{"id":31741,"date":"2019-02-04T10:22:52","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T10:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31741"},"modified":"2019-02-04T10:22:52","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T10:22:52","slug":"no-plan-for-mosul-chaos-and-neglect-slow-iraqi-citys-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31741","title":{"rendered":"No plan for Mosul: Chaos and neglect slow Iraqi city\u2019s recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nMOSUL, Iraq: The demolition of a wrecked building in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul where Daesh used to execute men they said were gay is already in its third month.
Homeless boys who hunt for scrap in the remains of the former National Insurance Company building work quicker some days than the lone digger perched on its crumbling carcass.
Two years after the battle in which Iraqi forces recaptured Mosul from Daesh, the authorities do not own enough equipment to clear the rubble littered across the city.
Hundreds of Mosul council\u2019s vehicles were destroyed in fighting or used by Daesh as suicide bombs. Few have been replaced.
Companies hired by the governor on lucrative contracts to make up the shortfall work deliberately slowly, or sometimes do not exist, lawmakers and locals say.
Mosul was held by Daesh for three years. Under the militant group\u2019s strict interpretation of Islamic law, homosexuality is a grave sin punishable by death. But rights activists say those executed in the seven-story insurance building, now reduced to two floors, were often Daesh opponents who were falsely accused.
The digger on top of the building is hired for $300 a day, a laborer at the site said. It often stands idle.
The regional governor denies allegations of fraud and says not enough money is coming to his office to fund rehabilitation.
Many residents are struggling financially. Families forced to build their own homes go into debt, borrowing from friends and living off charity. Others cram into increasingly expensive rented homes. Foreign-funded projects also suffer delays.
\u201cThere\u2019s no strategic plan. It\u2019s chaos,\u201d lawmaker Mohamed Nuri Abed Rabbo said.
Poor planning allows mismanagement of reconstruction efforts and alleged corruption, making recovery slow and haphazard. In this environment, residents fear the remnants of Daesh will again exploit resentment.
\u201cThe city\u2019s being rebuilt only on paper,\u201d said Abu Ali Neshwan, a 52-year-old shopkeeper. \u201cThere\u2019s no state here. Corruption\u2019s everywhere.\u201d
Abdelsattar Al-Hibbu, who is in charge of the municipal government \u2014 and is still recognized by Baghdad as such, despite the governor\u2019s attempts to remove him \u2014 said the little money allocated to Mosul was being misspent.
\u201cWith the amount spent so far on removing rubble, the city could have been completely cleared by now,\u201d he said by telephone. Of an estimated 7 million tons of debris, more than half remains, he said.
Hibbu warned last year that there was simply not enough money to rebuild.
The 2019 state budget allocates $560 million for Mosul\u2019s reconstruction, according to two Mosul lawmakers. A UN adviser in the city said one estimated cost for one year of rebuilding work was $1.8 billion.
\u201cIt\u2019s mostly international organizations getting things done. It\u2019s ridiculous that money has to come from outside, with Iraq\u2019s oil wealth,\u201d the adviser said. \u201cAuthorities overspend and work takes ages. It should take a few days at most to demolish a large building and cost a few thousand dollars, tops.\u201d
Fears that\u00a0Daesh could re-emerge<\/strong>
Nawfal Hammadi Al-Sultan, governor of Nineveh province which includes Mosul, dismissed the allegations of mismanagement and overspending.
\u201cClearing rubble is not being done haphazardly … but there are some neighborhoods that are so destroyed that there\u2019s no solution,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople shouldn\u2019t be asking why (reconstruction) is slow. They should be asking why hurry it?\u201c
The clearance work looks anything but organized. Grubby children, who outnumber workmen, load steel rods and window frames onto donkey-drawn carts to sell at scrapyards.
Wheelbarrows are displayed outside shops for residents wanting to do their own work.
Some Mosul families are rebuilding by themselves. Younes Hassan, 67, borrowed $9,000 from friends to rebuild his purple-walled home at the highest point of the Old City, overlooking a bank of the Tigris river strewn with rubble.
\u201cWe\u2019ve borrowed everything \u2014 there\u2019s no money from the government, and certainly no bank loans,\u201d he said.
Bank transfers to Mosul, which was a Sunni Islamist stronghold even before Daesh arrived, are banned by authorities over fears over the financing of extremists.
\u201cTen people live here, but my daughter hasn\u2019t come back yet. She\u2019s renting in east Mosul for $100 a month that she can\u2019t afford,\u201d Hassan said.
Hassan\u2019s family is among those returning to west Mosul, which suffered the worst damage from air strikes in its crowded Old City streets.
Nearly 2 million Iraqis are still displaced by the fight against Daesh, according to a survey by REACH, a non-governmental organization. Many say they are not ready to go home because of the destruction and lack of services.
Residents worry that the longer it takes to fix Mosul, the easier it will be for groups such as Daesh to re-emerge and recruit. Conditions that helped Daesh take over Mosul and other cities in 2014, including corruption and the neglect of Sunni Muslim communities by a Shiite-dominated government, remain.
A policeman manning a makeshift checkpoint said he worried most for the children picking around in the rubble.
\u201cThey\u2019ll be the next generation of Daesh \u2014 it thrives on corruption and chaos,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MOSUL, Iraq: The demolition of a wrecked building in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul where Daesh used to execute men they said were gay is already in its third month.Homeless boys who hunt for scrap in the remains of the former National Insurance Company building work quicker some days than the lone digger perched…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":31742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}