Finally, a day without the deadly spectre of Daesh

Mosul, Iraq: For the first time in more than two years, residents of eastern Mosul enjoyed a day without Daesh. As Iraqi security forces drove the muddy streets of the neighbourhood, families stepped from the gates of their driveways, waving, flashing two-fingered victory signs and yelling “Heroes!” Others held white flags.

Some men, in ankle-length kandoras in Daesh-regulation style, were smoking cigarettes, while others had them tucked behind their ears. They were celebrating the Iraqi forces’ victory over Daesh in their area by savouring some of the small pleasures banned under more than two years of terrorist’s rule.

“We are very, very happy,” said one man, Qais Hassan, 46, surrounded by soldiers. “Now we have our freedom.” Daesh, he said, had “asked us to implement religion. But they had nothing to do with religion”.

Iraqi soldiers were seeing first-hand what life in Mosul had been like under Daesh rule imposed in 2014. But they were also catching a glimpse of some of the challenges ahead, simultaneously pressing the fight toward the city centre and going about the messy business of re-establishing government authority.

Whether the mostly Shiite Iraqi military and police forces can keep the peace behind their front lines will largely depend on whether they can care for the displaced and root out Daesh fighters, without exacting collective punishment on a Sunni Arab population that had largely welcomed the Daesh at first.

The victory by Iraqi counterterrorism forces in this eastern neighbourhood of Mosul was a promising moment. But most expect long and intense fighting before the entire sprawling city, once the nation’s second largest, is reclaimed.

Wednesday began rainy and cloudy — difficult for the US warplanes assisting the Iraqi ground forces. Later the sun came out, but the fighting went largely quiet, interrupted by occasional sporadic shooting in the distance.

The Iraqi special forces in the area of eastern Mosul were going door-to-door in a hunt for weapons, booby traps and Daesh fighters.

At the same time, they were trying to keep order as entire families, with backpacks and suitcases in tow, streamed in from neighbourhoods still controlled by Daesh.

Male residents were mostly fixated on three things: the big beards they had been forced to keep, the cigarettes they had been denied, and the cellphones they had been forbidden to use.

“They would have killed me if they saw this,” said Farras Sharif, 55, holding up a cellphone. “Just one bullet.”

A man who still had his beard said his razor was electric, so shaving would have to wait until power was restored. A newly clean-shaven man, Sa’ad Qhais, held his hands about three inches from his chin and said, “My beard was to here. I was really dirty.”

Most of the women from the neighbourhood stayed indoors, but there were many among those displaced from other neighbourhoods, in niqabs and veils, some carrying white flags and bags of clothing.

Parents said they were hopeful that their children, out of school for two years, could return to classrooms. One father, Mohammad Mahmoud, 33, said he was grateful that he no longer had to worry that his young daughter would be forced to marry a Daesh fighter.

“What worried me the most was my daughter,” Mahmoud said. “Because they have no religion. I consider me and my family born again today.”

In the newly secured neighbourhood on Wednesday, the counterterrorism troops, Iraq’s most professional fighting force, seemed to be taking care not to alienate civilians. But this is not the only battle that will be fought, and fears have run high that vengeful violence will tear through liberated areas. But Hassan, speaking for himself and many neighbours, said that, more than anything, they want to feel like Iraqis again.

“The love of the country is greater than the love of the religion,” he said. “Now we understand that.” Sharif, his friend, agreed. “Now, yes, we are with the Iraqi army, with the law, with Iraq,” he said.

At least for one day, the atmosphere was a mix of jubilation, as civilians welcomed the soldiers with handshakes and hugs, and tension, as soldiers tried to determine who among the crowds of bearded men might be Daesh fighters and who were ordinary civilians.

Soldiers collected the men in groups, demanding their government identification cards, if they had them, so they could check them against a list of Daesh members compiled from informants. Later, a colonel asked all of them to go home and shave their beards and then gather at sunset with their ID cards in hand.

In some cases, civilians were helping the soldiers by pointing out neighbours they said had joined or supported the Daesh.

With the Iraqi forces now inside the city, the focus will soon turn to the question of whether the politicians, after the battle, can bring together the communities of Mosul — Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, Yazidis and others — as part of their effort to reunite the country. In Iraq’s long history of wars, the political aftermath has usually led to something worse.

“I think the politicians have learnt a lesson with Mosul,” Brig Gen Abdul Wahab Al Saadi, a special forces commander, said in an interview on Wednesday. “They have to do their job.”