 I'm just going to let all our participants enter the room before we begin. Okay, as people join us today, I'm just going to welcome you to our CSDS seminar. My name is Craig Larkin. I'm a senior lecturer in Middle East politics and the director of the Center for the Study of Provided Societies here in War Studies at King's College in London. And today our guest lecturer is entitled Shattered by Terror, Rebuilding Social Confidence in Post-ISIS Mosul, and we're delighted to have with us Oma Mohamed and perhaps better known as Mosul I. Oma Mohamed is a historian from Mosul, known recently as the anonymous blogger Mosul I. I threw this platform Oma set out to inform the world about life under ISIS within Mosul. For three years within Mosul, Oma risked his life to bear witness and document ISIS atrocities and destruction, but also episodes of local resistance to ISIS rule. His dispatches and tweets were read by hundreds of thousands of people providing a window into this distorted dystopian world of ISIS in the so-called Islamic Caliphate. Oma was currently teaching Middle East history and cultural heritage at Sanctuary University. His focus is also shifted to advocacy, social initiatives for the people of Mosul, including the international effort to resupply the central library of the University of Mosul. As a historian and lecturer at the University of Mosul, his work and scholarly work focuses on history and looking at local historiographies, narratives and micro histories. Oma is a regular media commentator on Iraq. He has an MA in Middle East history in the University of Mosul. He was named the 2013 researcher of the year by Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. And personally it's a real privilege and honor to have Oma here to speak today. I just want to thank him for his work, his courage and his impact, his willingness to bear witness in such challenging and horrific circumstances, but also his desire to see change and to be part of this peacebuilding process in Mosul and Iraq. So without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Oma who's going to speak to us for around 30 minutes and then we will have a Q&A time. So please, if you've got any questions, put it in the Q&A box and we will be able to fill those questions after Oma's talk. So thank you Oma. Thank you Craig for inviting me and many thanks to all the attendees. We have probably discussed the question of the fall of Mosul many times but there is always an important element that we have to keep the discussion about what happened in Mosul. We have always to continue the discussions because every time we get into debates we will discover new elements of how we and how we want to heal the community that was actually destroyed by Daesh and to see the deep destruction that Daesh caused in Mosul. But before I start speaking about how we will build this communal confidence, I would like to explain how this destruction happened and whether it happened in 2014 or before that. The fact that there are many researchers who tend to attribute the destruction of the social confidence in Mosul to the 2014 movement in the history of Mosul which is the movement of Daesh but in fact the destruction happened slowly long before that and I would start even before the 2003 invasion. It's a long and systematic destruction kind of creating the distrust between communities since the regime of Saddam and the regime of Saddam manipulated the social life of the people and played on different layers of the history of the city of Mosul and also by creating differences between the communities, empowering the rule of tribes over the urban life, redefining the meaning of urbanism, urban structure and the rural areas playing with the education and creating this kind of distrust among communities. It continued, it didn't happen at once, it continued, it was deepening inside the societies, the people started losing the trust among themselves. Of course, there was always a mechanism of producing new ways of living together and I would refer here to a question that was raised in the 1970s at one of the most important churches in Mosul, the Mascanta Church, which is one of the oldest churches in Mosul. It was a meeting between the cardinal, the current cardinal Luis Faisaco and other historians and Muslim scholars and that question was how can we live together and this question was asked in the 70s. It was an attempt to start looking toward the future, to strengthen the social and communal confidence among the communities, to maintain the diversity of Mosul and to try to heal any kind of or try to solve any kind of problems that might emerge in the future because they felt the dramatic change at that time. They felt the negative impact the government of or the rule of Saddam was having at that time. Unfortunately, that question didn't last long and it wasn't answered because later on the time that came when Saddam changed his mentality from a secular into a religious person when he started his Arabization policy, when he started his faith campaign, such kind of questions became dangerous. So the same people who were trying to establish a new understanding or at least continue to ask such questions, they withdrew and the city remained living in this kind of silence and silent agreements. When the Christian or the Muslims or the Yazidis, they started feeling themselves isolated from each other and while you see all the people living together in one city but the reality that the people were disconnected from each other, it also had an impact on the