‘Jordan could ensure safety of Mosul citizens’

Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson got the war in Aleppo and Mosul right: he depicted two black-clad grim reapers, operating in shifts, covering the cityscapes with blood.

This war is finally to be fought with exactly the same ferocity on two fronts, with the Mosul front activated at the time Aleppo is hot.

The two fronts are a single war because the enemy is the same: Daesh and Jabhat Al Nusra are both creations of Al Qaeda in Iraq and both are regarded as “terrorist” formations, although the US-led coalition refuses to act on this inconvenient truth.

Instead, the US and its allies are increasingly trying to blur the lines between in Al Nusra, its partners, and other armed groups occupying eastern Aleppo.

The aim is to somehow justify the presence of Al Qaeda among “legitimate” insurgents. Such presence in urban settings violates international law.

The Obama administration’s open support for Al Qaeda should be seen as a bitter lesson for millions of young US voters who championed Barack Obama’s candidacy for the presidency in 2008 and 2012 in the expectation that he would initiate “change” in the deeply cynical way the US conducts its destructive foreign policy.

There are clear indications that the US — coordinator-in-chief of the Mosul offensive — seeks to drive Daesh fighters out of Iraq into Syria, where they can take refuge in Raqqa, headquarters of the militarised cult, and Deir Ezzor.

From bases there, Daesh could join forces with in Al Nusra and other takfiri insurgents in the war against the Syrian government.

Lebanon’s Hizbollah has already begun to prepare for this possibility. It is also likely that Iraqi Hashd Al Shaabi, Popular Mobilisation Units formed by Shiite militias, will move into Syria to take part in what could be the final battles in the Levant against Daesh and Al Nusra.

Iran’s boots-on-the-ground and Russia’s air force would take part and, ultimately, take credit for defeating Al Qaeda and its clones in the war for Syria and Iraq.

It is unfortunate for the US and its allies that the battle for Mosul is taking place in the shadow of the battle for eastern Aleppo.

Washington and its partners can hardly complain about Russian bombing of insurgent-held quarters of Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city, while US and Western air forces are bombing Mosul, formerly Iraq’s second city.

So far, the battle for Mosul has not come to this but it will, ineluctably.

In Mosul, the number of civilians could be as high as a million, rather than the 250,000 said to be in eastern Aleppo. 

As in eastern Aleppo, Muslawis will come under siege. They have already been told to stay in their homes rather than try to flee, mainly because preparations have not been made to sustain a massive outflow of Mosul refugees.

This means they could suffer privation as well as death in their homes if and when urban warfare begins in Mosul.

The order of battle for the Mosul campaign has Muslawis worried.

While intensively trained units of the still dysfunctional Iraqi army and Iraqi police are meant to bear the brunt of the fighting within the city, most of the members of these forces are Shiites who, since the 2003 US occupation of Iraq, have been brainwashed to hate Sunnis.

Sunni tribal fighters are also expected to enter the city in the belief that they will be kind to civilians who have endured 28 months of Daesh rule.

The outlying districts of Mosul, where Christian and Shabak minorities used to live, are to be taken and held by Kurdish peshmerga militiamen, while the perimeter of the city is to be controlled by the Hashd Al Shaabi, the very same Shiite militiamen who killed,  tortured and abused civilians fleeing Fallujah, Ramadi, Tikrit and other Sunni cities during battles to free them from Daesh.

The presence of these militiamen, many of them members of former death squads, could discourage Muslawis from trying to flee once Daesh fighters are no longer able to prevent them from doing so.

To the mix must be added Turkmen fighters, trained and armed by Turkey, as well as Christian and Yezidi units.

The US and UK have deployed special forces which are with Kurdish and Iraqi army formations.

Muslawis are wary of this collection of “liberators”. Each externally sponsored group has an agenda for post-Daesh Mosul.

The Kurds have vowed to annex territory they secure during this campaign and to demand special status for Kurds in the city.

Insisting that its forces play a role in the battle, Turkey also seeks to promote client Turkmen who want their own autonomous area.

Christians, Sunnis and Yezidis also expect separate quarters.

This means Mosul, once a mixed city where different communities lived peacefully together, would become a mosaic of competing and, even warring, ethnicities and sects.

The weak Shiite fundamentalist-dominated government in distant Baghdad is in no position to counter the divisive policies of diverse communities and their powerful patrons.

A contributor to the Mosul Eye website produced by Muslawis still in the city says its citizens want temporary trusteeship: “We will take our case to the international community and come to an agreement with the Iraqi government on the terms and conditions of trusteeship that must guarantee primarily the reservation of Mosul [Nineveh province] as an Iraqi province with its natural geographical borders, and subject to international protection for a limited period of time until the rehabilitation of new political elites that are capable of administering the city properly and [preventing] any possibilities that might subject the city to future wars...”

Muslawis cannot hesitate but must dispatch a delegation to the Security Council to demand protection from their “liberators” and call for a credible international force to prevent dissolution and division. 

Jordan, in particular, could contribute to the vanguard of such a force mandated to ensure the safety of the citizens of Mosul, as well as the revival of Mosul as a secular, pluralistic city worthy of a united Iraq.