By Timour Azhari and Khalid Al-Mousily
MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – It was the simple nighttime act of watering flowers on his street in Mosul’s old city that made Saqr Zakaria pause and think about how safe this last bastion of Islamic State militants was since it was liberated in Iraq. 2017.
“I thought for a moment, ‘where am I?’” said Zakaria, who left the city in 2005 but returned in 2018 to set up a cultural center, the Baytna Foundation, at a time when thousands of bodies were still being cleared away . the ruins.
The jihadist group proclaimed its caliphate at the Grand al-Nuri Mosque nearby after capturing Mosul a decade ago. They imposed an extreme form of Islam, killing members of minority groups, banning music and destroying archaeological sites.
The maze of alleys in this part of the city on the west bank of the Tigris River became a place of regular killings, kidnappings and crime as Islamist insurgents emerged after the 2003 US-led invasion.
Much of it was pulverized and thousands of civilians died in the battle to liberate it.
But despite political infighting, accusations of corruption and delayed reconstruction, life is returning on both sides of the river.
Many of the more than two dozen people who spoke to a Reuters reporter during a four-night visit to the city said they felt safer today than at any time in the past two decades.
“Life was about eating and sleeping and locking your door so you don’t get kidnapped, killed or blown up. We were robbed, and today we’re making it up,” Zakaria said. His foundation, housed in a traditional Moslawi house with a courtyard, has become a leading attraction for local and foreign visitors, including French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021.
Shortly after he spoke, an elderly man walked into the courtyard and wept as he saw photos on the wall of the city’s intellectual and cultural elite longing for better days.
“This is Mosul,” Nizar Al-Khayat, a former school principal in his 70s, said, his voice shaking. “No matter what happens, it remains a civilized, civilized city.”
Local officials and residents say there is still a long way to go before Mosul loses the legacy of ISIS.
Seven years after the liberation of the city, rubble is still being cleared. Pockmarked buildings with collapsed floors and exposed reinforcement can still be seen around Mosul. The old city is in ruins.
But bridges have gone up. New restaurants have opened where customers feast on Lebanese cuisine and bob their heads to the nostalgic sound of Syrian tenors.
A souk and cafes along the river bustle with life well into the night, previously unthinkable in a city where people locked themselves in their homes late in the afternoon.
While the city works to restore basic infrastructure, it is focusing on expanding green areas and tourist attractions, such as a new coastal strip along the river, said Firas al-Sultan, technical advisor to the Mosul municipality.
Monuments to the city’s rich interfaith history, such as the Great Nuri Mosque and Al-Tahera Church that Pope Francis visited in 2021, are being rebuilt.
(Reporting by Timour Azhari and Khalid Al-Mousily in Mosul, editing by William Maclean)
