How To Rebuild A City: Cold, Hard Cash

IT IS FALL IN MOSUL, THE SEASON’S FIRST COOL BREEZES blow off the Tigris, and I am walking around a 12th century castle with my friend Safwan.

- Nick McDonell

We have spent the morning scouting on behalf of an NGO dedicated to direct cash assistance. The surrounding blocks are destroyed, but several families are trying to move back anyway, clearing the wrecked Ottoman courtyards, stone by stone. They are excellent candidates for support, but Safwan, a soft-spoken 29-year-old engineer, remains frustrated. “There is no progress with the mass of destruction,” he says. “It needs effort from foreign countries and serious work from the government. Until now, we haven’t seen that.”

Safwan’s frustration is common in Mosul. Though the city was liberated from ISIS in 2017, millions of tons of rubble are yet to be cleared; 40% of old Mosul remains disconnected from any water network; electricity is erratic; in certain neighborhoods, corpses and IEDs remain on the roadside. Sixty-five percent of the city’s housing stock was damaged or destroyed; in the less damaged quarters, spiking rents drive families into debt, while a lack of jobs leaves young men idle in tea shops. The surviving hospitals and schools cannot support the population of 1.5 million; in the street, children orphaned in the battle beg for change, then curse those who refuse them.

I wonder what sort of men they will become. In 2009, I walked around this same castle with American soldiers. Before we set off, a lieutenant told me we would be attacked in less than 30 minutes—it happened every time he patrolled there. We checked his watch. Twenty-two minutes later, a grenade bounced up the alley behind us. That day, his patrol caught the attacker—a teenager, who said he did it for $15. In the following years, ISIS rose and fell on the backs of such young men. Today there is no fighting in Mosul, but the city remains devastated psychically, as well as physically. A great deal of work is necessary to repair it.