decline of the rule of the community leadership and the community leadership in Mosul had played a very important role in the past and it was essential to maintain the social contract intact in the city of Mosul but Saddam and his region destroyed this kind of trust in the community leadership and he replaced them with those who were loyal to him no matter what kind of like how disqualified they were, the only qualifications that is required is to be loyal to the regime of Saddam and this didn't stop after the fall of Saddam in 2003. It actually kept going in post 2003 and those same people who tried to ask that question in 2000 in the 1970s in fact thought that 2003 would be a moment to put that question again on the table. So they tried and they went into more serious discussions and unfortunately the emergence of terrorism, the rise of terrorism killed that movement again and then Mosul went through terrible movements when it moved from justice into violence and this time Mosk's church shrines would be targeted by the extremists. One of the earliest horrible memories that everyone in Mosul still remember is the behaving of the Christian priest in Mosul in 2004 and the distribution of the CD of this behaving. That one was the most shocking movement in the history of Mosul which shocked everyone but it actually had a fundamental impact on deepening this kind of distrust among communities and the suffering of the Christian and everyone else started growing. Imagine that from 2003 to 2014 more than 2000 priests were killed and I still remember observing the streets of Mosul before 2003. To be honest I don't want to remember what happened but for the sake of letting the world know what happened you rarely spend your day in Mosul after 2003 without seeing a corpse of a dead, a behaved person in the middle of the street. That was the normal day of everyday life in Mosul and this created the fear that fed the emergence of terrorism and it was the foil of Daesh and Daesh thrived on this fear that everyone was afraid of saying anything or trying to do anything in the city but then there was another moment that I connected to again to the moment of the 1970s at the moment of 2003. There was in 2008-2009 another opportunity and window where the religious leaders as well as the community leaders wanted to reclaim the narrative again and again the same person, the same personalities and I always keep mentioning his name because he was always the one who initiate the question of how can we live together? It's Luis Rafael Sacco and he asked the same question when Mosul lived in a kind of like short peaceful period but then 2011 happened the withdrawal of the US troops from Iraq and the reemergence of the terrorism and the rise of Daesh and then came the moment of 2014 and that was the last step in the politics of fear that Daesh practiced in Mosul. 2014 was the moment when they implemented their full strategy of destroying and shattering the communities of Mosul by deporting the Christians, by committing a genocide against the Yazidis, a genocide against the Shia population, another genocide against the Sunni people, they didn't leave anyone and then they started systematically destroying the most visible elements of the identities of the people which is the cultural heritage. They started destroying the ancient history, then the Christian history, the Islamic history, the Yazidi history, they came to Mosul not only with weapons, they came with a full package of history to replace the history of the people of Mosul and to change the social structure of the city with the system that they brought. So instead of having equal citizenship before the law, Daesh provided something in you which is if you are a member of the organization then you are privileged, if you are a supporter of the organization you are privileged, if you are not part of this terrorist organization then you are out of the social class that Daesh provided. They call it Amma or the commoners and everyone among those commoners is suspected by Daesh as a potential enemy of Islamic state and they also created their own structures of what they call the Muhajirun, the foreign fighters, the Ansar, the supporters and they played a dangerous game with the tribes and here I have to be honest when I discuss this because it is something that Daesh succeeded in achieving while the several governments weren't able to solve this problem and the question of the tribes is still actually a big question in Iraq. When Daesh wanted to control the tribes what they did is simply they returned back their villages that they were confiscated as part of the post-2003 conflict that happened, the conflict between Arabs and Kurds or Turkmen and Arabs, Shabbat and Arabs etc. Daesh gave those tribes their villages and in exchange they were loyal to Daesh, whether they joined them or not they managed to gain control and authority over these tribes or at least to keep these tribes on their side without having them fighting against Daesh and they also changed the structure of even the geographical space of the city of Mosul by redesigning or redrawing the borders of Mosul, now it's no more the same Mosul that the people used to live, it's not part of the same geographical borders, no it's part of the what they called Wilaya system, Mosul is no more the same city, it belongs to another Wilaya, the southern part of Mosul belongs to another Wilaya and all of this confused the people and changed also the meaning of what is urban and what is rural and that created conflict between urban