No, It is Not Liberation: Terrorism Experts Have Lied: The Visual History of the Destruction of Mosul 2017

Every period, a class of people who practice “writing” as a profession appear to write in just about everything in their surroundings for the sake of appearance and declare their selves “specialized experts” in one matter or the other. Historically, this phenomenon occurred earlier during the emergence of language and grammar studies centuries ago and those studies became a commodity for everyone. This phenomenon reoccurs constantly. Today, with the emergence of ISIS, it created a society of so-called “experts” who write about everything and make assumptions about everything related to the most popular and dominating commodity for the past couple of decades, that is “Terrorism”. This commodity that drove thousands to call their selves (specialized experts, researchers, investigative journalists, etc.). They had a platform to launch from, especially “Twitter”, which helped to move obscured people from being “nobodies” to researchers and experts at elite research centers and strategic studies, providing theories, opinions, and assumptions about sensitive issues. This is not as strange as the criteria those centers use to accept those types of experts and spend massive amounts of money on those studies. The main question here is “what is these centers’ goal behind introducing such naïve ‘experts’ as ‘experts in terrorism’”? with a small google search on the terms (Counterterrorism, Extremism, Counter-extremism, Islamic State Studies, Strategic Studies) and one will find hundreds of centers spread all over the globe that analyze and synthesize terrorism and fabricate its roots. And with a closer look at the nature of those centers and their affiliations one can easily conclude the reason behind inviting and selecting those so-called “experts”. Those “experts” are carefully selected to represent those centers’ agenda. This Prompted experts to develop their methods. They somehow monitor the trends of each center and set up an advance plan of writing on Twitter for a month or more and create a “symmetric society” around them, thus recommending each other in different ways.

All the techniques those so-called “experts” utilize will be illustrated in further details with evidence and proofs about a selective number of “experts” whom the writer is following and closely monitoring them and their reactions toward the events constantly. The main goal of writing this article is to show the impact of these experts and their lies about Mosul and their invention of deceptive terms and concepts to deal with a very serious matter such as Mosul, and their attempts to produce a specific understanding of Mosul that has nothing to do with reality, nor with the historical context of Mosul.

In the defence of established knowledge that those so-called experts keep on abusing by using it in a naïve way and putting as a description of their work. While their work is nothing but “Anti-Knowledge”. Those experts are categorized into two types: the first type are the Arabic-speaking experts (most of them from Iraq, Syria, and Egypt), and the ones concerned in this article are those from Iraq. Those Iraqi “experts” are divided into two distinct categories: pro-Iraqi government and anti-Iraqi government, and many subcategories lay under those two categories: Shiites who obviously and directly accused Mosul intellectually and flat-out described Mosul as being “ISIS enthusiast city” and put all their efforts in creating comprehensive concepts and judgements against of Mosul using ISIS as an excuse. Others switch from one side to the other, where others try to hold the stick from the middle and make their selves unpredictable.

The second type of those experts, which are far more lethal than the first type, are the English-speaking experts who hijack knowledge and abuse it; those who claim to be “orientalists” in their writings where, in fact, their writings have no value more than the cost of the ink used in those writings. They provide a superficial knowledge that holds no scientific roots, no intellectual, nor factual bases. All they provide is merely considered personal opinions based on wrongful assumptions. Yet, their message and styles spread very fast and dominate over any other messages because their message provides what those “research and study centers” are looking for, which in turn, provide what the participating governments in the “War on Terrorism” required to wage those wars. It is very necessary to recall what Mathew Arnold wrote in his book “Culture and Anarchy”, published in 1869, as he was writing on culture and useful knowledge. He believes that “The intellectuals of culture are those who are eager to disseminate the best knowledge and ideas of their time. They are those who facilitate their sovereignty and transfer from that party in society to another. They are those who are diligent to prune knowledge of everything that is coarse, ill, adverse, professional and abstaining, to give it a human touch and make it useful outside the framework of the polished and educated, provided that it is kept amongst the best knowledge and ideas of time and make it, then, a real source of splendor and light”

Knowledge in its ultimate, comprehensive form is to present the truth in its obvious form without falsification or biased according to those who seek to present certain portions of the truth that pertains to their agenda. What those experts have practiced over the past three years about Mosul is a crime that is no less than ISIS’ crimes or others’ crimes against this city and its people. The chaos of information those experts provided over those years are the utmost obnoxious crime in history in misinforming the populations, exploitation, and destruction of Knowledge and its humanitarian concepts.

