Mosul Officials Warn Reconstruction Will Take Five Years, Billions of Dollars

Invasion of Huge City Will Mean a Huge Future Expense

Nearly eight months into the Iraqi invasion of Mosul, their second largest city, which has been under ISIS control for years, Mosul city officials are starting to make their way back into what portions of the city have been recovered, and are just starting to make an assessment of all the damage the invasion has caused.

With the destruction of airport, rail station, university, and literally all the bridges in town, officials are making preliminary estimates that the reconstruction will take at least five years, and cost billions of dollars, billions the Iraqi government clearly doesn’t have.

This is just the latest in a long line of Sunni cities “liberated,” and by extension nearly totally destroyed, and so far there’s been little to no sign of reconstruction. The situation in Mosul is likely to be even more grave when all is said and done, because at this point much of the most densely populated parts of the Old City are still under ISIS control, and the invasion, with its heavy airstrikes and artillery shelling, is far from over.

Though it’s never explicitly mentioned, Iraq will almost certainly seek some funding from the US for the reconstruction scheme, likely citing the massive amount of damage the US airstrikes have done in the course of the operation.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.