areas and rural areas which actually led to more conflict and it even led to develop the structure of Daesh itself while Daesh kept attacking the civil society to the extent that we were afraid that the civil society in Mosul might disappear at any moment even after the fall of Daesh because the way they attacked the civil society was horrible and with all of these kind of, with all of this destruction that took place in Mosul you can see Greg as many other observers that it's not only the communities that lost the trust in each other, it's individuals who have lost trust in each other so it goes from the individual to the community and when you speak about coexistence, when you speak about reconciliation, when you speak about let's sit together, when you bring back the same question of how we can live together you feel yourself a stranger because no one would understand this, when you ask the question let us go for a reconciliation, they tell you reconciliation of what, my whole land was destroyed, my whole communities were shattered and deported, the Yazidi is the same, there was a genocide committed against them and when you speak to the Sunni people the same thousands of Sunnis were in fact executed by Daesh so the question remains how can we address these issues with a way of telling everyone of these communities that your a question matter but not at the cost of the question of the other community, when we speak about the Yazidi genocide we don't want to, we don't want to create this kind of types of victims, no whoever was attacked by Daesh is a victim of Daesh, I cannot say that the Christian question matters more than the Yazidi question, we need to deal with all of this as a whole because Daesh committed crimes against the humanity and everyone in Mosul is part of this humanity who suffered from these crimes of Daesh and I would like here to also address something very important to Craig and it's one of the problems why we are unable to actually effectively achieve at least first steps of reconciliation in Mosul is that we are still using ineffective terminologies, I cannot keep, I cannot implement, I am here referring for example to the United Nations, I cannot implement the United Nations strategy that was implemented in Rwanda, I cannot implement it in Mosul, it's completely different context, it's not the same historical structure, not the same social structure, what we need is to develop our understanding, to create new questions and to see how deep the problem goes into the history of Mosul and where we can actually address the real problem because the real consequences of Daesh are no more just the religious ones, we are speaking now about the impact of the climate change on the Christians themselves and I would explain this with more details, the Christians who are living in the Nineveh plains are still suffering from the fear and the risk of losing their lands because now it's not just Daesh, it's the militias who are offering lands for those who are coming from Southern Iraq and those who are coming from Southern Iraq, they are leaving their lands because it's no more a livable area, it's suffering from the climate change so they are moving north and in exchange for having the farms, for having the lands, the militias are gaining more loyalty from those people at the expense of the Christians, imagine that whole villages were distributed, like you have a land of two or three miles, it will be cut into pieces and distributed to those new comers who are running from also the consequences of the climate change, what I'm trying to say here Craig is that it is getting more complicated and we cannot just keep discussing the consequences of Daesh as just a religious problem, it goes beyond this and as I said before the economy is at the heart of the rebuilding the confidence in Mosul because the city of Mosul is a commercial city, it's a city that lives and thrives on the economical prosperity, when you look at the urban structure of Mosul you would see the Jewish neighborhood, the Christian neighborhood, the Muslim neighborhood but where do all of these people meet and have the real diversity, it's in the old markets and that's why the first thing that actually recovered in Mosul was the old market of the city and it's still recovering because it's helping the people to reclaim their historical identity, cultural identity, but most importantly the peace that they are trying to achieve which needs more efforts and the moment you can offer the Christian for example the stability and the returning of their shops in the old market of Mosul they will not need this kind of conversations of let's speak about reconciliation because the reconciliation is an outcome of a sustainable plan of economical prosperity when you provide them back with their normal lives with what they really need this will help them to continue and I always mentioned this example of Ayazi demand sitting in at the top of Mount Sinjar in Sinjar he produced a dried figs olive oil tahini or whatever kind of productions he produced he needs a market what is his usual market his usual market is the old market in Mosul so how do you how do you make him communicate with people of different faiths different backgrounds is his journey from Sinjar to Mosul is the process of the reconciliation what he feel that it's safe to sell his products again in Mosul in the old market of Mosul that is the natural and normal process of reconciliation I cannot impose it on them it has to happen naturally by providing all the elements and by by