The extremely ugly final weeks of the Iraqi “liberation” of Mosul is leading to an aftermath where untold hundreds of corpses remain buried under the rubble of the Old City. The corpses include some ISIS fighters, of course, but also a massive number of civilians.
That’s reflective of what Iraqi soldiers say were their orders in the final days of the battle, kill anything that moves. Iraqi forces eagerly did so, with one noting that they “killed them all, men, women, and children. We killed everyone.”
There is little chance that the dead will even be counted, with Iraqi forces sending in armored bulldozers to cover over all the rubble, crushing the uncovered bodies along with the former homes they lived in.
One Iraqi major insisted reports that the change came as the result of Iraqi prisons being full was false, saying that Iraq has plenty of prisons, but makes “very few arrests” in Mosul, noting that Iraqi troops summarily execute people for more or less anything.
Civilians caught going down to the Tigris River for water, because they’re dying of thirst, are routinely killed, he noted. The reporters in the city who would normally witness this sort of action are bullied, their cameras’ memory confiscated, and convinced to quietly leave town.
As Iraqi officials were celebrating “victory” in Mosul in recent weeks, attack helicopters were overhead just blocks away, targeting everyone that was still moving in the shrinking ISIS districts. The memory of what happened burned into the minds of the locals, Iraq now has an uphill battle trying to govern Mosul as anything but an occupied city, taken in the most brutal of fashions.
They can’t blame this on the Shiite militias. They were told to stay out of the city and guard the outskirts. This was the ISF.
Was that part of the “training” they received from the invaders/occupiers? I remember when the US used to distance themselves from savages like this – a long time ago. It’s sad how far we’ve descended into the cesspool.
Yes as nations go our Empire is by far the most imperial and brutal,
still no one can make a man cruel, it being a harm we force on the weaker.
The US did the same things in taking Fallujah. It is a method. I don’t defend it, it is the wrong method in every way. Still, we need to understand where this came from, not just wallow in shock.
It came from wealth and a lust for the glory and power inherent in wealth.
For wealth is all the property we hoard above what is needed for a comfortable life, wealth gives us no choice but to kill anyone who takes our wealth and no choice but to invade any nation if it is in the best interest of wealth.
Surely, wealth is stolen property belonging to the 23% of our children who suffer hunger and have no healthcare.
This is all based on very unreliable claims from anonymous sources. The Saudis/Israelis and neo cons want to demonize the shia factions and paint them as monsters to pave the way for the next military campaign that they hope is against Iran.
Bush before his 2003 war knew that the oil rich society of Iraq was exactly like this. Our greed driven Empire builders, just another satanic group joining in the kill fest and slaughter.