Taking Mosul back from the Islamic State (ISIS) should not be too hard, the chosen governor of Iraq’s second city said in an interview with Rudaw. Atheel Nujaifi had to flee when the radical Islamic group invaded in June. He says he is getting ready to return, with military forces working in and outside Mosul toward that end, and Americans helping to train them. The killing of the ISIS governor in an American air raid was one step in that process. Nujaifi says that the ISIS coalition in Mosul has crumbled since the religious fanatics murdered members of the groups that had helped its few hundred fighters invade and take power, over four months ago. But whilst military action will not take too long, to win back the minds and hearts will take years. To beat back the influence of the extremists, education and work is needed, Nujaifi says.
Read the edited transcript of the full interview:
Rudaw: Ever since ISIS took over in Mosul you have been working for your town from the safety of Iraqi Kurdistan. Has the situation in Mosul changed since?
Atheel Nujaifi: ISIS is still in charge in Mosul, but has lost a lot of support. At the beginning people were happy to get a caliphate. It was like a dream for them, like paradise. But when the caliph came, they saw it was just blood, hunger, lack of services, killing, women being taken, as well as the homes of people.
So ISIS lost them. But there still is a group of supporters in Talafal, who are mainly Sunni Turkmen and afraid that Shiite Turkmen will come to fight them. Although these are indeed training in Karbala, it is mainly ISIS propaganda.
Rudaw: According to a senior Kurdish government official the total number of ISIS fighters in Iraq amounts to about 200,000. How many are there in Mosul, where the growth of ISIS in Iraq started?
Atheel Nujaifi: In the Mosul province there are no more than 20,000 ISIS members, I think. In Mosul itself, no more than 5,000. I am talking about the total number of people in the town who are working with ISIS. There are about 600 foreign ISIS members.
The ISIS coalition is splitting up and losing partners. In Mosul, most groups that were working with ISIS now try to be neutral. There is no sectarian war there; the situation is different from elsewhere. In places like Anbar and Diyala all the Sunni groups are working with ISIS against the Shiite militia that are fighting there.
Rudaw: Considering these numbers, how hard will it be to liberate the city?
Atheel Nujaifi: It will not be a big battle. It will be easy to free Mosul. Inside the city we now have a predominantly military force to make problems, to fight ISIS. Some of those people are from the groups that stopped working with ISIS, but they do not want to announce their names, as they know ISIS knows all their details. But they are now working with us.
We are making a police force and an army, and also a tribal force. We work on creating a force of 20,000 men, police and army. For the police force we now have 5,000 men, 1,200 of them are Yezidi, next to Christians, Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs.
We are setting up a police camp, but for the army we are only just registering the recruits. We ask the coalition to train them. That will happen inside KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government). We take those who worked with the army and police and are now in the KRG as refugees, and have no relations with ISIS. They lost their houses, and have good reason to fight ISIS. Because they are experienced, the training will take no more than a month and a half.
Rudaw: And the tribes, in what way are you organizing them? Will this be a new Sahwa militia, like the Sunni force the Americans set up against al-Qaeda in 2006-2007?
Atheel Nujaifi: We want tribes to protect and defend their own areas. We need them to fight in their villages at the same time that we are working on Mosul. A new Sahwa will not work in Mosul. We need to keep the tribes with us, but not to depend on them. It is better to have them as an assisting factor. We need to control them inside a system, as their radical Islam could pose a danger, and there is a lot of revenge and problems between them. It will not be easy to give them guns whilst there are Yezidis, Christians and other minorities inside the communities.
Rudaw: Is there a role for the Kurdish peshmerga in getting back Mosul from ISIS?
Atheel Nujaifi: There will be a supporting role, but not a direct one. They can support the Arab force; it would not be wise for them to come under their own name or their own force. We know the rumor is going that the Kurds will liberate Mosul. It is better to have the image that it is a Mosuli force, and not Shiite or Kurdish one.
Rudaw: You say it will not be difficult to take back Mosul. But how do you win back the minds of the people?
Atheel Nujaifi: Most ISIS supporters are people from the villages who came to Mosul. Their low education is the reason they joined. We know villagers will follow anyone who is in power. So they will not stay with ISIS. We need education for them and to explain what is the real Islam. The problem is that most of our religious men kept quiet about this issue… Moderate imams need to speak to them. And we need to control that, so that extremist imams do not get any chance anymore. We need to return to a civilian life where other religions are respected. That is possible, as Mosul in its history never accepted the Salafists. When Mohammed Abdul-Wahhab came from Saudi-Arabia, the people refused him. They like Sufis better.
Politicians can do their part, they can guide the imams. We need them to take action. Of course it will not be easy, we need to change to society, the ideology of that society. And to lose the pressure on our society by those who feel it is better to die than to live. We need to give them work, a future. We need to beat poverty and illiteracy.
Rudaw: What happens to the Arab villagers who went with Isis once the group is defeated? It is very important that everybody returns home. The villagers will be scared to stay in the city. They came because they thought ISIS would protect them, but the owners of the houses they took over will be protected by the government. They have no place to stay, so they have to return home.
They have no chance unless they live together with others, but they need to know how to do that. When they return they have to be controlled by the educated Arabs, and not by those who worked with ISIS.
Rudaw: Will it be possible to get rid of ISIS completely?
Atheel Nujaifi: Of course, militarily it is not so difficult, but politically and ideologically it will take time -- years even, because it is not only in Iraq but all over the world. We need to change that extremist Islam that I do not believe is Islamic. We have to give people an idea of what Islam really is: that it wants to establish a world where people help each other.
