One year timeline...

Twelve months have passed since the government announced that the military campaign to recapture Mosul from ISIS terrorists has been finally unleashed. Every one of us was eager to hear that announcement, it’s time to end the dark night, to see the light at the end of the tunnel. This eagerness was disrupted by the strangling worries when you see all those military hosts equipped with devastating weapons and you know that those weapons will be thrown upon the city where innocent people, your beloved family, friends are still living, suffering from fears, hunger, and an unknown destiny. The battle started on17th of October 2016, we couldn’t sleep that night, we were doing nothing but to surf through the news media.

The scenario was fast at the beginning, and the scenes were promising and gave us some hope that innocents are going to be safe. It was fraught to see the people who were lucky to flee safely from the combat zone in that misery, they were emaciated, tired and barely able to breathe and their looks told a story of days full of pain ، worries, and a big question…why us? What guilt did we make to deserve this punishment?!

Day by day, things went more wildly and became bloodier, people were buried under their houses, and we all have lost people we love and care about...

On 10th of July 2017, the Iraqi government announced that Mosul is fully liberated from ISIS terrorists, leaving thousands of killed people and a destroyed city that was inhabited, one day, by two million people.

Within the “liberation year”, Mosul has become a semi-dead city.  While people on the left coast are trying to summon up the courage and to start a new life with the scarce support from the government, the right coast is now is a deserted, destroyed city, people are forbidden to cross to the right coast and many of them are still having relatives buried under the wreckage!

Again, innocent people are the biggest loser from this war and they are always the victims of the politicians and all we need now is the international support and a protection to those innocent people as it is unjust to leave them at the mercy of those who would not care about them and would never bring peace to the city.