By Ghazi Hars ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — In the year since the Islamic State captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, a picture has emerged of the events surrounding the stunning collapse of the local defense forces. What follows is a compilation of Rudaw media reports from the time and subsequent interviews with officials. On June 9, 2014, a group of an estimated 150 ISIS militants overpowered the 75,000-strong Iraqi Third Army Division in Mosul. At the time of the attack, Mosul had an estimated population of 2 million, mostly Sunni Arabs but with an ethnically diverse mix of Kurds, Turkmen, Christians and other groups. Just days before the takeover, ISIS had taken control of a number of neighborhoods in the city’s center, but government forces were quick to recapture the fallen areas the same day. Before the fall of Mosul, four army divisions had been deployed to all 18 cities and townships of Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital. The bulk of the forces were stationed throughout Mosul’s 74 districts. Rumors circulated about a possible invasion, but no one thought the city would fall so rapidly. A force of national police along with the regular, mostly Shiite, army had been brought from other provinces in an operation codenamed Nineveh Operation Leadership and with the full support of former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. In late May 2014, Iraqi security forces arrested seven ISIS members in Mosul who confessed that the group had plans to overrun the city in the following month. Major General Mahdi Gharrawy, commander of the Nineveh army divisions, had asked Baghdad for reinforcements before the attack, but top army officials close to Maliki had allegedly overlooked the appeal. On May 4, Iraqi police had surrounded the ISIS military commander in Mosul, but the man blew himself rather than surrender. At 2:30am on June 6, General Gharrawy and his men visited checkpoints around city and returned to their headquarters. The same night a convoy of vehicles entered Iraq from Syrian borders into the neighboring Mosul. Before invading Mosul, the ISIS militants were in virtual control of Raqqa and part of the Deir ez-Zor province in Syria. There were also ISIS operatives in Iraq’s Anbar province who had published online videos earlier of drivers being killed or beheaded. When reports started to circulate about ISIS operations in Mosul, Lieutenant General Aboud Qanbar, commander of the joint forces of the army, and Lieutenant General Ali Ghedan, commander of the infantry divisions, were assigned to jointly preside over the operations to protect Mosul. But during Monday night and early Tuesday morning, the 100,000 strong police and army forces left the city without local residents being aware of their withdrawal. Generals Qanbar and Ghedan and Gharrawy were reportedly in Mosul at the time of the ISIS attack, but decided to retreat and surrendered. A vast amounts of cash was in local banks when Mosul fell. On the first day, ISIS took over $2 billion in addition to 2,700 military vehicles, including US-made Humvees, tanks and army trucks. As the Iraqi army was fleeing the city into the Kurdistan region and Salahadin province, ISIS was transporting the weaponry from Nineveh into Syria. A large number of Iraqi Army soldiers later entered the Kurdistan region disguised as refugees. The fall of Mosul preceded the capture of Tikrit, capital of Salahadin provincel, and parts of Kirkuk and Diyala provinces. A year later, despite efforts by the Iraqi government and the US-led coalition, the militants are still in control of the Mosul and other cities.