creating the environment for such kind of communication to happen still there is another element that is very important and essential and it should be actually intensively used Mosul especially the old part of the city is still under reconstruction and this reconstruction of the old houses they need a certain kind of construction materials those construction materials such as the marble for example it comes also from Sinjar and then you need the gypsum that comes from Nineveh Plains and Eastern part of Mosul if you can create these kind of economical connections again between the people and all of them would contribute in the reconstruction of Mosul that's how I call it the reconstruction of the communal and social confidence otherwise if we try to impose if we try to discuss only the problem without looking into the solutions and also to ask different questions we will not be able in fact to go into a real debate what we need is more debates what we need is more visible reconstruction that helps the people to come back to life also helping the people to trust not only in the social life but helping the community is to rebuild the trust not only among themselves but also between the communities and the local governments and this is how with the authorities this is how you create the confidence because after all what would a citizen need more than safety security and a good job that's that's how you reconstruct a city because the city is not just a group of people it's a complicated combination of elements economic, religious, social and historical thank you sorry Mike just let me open the door for my job go ahead thank you very much Omar for an excellent presentation we have a number of questions coming in so please feel free if you have questions you would like to ask Omar just pop it in the Q&A and I will run through them I just I just want to start with a couple because I mean there's just so many there's so many issues that and so many questions that come to mind and yeah I'd like you maybe to comment on and I was curious whenever you mentioned the idea of the challenge of collective suffering and individual suffering and whether I mean there's a there's a push towards even the use of the term genocide and whether it should be used for one community another or how we should memorialize the death of those that have been killed you know should there be collective memorialization or in what way should it be individualized should it be particular museums for perhaps the Yazidis for Christians for for other communities and I just wonder what's your thinking on that because I think the memory and the sort of reconstruction goes hand in hand as you're rebuilding the question is what are we actually rebuilding how do you memorialize the dead in a way that honors them but also allows for a future vision of the city so yes this this is a very very important and sensitive question Craig but before we answer these questions we need to define the crimes of Daesh the way you define the crimes of Daesh will help us to easily understand the importance of recognizing a genocide against certain community rather than another community I have to be careful here but it's important to say it when you recognize a genocide against a certain community and you don't recognize or you don't say that another community suffered from a genocide this might create some kind of also problems but there is always a way of using this for the greater good which is the crimes of Daesh should always be defined as a crimes against humanity and we start from here and then we go we say yes Daesh committed the crimes against all the people but let's look at the structure or the systematic destruction and systematic attacks that Daesh committed against the Yazidis which no one can actually question or debate because it's a fact they committed and and just I think yesterday Karim Khan the the special advisor of UNITAD explained that there are enough evidence to I'm sorry there are enough evidence of to recognize what happened to the Yazidis as genocide but at the same time we have the Christian are calling for the same they also want to be what happened to them to be recognized as a genocide now the problem is can we depoliticize this and can we speak to the communities in one manner like as I said like we speak to all of them to all of these people what happened to you is a crime against humanity but then again we have to go back to the level of destruction that happened but I am afraid that this question will remain open for a very long time that certain communities will feel themselves like why my suffering was less important than the others it will always remain there but the most important thing that as you say it's also a museum is I support to to build a museum to recognize all the victims but it's also in reality it might also be a dangerous thing to do in the meantime we just need to give more time until we create such kind of a museum but one of the important things and I urge here all the organizations that are working on investigating the crimes especially UNITAD and the International Coalition and I have asked this before we need to make sure that we make public spaces with all the names of the people who were killed by Daesh like it's not a big thing to do it's easy you have panels and and murals that contains the names of all the victims of Daesh so as you said Craig we go to the individual level that everyone's suffering is recognized this might also help to show that everyone actually matter everyone is important every life is