight into the potentially astronomical cost of recovering damaged areas after liberation. There, reconstruction efforts may require as much as $10bn in emergency resources, with additional funding needed to restore municipal institutions in the coming months.

Spoilers of reconstruction

Low oil prices since mid-2015 have left the Iraqi government without sufficient resources to confront the reconstruction challenge. Profit from petroleum export makes up 43% of GDP, 99% of exports, 90% of government revenue and 80% of foreign exchange earnings. By late 2015, the market price of oil was only half that needed for the Iraqi budget to break even, and in 2016 the budget deficit reached around $20bn. This continuing economic crisis leaves room for more immediate spoilers for Mosul’s physical and social recovery to fill the government’s vacuum.

Many complain about the emergence of informal providers of services (local organisations or even simply residents), which highlights deeper cleavages between neighbourhoods and the security actors that control them. For many sub-state groups, ownership of reconstruction projects in a given zone of control has become a lucrative means of building legitimacy among local populations and securing funding from federal and provincial sources.

Street scene in Rashidiya neighborhood, eastern Mosul (March 2017) Matthew Schweitzer

According to local security forces I interviewed in March and April, approximately 30-39 distinct armed groups — including elements of the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) and Sunni tribal mobilisation forces — have established zones of operation within Mosul. These groups sometimes compete with city, provincial and federal security forces, particularly in terms of screening for suspected ISIS members and conducting counter-terror operations.

Such a fractious security environment has also handicapped local recovery efforts. For example, without clearly defined mandates or jurisdictions, some healthcare clinics in eastern Mosul have been robbed of vital supplies like intravenous fluid, bandages and medicines. As one physician concluded, ‘right now we are struggling to survive, even as we are bled [of resources] from all sides.’ Similar instances of theft in western neighbourhoods have been traced to ISIS-linked cells, which allegedly manage to smuggle medical equipment to wounded militants across the front lines.

‘Uncertainty and desperation’

Political rivalry and subsequent insecurity has further hindered infrastructure reconstruction. In late March, a group of unknown fighters removed newly-installed pumps and electrical generators from a sanitation station in eastern Mosul, despite the presence of Iraqi Army 16th Division units, delaying water restoration efforts in several districts. While small-scale looting for financial gain has been reported across the city, this episode appeared designed instead to send a political message. The pumps were returned one week later, with no explanation or investigation. A local NGO official explained, ‘These crimes declare to police and army forces that they and the government do not own the city, and that they do not have control over its fate. For local residents, this is a worrying prospect that only creates uncertainty and desperation.’

Residents in eastern Mosul’s Rashidiya neighbourhood understand this warning well. Nearly three months after liberation, they must dig their own makeshift wells, sometimes selling water or pump access to neighbours. Entrepreneurs have established networks of diesel-powered generators, and charge local ‘managers’ a monthly rent to provide electricity in their neighbourhoods. In Rashidiya, one such individual is able to collect $7 per ampere from residents, selling about $21 worth of electricity per family in a month. Local NGOs and community organisations must navigate these non-state economies, which lack accountability and are vulnerable to infiltration from divisive armed groups and militias.

An Iraqi Army soldier near Nabi Younis neighborhood, eastern Mosul (March 2017) Matthew Schweitzer

As provincial officials have complained, such a situation weakens the government’s ability to establish its legitimacy at the neighbourhood level post-ISIS, or deliver services across neighbourhoods. Nearby to Rashidiya in the Nabi Younis neighbourhood, a member of parliament who is also a prominent figure within the Hashd Shabak — a minority ethnic militia linked to the Iran-backed Badr Organisation — has reportedly received government funding to rebuild areas around Jonah’s Shrine, as well as the shrine itself. According to one Ninewa antiquities official in charge of preservation, ‘such an award means that the militias will take credit for rebuilding these areas, they can put their flag on the heritage these areas hold, and they will deepen their financial independence from Baghdad and the local population.’ The only response, she concludes, ‘is for Mosul’s citizens to create our own militia. Otherwise, we are powerless and vulnerable.’

Beyond a military victory

Nascent territorialism in Mosul threatens long-term reconstruction efforts by institutionalising division between traumatised populations and security actors, as well as by breeding local resentment at perceived government neglect. With insufficient military and economic resources to commit to liberated areas, the Iraqi government may struggle to reverse trends toward factionalism without sustained international assistance. Yet today, long-term international aid seems unlikely, as Baghdad’s critical foreign partners scale back post-ISIS cooperation.

In late March, the US secretary of state Rex Tillerson voiced such a policy of disengagement, noting that ‘we are not in the business of nation-building or reconstruction.... War-torn communities must take the lead in rebuilding their institutions and returning to stability.’ Other US officials have confirmed these sentiments, indicating that Washington plans to provide very little beyond immediate emergency stabilisation aid. With the staggering task of securing and rebuilding not only Mosul but critical areas elsewhere in Ninewa, Anbar, Salah ad-Din and Diyala provinces, Iraqi planners may have little option than to defer to local actors with dubious allegiances, motivations and records.

In Iraq, unaddressed grievance — born of feelings of abandonment and marginalisation — has fuelled cyclical conflict for over a decade. Early observations from liberated neighbourhoods in Mosul indicate that such feelings may re-emerge to shape the post-ISIS environment if reconstruction efforts are premised on rivalry rather than reconciliation.

The ability of Iraqi and international policymakers to implement a comprehensive reconstruction plan across neighbourhood, ethnic, socioeconomic and sectarian lines could determine the country’s future trajectory after ISIS.