Some of it is visible: houses looted, partly destroyed as they were used as factory or storage, walls broken through for ISIS fighters to move undetected, the entrance to a tunnel in the sitting room or cellar – as well as mostly destroyed by air raids or in the fighting.
Some of the damage was inflicted on purpose, in a ‘if I cannot have it, nobody will’ attitude, or for the sake of the war, for instance the fires started in many of the houses in the Christian town of Qaraqosh.
All those tunnels that were dug, most will have to be closed up, even though some might in the future be used as escape routes, or even for tourism, for remembrance of the ISIS days.
When you travel through former ISIS-occupied lands, you cannot miss the garbage everywhere that somehow must be cleared, nor the roads that are all damaged by IEDs, trenches or other war efforts that need repairing.
The Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi put a figure on all of this of 35 billion dollars, but much of the damage is not even visible yet.
For instance, the mines that ISIS has placed everywhere – in roads, houses, any building; even though demining is going on, how much of these will be detected later by accident and with deadly consequences?
There is the visible damage that will have results that we do not see yet, like the burning oil wells near Qaraqosh and the burned sulphur that caused poisonous clouds. What will be the long-term effects on the health of those living in the area, as still not all the oil fires have been extinguished?
The effects of two years of occupation are many: In parts of Iraq, for two years all births, deaths, marriages and divorces were only registered by ISIS, if at all, and the Iraqi government considers these documents illegal.
Which means a backdrop of millions of documents, on top of outdated passports and licenses, that will bring a lot of hassle to civilians and problems to the Iraqi authorities.
Students in the occupied territories, whether they were subjected to the ISIS schooling system or stayed home, all lost two years of education and will eventually be two years older than normal Iraqi students when finishing their schooling.
But what happened to the minds of children who did endure those years of learning sums through counting bombs and who were submerged in the military and jihadi ideology. We will only see in the future, when we may find they grow into aggressive bullies themselves.
What will be the effect on people with chronic diseases who did not get the treatment they needed in the low-quality ISIS hospitals; will they recover or die an early death because of it?
And consider those who became handicapped; losing a hand or arm for stealing, losing limbs in the battle to recapture towns and cities; will they be a burden on the already burdened society after ISIS?
And the broken families because of ISIS’ cruel punishments; fathers and sons executed for being former police or army, or for being perceived to be against the group, resulting in widows and kids growing up without fathers.
And there is the added grief that many have no grave they can visit because ISIS threw the bodies of those they executed into mass graves, or executed people by throwing them into a deep gorge in the countryside.
What will be the effect of the way ISIS broke up communities, with ‘if you are not with us, you are against us’? Part of the community was with ISIS and had access to money, food and status, while others suffered from persecution, shortages, hunger and poverty.
Even families were split after sons or fathers decided to join ISIS, sometimes from an ideological background, sometimes for lack of money, sometimes for opportunistic reasons.
Hatred was sown. “We will never live next to these guys,” those who fled from Mosul will tell you.
The provinces of Salahadin and Babel have formally decided to block ISIS families from returning and to confiscate their belongings.
Frustration is sown. Those who lost their homes or loved ones feel victimized and now look for someone to blame, as do those who were reduced to poverty by ISIS.
Those who could not stop their sons from joining ISIS will not only suffer from the measures against ISIS families, but will also face the blame - as the ISIS guys themselves either fled or died.
There is no way that what it will take to rebuild Iraq can be summed up in money, because ISIS ripped Iraq apart, planted frustration and the seeds of more violence and aggression.
Reconciliation and rebuilding efforts are needed but cannot prevent the country being burdened with the heritage of ISIS for many years to come.