important great thank you we have a number of questions so I'm just going to to run through a couple of them and Jennifer Young has a few questions and she asked does vengeance and retribution feature on this path towards healing in a fractured society I think it's an interesting question when we talk about the tribes we talk and we think we think about internal like so and ceremonies or practices you know what role does does retribution or some sort of peace building that depends that depends on you know the problem the problem that started about the the ISIS affiliated families or ISIS perceived families many families were imported from their homes just because one of their a member of their family joined Daesh and all the family was punished that actually happened because there was no plan how to deal with the post Daesh question and when you leave it to the tribal system you will get nothing but this kind of revenge and many many many many crimes happened and committed against them also the question of the families who want to return back to Iraq but they are stuck in a whole camp or they are stuck on the borders it's still a question of how you convince the community to accept them back and this question is not with the community anymore it's with the community leadership that's why we always need to invest in developing the community and the religious leadership now I am aware that religious leaders such as Luis Rafael Sistani, Bayezidi leadership and also the Sunni leadership they are all ready to to establish certain kind of an announcement or a statement to give mercy or to say that those families are not to be punished for the crimes that they were committed by the members who joined Daesh it's also important to support the justice system and we would love to see more visibility of the work UNITAD is doing because that would give more confidence to the people that the justice system is working but the most important thing which I don't know why it's still not happening and I've called for this many times we need an urban movement in Iraq a public trial should be happening in Iraq and this should happen today not tomorrow we cannot wait anymore for this a public trial to bring the criminals of Daesh to justice and to show the people the victims their families that there is justice and that there is system that can bring justice to those victims and to put those criminals behind the bars now that's that's that's a political decision has to be made by the Iraqi government I know that there is a will to do this but I still don't understand why it didn't happen so far there are enough evidence of these crimes and especially after the recognition of the genocide against the ASDs it's now more than ever the Nuremberg movement should happen in Iraq I think with this first step of public tribunal a public trial everyone should see it with more investment in their leadership I think it will lead to reconciliation among communities because once you feel that justice is served I believe that people will cool down a little bit I mean do you think this can happen realistically internally or it would need an international I believe I believe it can't it can't it can't be it can't be both I mean of course of course the mandate of UNITAD is very important but it's also important to have this kind of court to be established in Iraq to have its sessions in Sinjar in Ninova Plains in Mosul in other places where the crimes were committed I believe that this is a very important way of showing the victims and their families that justice is being served maybe along those lines I have a question from Makita and she says is there much research that's been done on how the legal environment pre-during or post-conflict affects reconciliation process so maybe the issue might be you know you could call for an international court but if there is you know if law and order has not really been fully established within the state you know how can we expect reconciliation processes to begin I'm afraid there is there is less efforts on this aspect I'm afraid that there is very little being done about this it's still I am aware of some steps were taken but they are still very small we are speaking here about a full time efforts and research need to be done to establish the facts to establish the situation of problems that predates that itself because it's well connected as I explained when I spoke about the villages that were given back to the tribes it predates that it goes back to the Saddam period to the to the Arabization policy of Saddam so the problems are very complicated and they need to be seen not as something just as a consequence of Daesh but we have to see the problem of of Daesh it brought all the all the problems all together beside the problems of Daesh and it created all of this kind of chaos but more need to be done about this great I have a question from Francis and they ask is Mosul even remotely a priority for the Baghdad government and should it be so and then secondly they ask about the position of women who are being held accountable for their husband's involvement or are being accused of being a member of Daesh so yeah well I mean to start with I mean one of the one of the reasons why Daesh happened is because Mosul wasn't a priority for the Iraqi government and that's that's one of the questions that we still need we still have to discuss I am afraid that Mosul is still not a priority for the Iraqi government and if it wasn't for the international support we wouldn't have seen any effective reconstruction