Iraq’s Mosul Struggles to Rebuild without Funds

A wholesale foodstuffs store is seen at the Corniche market in Iraq’s second city of Mosul. (AFP)
A wholesale foodstuffs store is seen at the Corniche market in Iraq’s second city of Mosul. (AFP)
TT
20

Iraq’s Mosul Struggles to Rebuild without Funds

A wholesale foodstuffs store is seen at the Corniche market in Iraq’s second city of Mosul. (AFP)
A wholesale foodstuffs store is seen at the Corniche market in Iraq’s second city of Mosul. (AFP)

Iraqi shopkeeper Ahmad Riad is busy again serving customers at a Mosul market four years after the city was destroyed in battles against extremists, but he still awaits war reparations.

“Life has gradually resumed,” said Riad, who runs a shop selling rice, pasta and tins of tomato paste in the Corniche market, along the banks of the Tigris River.

“But we have not received any compensation from the government.”

Mosul, the country’s second city in Nineveh province, was the last major Iraqi bastion of the ISIS group’s failed so-called “caliphate” between 2014 and 2017.

The city was retaken by the Iraqi army and a US-led coalition after intense bombardment and fighting that left it in ruins.

The market was “devastated” in the battles, Riad said, with shopkeepers using their limited savings to rebuild.

“We are the ones who paid,” he said.

Of the 400 stalls that once crammed the market, just a tenth have returned to business, he added.

According to official sources, the cost of reconstruction for Nineveh would top $100 billion, a staggering sum for a country mired in an economic crisis.

It outstrips the total annual budget of oil-rich Iraq, which stands at nearly $90 billion in 2021.

Many buildings are still in ruins, their facades dotted with bullet holes and piles of rubble lie strewn all around.

100,000 claims, 2,600 paid
When Pope Francis visited Mosul last March, he held a mass with the partially collapsed walls of the centuries-old church behind him.

On Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to visit Mosul, a day after attending a regional summit in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, some 355 kilometers (220 miles) to the south.

Mosul, capital of Nineveh province, is a melting pot of diverse ethnic communities and was once one of the key cities on the Middle East trade route, lying close to both Turkey and Syria.

Ammar Hussein runs a restaurant.

“The government should compensate the merchants who suffered damage so that they can rebuild their stores and the market can return to its former glory,” he said.

The list of claims is long.

Some 100,000 claims have been filed by those who suffered damage during “liberation operations”, according to Mahmud al-Akla, director of Nineveh’s compensation department.

Not even three percent have been paid: while more than 65,000 files have been examined, just 2,600 claimants have received cash, he said.

On top of that, the centralized nature of the Iraqi state -- and the graft-riddled bureaucracy that governs it -- means that disbursements are paid out extremely slowly.

Mosul district chairman Zuhair al-Araji blames officials in Baghdad.

Promises as elections approach
Progress is patchy.

While 80 percent of basic infrastructure such as sewers and roads have been restored, only around a third of health facilities have been rebuilt, according to Araji.

Mosul resident Saad Ghanem filed a claim for his destroyed home.

“As far as I know, the compensation department in Nineveh finalized the transaction and then submitted it to the government in Baghdad,” he said. “They still have not compensated us.”

Mosul did not take part in October 2019 popular protests decrying corruption and government misuse of power in Baghdad, as well as much of the country’s Shiite south.

Residents said they feared the benefit of reconstruction could be wiped out by the unrest.

With parliamentary elections in two months, the slow pace of reconstruction prompted Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi to visit earlier this month.

Kadhimi said he was “sorry” to see the problems, ordering a committee to draw up an “action plan”.

At his wooden furniture store, carpenter Ali Mahmoud said he is exhausted.

“I hope to rebuild my workshop, which was my livelihood, and return here,” he said. “But I don’t have enough money.”



Gazans’ Daily Struggle for Water After Deadly Israeli Strike

 Palestinians wait for donated food at a community kitchen in Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, July 14, 2025. (AP)
Palestinians wait for donated food at a community kitchen in Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, July 14, 2025. (AP)
TT
20

Gazans’ Daily Struggle for Water After Deadly Israeli Strike

 Palestinians wait for donated food at a community kitchen in Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, July 14, 2025. (AP)
Palestinians wait for donated food at a community kitchen in Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, July 14, 2025. (AP)

The al-Manasra family rarely get enough water for both drinking and washing after their daily trudge to a Gaza distribution point like the one where eight people were killed on Sunday in a strike that Israel's military said had missed its target.

Living in a tent camp by the ruins of a smashed concrete building in Gaza City, the family say their children are already suffering from diarrhea and skin maladies and from the lack of clean water, and they fear worse to come.

"There's no water, our children have been infected with scabies, there are no hospitals to go to and no medications," said Akram Manasra, 51.

He had set off on Monday for a local water tap with three of his daughters, each of them carrying two heavy plastic containers in Gaza's blazing summer heat, but they only managed to fill two - barely enough for the family of 10.

Gaza's lack of clean water after 21 months of war and four months of Israeli blockade is already having "devastating impacts on public health" the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA said in a report this month.

For people queuing at a water distribution point on Sunday it was fatal. A missile that Israel said had targeted fighters but malfunctioned hit a queue of people waiting to collect water at the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Israel's blockade of fuel along with the difficulty in accessing wells and desalination plants in zones controlled by the Israeli military is severely constraining water, sanitation and hygiene services according to OCHA.

Fuel shortages have also hit waste and sewage services, risking more contamination of the tiny, crowded territory's dwindling water supply, and diseases causing diarrhea and jaundice are spreading among people crammed into shelters and weakened by hunger.

"If electricity was allowed to desalination plants the problem of a lethal lack of water, which is what's becoming the situation now in Gaza, would be changed within 24 hours," said James Elder, the spokesperson for the UN's children's agency UNICEF.

"What possible reason can there be for denying of a legitimate amount of water that a family needs?" he added.

COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last week, an Israeli military official said that Israel was allowing sufficient fuel into Gaza but that its distribution around the enclave was not under Israel's purview.

THIRSTY AND DIRTY

For the Manasra family, like others in Gaza, the daily toil of finding water is exhausting and often fruitless.

Inside their tent the family tries to maintain hygiene by sweeping. But there is no water for proper cleaning and sometimes they are unable to wash dishes from their meager meals for several days at a time.

Manasra sat in the tent and showed how one of his young daughters had angry red marks across her back from what he said a doctor had told them was a skin infection caused by the lack of clean water.

They maintain a strict regimen of water use by priority.

After pouring their two containers of water from the distribution point into a broken plastic water butt by their tent, they use it to clean themselves from the tap, using their hands to spoon it over their heads and bodies.

Water that runs off into the basin underneath is then used for dishes and after that - now grey and dirty - for clothes.

"How is this going to be enough for 10 people? For the showering, washing, dish washing, and the washing of the covers. It's been three months; we haven't washed the covers, and the weather is hot," Manasra said.

His wife, Umm Khaled, sat washing clothes in a tiny puddle of water at the bottom of a bucket - all that was left after the more urgent requirements of drinking and cooking.

"My daughter was very sick from the heat rash and the scabies. I went to several doctors for her and they prescribed many medications. Two of my children yesterday, one had diarrhea and vomiting and the other had fever and infections from the dirty water," she said.