UTTERLY SURREAL

East Coast of Australia, Littoral Zone

It was utterly surreal.

But no one knew.

The news bulletins did not lead with it. There was no discussion at the Tables of Knowledge. The endless talk fests of modern society did not debate it. The politicians did not strut their stuff, crowing about military victories.

There was no pride in defense of the homeland. 

We discussed the war, if at all, as if it was some arcane version of Pokemon being conducted on the other side of the world, obscure, of having no significance to our lives.

Mosul was falling.

The place where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had declared a caliphate three years before and unleashed a campaign of terror which would profoundly alter the world was now in ruins.

The Coalition, of which Australia was the second greatest contributor, had pulverised the ancient town, which encompassed the Assyrian city of Nineveh, referred to in the Bible as "the great city".

The Great City had been pummeled into dust by The Great Satan.

The vision of destroyed, traumatised families, dead bodies in the street, wounded or dead children, the infidel Americans in the city, their gunships overhead, was fueling jihad sentiment around the world.

It was as if deliberate, in the double, triple, quadruple blinds of Western artifice, as if some secret entity was pulling the levers, deliberately stoking violence, deliberately propelling the end of what had become known as Western civilisation, that now rotting ruin.

"My five children are dead. There is but one God, Allah."

The woman stumbled across the front line. Not into the hands of safety. Into the hands of the murderers of her children.

The highly traumatised population, devastated by the bombing, fled through snipers, past the smell of rotting mujahideen, past whole families rotting in the rubble, the largest, most shocking cases of urban warfare in history.

And the Australian news bulletins led on education reform, football scandals, yet more programs to cut waste, the latest bureaucratic minutiae on the development of emissions trading schemes, yet more legislation abrogating freedoms they purported to protect, celebrity gossip. And the latest in a long running secular witch hunt, the charging of Cardinal George Pell with sexual abuse allegations dating from 1978.

Where the truth lay in some accused fumble in a school gym 40 years ago only God knew.

But the hounds had been unleashed.

The stench of death hung over Mosul and no one cared, all the alleged social justice warriors too concerned with their waste disposal units to care about flyblown bodies on the others side of the world.

We were there, Australian politicians had assured the public, to stamp out terrorism at its roots.

Decades of failure in Iraq, the hundreds of thousands of dead, the millions of lives altered or destroyed, the galvinisation of jihad movements around the globe, none of it mattered in the altered universe that was Australian public life.

Australia was actively supporting the Shia dominated Iraq Army, fermenting sectarian violence against the Sunnis, creating the perfect breeding grounds for Islamic State 2.0.

And nobody cared.

They would come to care. 

But would never understand why their world had just been mugged.

THE BIGGER STORY:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/29/mosul-mosque-where-isis-declared-caliphate-has-been-recaptured

Martin Chulov

Iraqi forces claim to have recaptured the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul – where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself leader of Islamic State three years ago.

The seizure marks a highly symbolic moment in the war, placing government troops in the heart of the Old City – the last redoubt of Isis in Mosul – and probably within a fortnight of recapturing all of Mosul.

Baghdadi declared a caliphate from the mosque three years ago to the day – 29 June 2014 – at the height of the group’s power.

Isis last week toppled the Hadba minaret adjoining the mosque, causing extensive damage to the surrounding compound. The fight for the terror group’s last redoubt was grinding and savage, with Iraqi troops reporting house-to-house fighting with a battle-hardened enemy, which refused to surrender.

Iraqi special forces entered the compound and took control of the surrounding streets on Thursday afternoon, following a dawn push into the area, said Lt Gen Abdul Wahab al-Saadi.

Earlier, the special forces Maj Gen Sami al-Aridi warned that the site would need to be cleared by engineering teams as Isis fighters were likely to have rigged it with explosives.

Five Isis militants were killed on Wednesday while trying to swim across the Tigris river from the west to the east of the city, armed with explosives. The densely packed Old City is thought to still house up to 100 well armed extremists, as well as tens of thousands of civilians, who have been gradually streaming out of ravaged buildings to safety over the past week.

After months of fighting, the Isis hold in Mosul has shrunk to less than 0.8 square miles of territory, but the advances have come at considerable cost.

“There are hundreds of bodies under the rubble,” said special forces Maj Dhia Thamir, deployed inside the Old City.

THREE YEARS AGO:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10948480/Islamic-State-leader-Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi-addresses-Muslims-in-Mosul.html

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, emerged from the shadows to lead Friday prayers at Mosul’s Great Mosque, calling on the world’s Muslims to “obey” him as the head of the caliphate declared by the Sunni jihadist group.


The notoriously secretive jihadi, who has never before been seen in public, chose the first Friday prayer service of Ramadan to make an audacious display of power in the city that the Sunni Islamists have now controlled for three weeks.


Speaking from the balcony in his new incarnation as self-anointed “Caliph Ibrahim”, Baghdadi announced himself as “the leader who presides over you”, urging Muslims to join him and "make jihad" for the sake of Allah.


Under his direction, the Islamic world would be returned to “dignity, might, rights and leadership”, he said.


“I am the wali (leader) who presides over you, though I am not the best of you, so if you see that I am right, assist me,” he said, dressed in a black turban and robe reminiscent of the last caliphs to rule from Baghdad.

“If you see that I am wrong, advise me and put me on the right track, and obey me as long as I obey God in you.”

Al-Baghdadi hailed the jihadi “victory” which he said had restored the caliphate after centuries.

“God gave your mujahedeen brothers victory after long years of jihad and patience... so they declared the caliphate and placed the caliph in charge,” he said.

“This is a duty on Muslims that has been lost for centuries.”