in the city of Mosul it's also important to give a credit here to the people of Mosul and to praise them for the efforts they have done for reconstructing and restoring their life there are thousands of youth who are eager to build a better future for for themselves and for their city there are many people who are reconstructing their homes shops and re-establishing the markets the the international organizations are working on the reconstruction of the cultural heritage which is fundamental and essential in reconstructing the confidence communal confidence and regarding the second question I think it was about the women or wives of Daesh members unfortunately the problem is very deep now it's more problematic than it was two years ago everyone who joined Daesh his whole family is being punished their house is being confiscated they are deported from their areas and there is no clear plan of how to deal with this and I connect this back to what I said we need to invest more in community leadership in order to create social confidence among the communities but also to strengthen that the the the judicial and the justice system should be respected when we deal with this we cannot punish people who committed nothing and we cannot punish anyone for crimes that were committed by others but the question is and it's a very a very a very tricky question about women of Daesh we have to distinguish between women who found themselves all of a sudden their husbands are member of Daesh they didn't know about this and as a woman she cannot resist this or she cannot say no to that to that person and we have to distinguish between those people who are innocent and those who willingly joined Daesh whether they are women or men that's that's why we need to go through legal system we need to go through investigation to determine who was Daesh and who was not it's not just a perceived affiliation just because the family one of its member had Daesh the whole family is Daesh but there are women in fact who joined Daesh willingly and this this not to be to be confused and we don't have we we shouldn't actually punish other women just because other women joined Daesh then we see like all all these females are also Daesh members great and there's there's a question by Salma and they ask what are some of the local initiatives that are dealing with social healing perhaps that you've seen that are successful maybe in small projects or micro enterprises can you give us an example perhaps there are many there are many many many many examples and I will give you only some and I will ask you to go and take a look just type on the google and say social initiatives in Mosul and you will see yourself but I will give you some real examples and it is it is one of the most beautiful examples during the recent visit of Bob Francis to Mosul on 7th of March 2021 the last march everyone was surprised that a beautiful cross with all the elements of the diversity of Mosul being displayed on that cross was created by a young Muslim person who created this cross and gave it as a gift to the Pope and as a gift to the Christians and also the statement that the director of the Christian Properties in Mosul priest Father Ra'id who said I am a Christian who lives among two million Muslims and all of them calls me Abuna Abuna means father in in in Arabic that he is explaining how possible it is to re-establish the confidence and the peace there are many other initiatives of inviting the priest to a Nuri mosque or vice versa religious leaders from Muslim community to the churches there were many youth initiatives of people meeting each other from different cities from different faiths from different sects having discussions among themselves it's all community-based and the grassroots initiatives you could see young people cleaning and reconstructing a church and young Christian people rehabilitating a mosque I believe that these are the initiatives that we need to look at to develop and to invest in there are also many other initiatives such as the rule the music and art initiatives are playing in re-enhancing the narrative of Mosul as a city of diversity yes I think there are many also the rule I think there are also questions connected to women I will answer them within this question which is now the women are having more rule in the recovery of Mosul and this is also very important to not hear that we are not only getting a recovery from Daesh but we are in fact redefining the rule of women that wasn't defined long time ago it's the time now to redefine this rule and to give the space to women in Mosul which is actually being reclaimed by the women themselves and they enforced their space in the city of Mosul and they say we have to play a rule in the future of Mosul and then they did they are having a rule in the future of Mosul that's a really interesting answer I'm always curious because I've sort of followed the revive Mosul tagline and hashtag and I'm curious you know how much are we talking about a revival or a nostalgic return to the past or whether we're whether what we're witnessing is initiatives for a change I mean we're not just looking to to recapture what was there but a transformation of Mosul society I believe I believe Greg that we are in the process of reviving the spirit of Mosul not just a nostalgic approach to the past what I see here is there is something important happening in Mosul is that the young generation has more courage to use critical thinking than the past generation I mean I'm still young I think I'm still young I'm