It is also very interesting to watch how all the ISIS/Mosul so-called EXPERTS switched to become Kirkuk/PMU/KRG EXPERTS! Mosul is no longer a topic of interest for them! Instead, they are now theorizing about the future of Kirkuk, and one wonders how could they manage to jump from a subject to another and give it their close attention as it is their solo interest!? It is worth here to defend the established knowledge. The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset in 1930 described ‘The Revolt of the Masses’ and the unfounded intellectual arrogance that characterized it: “Thus, in the intellectual life, which of its essence requires and presupposes qualification, one can note the progressive triumph of the pseudo-intellectual, unqualified, unqualifiable, and, by their very mental texture, disqualified. Similarly, in the surviving groups of the ‘nobility’, male and female. On the other hand, it is not rare to find today amongst working men, who before might be taken as the best example of what we are calling ‘mass’, nobly disciplined minds. The present-day writer, when he/she takes their pen on hand to treat a subject which he/she studied deeply, has to bear in mind that the average reader, who has never concerned oneself with this subject, if one reads does so with the view, not of learning something from the writer, but rather, of pronouncing judgment on him when he is not in agreement with the commonplaces that the said reader carries in his head. If the individuals who make up the mass believed themselves specially qualified, it would be a case merely of personal error, not a sociological subversion. The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.”

Since the conclusion of the international coalition and the Iraqi government campaign against the Islamic State in Mosul, those “experts” start to paint a colorful picture of Life returning to the war-torn city of Mosul, neglecting a visual memory that contradicts their lies and fabricated truths. This live memory that will continue to recall how those “digital experts” destroyed an entire city and expelled and killed its people. Families will not forget how their children died of hunger, bombed with bombs and missiles, and killed with bullets. They cannot forget how their heritage and culture was destroyed right before their eyes as they are being mocked and disdained about it by those very “experts’ as they were questioning “what heritage does Mosul have?”, and “what culture does Mosul have?” Pictures tell what those experts have been silent about and failed to cover, and when they failed to dilute the matter, they start to relate every criticism about the destruction of Mosul to terrorism. Therefore, anyone criticizes how the military operations were conducted, or just by saying that “The Iraqi government destroyed Mosul along with the international coalition and the Islamic State” is identified as a “terrorist” and “terrorism supporter”!

ISIS has accomplished its mission of destroying the Mosuli Identity. It demolished the entire city, along with the destruction occurred because of the bombardment over Mosul. As the military operation was concluded, the number of bombs dropped over Mosul exceeds 40,000 bombs. Still, neither the United States, nor the International Community has formed a clear understanding of Mosul, and that is for various reasons. Obvious reasons include misleading theories and ill opinions disseminated by journalists turned “researchers” and “judges” of history with regards to Mosul through their reliance on mere opinions, not facts, in addition to the United States’ desire urgency to annihilate ISIS without clear planning of post-ISIS stage.

Mosul will be lost, and jihadist groups will continue to recruit fighters as long as Mosul remain in ruins, and without fast reconstruction plans, and appoint Mosul’s people to administer their affairs, this vicious cycle of terrorism will carry on, non-stop. Everything in this existence has a center, and the center of Nineveh province is Mosul, and the center of Mosul is the old city, and the old city’s heart are its markets, and all those are destroyed.

Since 2014, ISIS performed a systematic destruction of Mosul’s heritage and history. It is estimated that more than %90 of the city’s historical sites are destroyed, and the war destroyed what ISIS left of the city. Military Times Magazine estimated that the number of bombs dropped over Mosul has exceeded 40,000 various types of bombs. There is no realistic statistics so far of the number of bombs the various Iraqi forces dropped over Mosul, in addition to various IEDs, VBIEDs, rockets that ISIS used in Mosul during the war.

No! … What you did is NOT a liberation, and Mosul is not recovering as those experts are claiming. We do not consider what you did a liberation, but more of a systematic destruction of the city.

Never believe that we will forget, and anyone says otherwise is a liar and a swindler. We never made up ISIS. ISIS is the result of your policies that relied on mere lies. You destroyed our city, our heritage and our history, and we can never call it a liberation. The old city is still in ruins and there are ongoing plans to erase it.