not very old but even in my time as another thing Mosul I wouldn't dare to ask such kind of questions I'm speaking here on on a historical level religious level social level and many other layers the young generation is redefining the future of the city and trying to trying to establish a social contract that can actually contain everyone that can accept everyone but we have to also be realistic such change and such establishment of social change it doesn't happen in one day it requires time and we have to give enough time to this but what I see and as a historian I shouldn't be optimistic but as a citizen of Mosul I really feel optimistic about the future of the city when I see those young people thirsty to a better future that they are actually opening in new spaces in the city that I never imagined to see them happening in Mosul the women interpinals the women led enterprises the women led initiatives the women led theater the women led music displays and also the art and the other kind of initiatives we are witnessing the we are actually witnessing now that there are more women in very important positions in the university for example we didn't see this before the head of the international relations of Mosul University is a woman it was always held by a man since the establishment of Mosul University but it's changing now there are more women entering the the public space but there are challenges and one of the main and the biggest challenges is the security if we cannot maintain the security of the city such initiatives might die and disappear so it's a fight on different fronts but the good thing is that it's happening the change is happening it's encouraging to hear someone who's witnessed such horrors you know to still be optimistic about your cities if you're trying to see you know from those you know the ashes and horror that they can you know some good can actually be redeemed from it on the question of security Francis argues or asks while ISIS you know have put aside territorial ambitions in Iraq and Syria but are perhaps slowly regenerating in the Nineveh Plains what's your sort of diagnosis on on ISIS and its ability to capitalise in ungoverned spaces you know we've seen it perhaps in Syria particularly that there is a revival in some of those spaces that have you know where there's a vacuum yes that's that's another big challenge Craig and specifically what Francis is explaining it's unfortunately happening especially in areas that overlaps with militia controlled areas in the western part of of Nineveh on the iraq-syrian borders in the tribal areas and not only this is my concern my concern is there are grievances and such grievances haven't been addressed yet and those grievances especially the consequences of the destruction of Mulsay is what Daesh is using to rebuild its narrative again which is a very dangerous approach that Daesh is using now the unsolved problems of the as we mentioned the Daesh families the unsolved problems of the people who disappeared no one knows where are where they are imprisoned and many other questions of people who lost everything the children who are growing in in in terrible situation in terrible conditions all of these are making a perfect formula for Daesh to regenerate itself but we also need to be realistic here to answer the question of whether Daesh will have the capacity or capability of having the same power that it did before 2014 the answer is no they cannot but they can make enough troubles to disturb the security in the city which is also a very concerning thing but they cannot regenerate again yeah that's that's a good answer we have a question from Maya a couple of questions and she's interested as you've collected all of this data and material do you think there's the need to to to create a sort of documentary or there should be some type of educational approach to inform people absolutely absolutely that's that's that's a fundamental thing in the process of of free of free building the confidence is we have to make it clear that those victims are not only numbers and statics they have names therefore I suggested that and I invite everyone who was interested among the international community and the United Nations we need to build a memorial that contains all the names of the victims who were killed by Daesh and to display them publicly so those people will not actually be transformed into numbers but their names to be remembered and yes it's very important to keep that and we have to protect as I said before we have to keep everything and every single paper every single memory in order to show them I I am with the idea of forgiving but I believe that it's very dangerous to forget we cannot forget because we need to remind the next generation of what happened so we can at least understand what happened to prevent it from happening again there's there's another couple a couple of questions and again it's it's really to do with reintegration questions and an anonymous attendee asks is it realistic to imagine that all of the former religious communities could actually return or and Leslie also argues are there certain parts of Mosul that has been totally destroyed were certain cultural heritage from particular groups no longer exists and cannot read cannot be rebuilt the the amount of destruction in the old city of Mosul is about 80 percent according to the estimation by the UN habitat and many other organizations this is this is related to the to the cultural heritage on the historical sites not to mention that huge destruction actually of the houses and the other kind of infrastructure but all of this can be rebuilt there are many buildings that are still intact but they require immediate action it's very important to move quicker and faster in the recovery especially the houses I believe there are some projects now working on rehabilitating the houses of the people which is helping people to return but we are still speaking about other areas within all Mosul that are completely demolished and they were unfortunately demolished after the destruction of Mosul happened and after the end of the battle by the notorious governor of Mosul who destroyed an area of size of the 18 football fields in size which is the oldest part of Mosul he was planning to build new new buildings and to invest there he he talked down and demolished to the ground all that important historical area it's a very difficult task it's also a question when you speak to the people about the importance of cultural heritage comparing to houses the people would ask you like my house is more important than the mosque or the church or the historical site it's true but we shouldn't only deal with it just as one element because the historical site is connected to that house it's connected to the identity of the people we have to move alongside we have to move them together alongside and rehabilitate them together because when you rehabilitate the cultural identity and stabilize it the people will live in peace but when they feel that their cultural identity is not represented it will create problems do you think there's a danger I mean I've seen it in the Middle East where there can be a focus on on restoration of holy spaces and shrines but if the communities are no longer there it just becomes a museum to the idea of religious diversity rather than the practice that's that's that's what was being that's that's what some people were trying to do regarding the Jewish cultural heritage which I strongly stood against I am against the muslimization of communities and their heritage they were trying to rehabilitate the Jewish heritage but where are the Jews and that's the question that I am asking where are the Jews what's the meaning of reconstructing the Jewish synagogue without having the Jews before we built the structure itself we have to tell the full story of what happened and we have to speak about the people more than the site itself I believe there is an opportunity that Mosul can convince its Christian to return back and that the reconstruction of the holy sites of Christian in Mosul especially the very ancient churches that are under reconstruction it will help the Christian to return I have seen this kind of spirit among the Christian leadership the RTP shop of Mosul Najib Mikhail the representative of the Dominicans Olivier Father Olivier Cardinal Luis Rafaic Saco they are all optimistic about this idea of recreating or re-establishing the space of the Christian to help them to return but also not just the you see Craig not just the holy sites if you cannot provide them back with their houses and the shops those sites will have no meaning therefore it's important to deal with it as a full package not separated you know I totally agree just a final two questions perhaps one from Bilal who says in Rwanda and South Africa there was a monitoring and evaluation to the reconciliation barometer to keep track of progress on some of these processes is there anything similar in the case of Mosul I'm afraid not and that's that's one of the questions that we need to address it's actually not the same case I mean there are initiatives or reconsider of reconciliation but we haven't seen real progress in them and or if there is a progress we haven't seen results or we don't know how it's it's it's moving yeah and Leslie argues again on sort of cultural heritage restoration have UNESCO been involved in assisting the rebuilding and were there enough sufficient detailed plans of houses or cultural artifacts that they can actually be restored faithfully and is there enough finance for this yes in fact UNESCO is involved through the Revive the Spirit of Mosul in different projects the projects that are dealing with the historical sites especially the Anuri Mosque which its design has been announced recently uh the Atahira church the Catholic Syriac church of Mosul a Sa'a church as well as Gawat Mosque which is one of the oldest mosques in Mosul beside that the UNESCO is working on a bigger project of reconstruction of houses in old Mosul to help the people return the problem of such kind of as you say Leslie the wholesale rebuilding requires finance there is there is a lack of of financial support for such kind of projects and UNESCO is limited with resources it's it's a very important idea here to address is that to and I have called for this before is I know that organization cannot easily work together but it's the time to to have this kind of like align us of coalition just like the military coalition against Daesh we need the coalition of organizations to work on more reconstruction in Mosul yeah thank you that's that's great I think we've we've basically run through most of our our questions so yeah thank you for an excellent excellent presentation there's so many so much more I'd like to talk to you about but thank you for yeah just sharing with us your experience and what you're currently involved in thank you Greg for for inviting me and many thanks to all the people who attended and those who asked the questions thank you very much thank you stay safe all of you okay bye