The global tour | me in Mosul, Iraq
Hello everyone, I am Shen Dianqi, a field traveler who travels the world and pays attention to Chinese people around the world.
Walking on the streets of Mosul today is like coming to the scene of a disaster movie, a large number of high-rise buildings on the street have left traces of missiles, and the walls of some buildings have been beaten into "horse honeycombs" by machine guns.
1, three and a half years of deep water
In 1515, the city of Mosul was stationed for three and a half years, and it became the base camp of 1515.
I asked the locals Saye, when the city was occupied in 1515, could the locals escape?
Saye said there was no way to escape because 1515 soldiers had taken control of Mosul's border with the outside of the city and all intersections, they would be stationed 24 hours a day, and locals would be killed if they found out. For the local people of Mosul, they had only two choices, either to join 1515 or to be killed.
During the three and a half years of occupation in 1515, many of the locals of Mosul hid in their homes and did not dare to go to the street, for fear of being killed by 1515.
Saye told me that the locals are not allowed to talk to 1515, and once the local people talk to 1515, the local people may be killed, the main reason may be that 1515 is worried that its members are "reformed" by the local people, and quit 1515, so the result is that 1515 is more like an information-closed organization, like a group of religious elements who have beaten chicken blood, wearing soundproof earplugs, doing crazy things.
When I arrived in Mosul, the city had been liberated by government forces for 5 years, and many streets and buildings had been repaired, but you could still see a lot of ruins...
According to statistics, 65% of the buildings in Mosul's old town were destroyed, including 70% of the buildings, roads and infrastructure in the surrounding towns.
2, 1515 entered Mosul occupied for 3 and a half years, what did they do to the people in Mosul?
Saye was my hotel front desk guy, and he told me that after the occupation of Mosul in 1515 from 7 years ago, they forced women to wear black robes, had to pray five times a day, men needed to wear beards, wear white robes, and abstained from alcohol. Anyone who opposes them will be killed.
How I felt after listening: "The more I listen to the style of 1515, the more I feel that they are a 'low-ended' version of Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia and 1515 are two different, the first 1515 does not have Saudi Arabia money, so there is no way to materially fill the needs of the people of Mosul." The second 1515 is not an internationally recognized government, so Saudi Arabia has relatively large public pressure, so the implementation of sharia law will be much more restrained, while 1515 is the complete implementation of the original and pure sharia law. ”
3, Saya's uncle and father were killed by the bomb
Saya is the only child in the family, which is extremely rare in Mosul, and in 2015, when his uncle was hit in the leg by a weapon on the road, Saye sent his uncle to the hospital (when the hospital was controlled by 1515).
Because his uncle was not a member of 1515, the hospital refused to rescue his uncle and directly let his uncle die...
After 12 hours, without any help, his uncle was bleeding profusely and finally died alive at the hospital gate!
4, Mosul is still religious
Although 1515 has been gone for 5 years, three things that Make me regret mosul are:
(1) The school has not been changed here, and the mosque has been changed a bunch.
At certain times of the day, deafening chanting is heard from mosques in different locations, and the whole city is shrouded in a certain degree of religious atmosphere.
(2) Women are still rarely seen on the streets, although 1515 is gone, but some locals are actually not much more conservative than 1515, which can be seen from women's clothing.
Women are hardly seen on the streets, and women are usually led out by the men in the family as guardians.
The ratio of men to women I see on the street is 10:1.
(3) The birth rate is extremely high, and the high birth rate has always been the characteristic of Arab countries, whether it is poor countries such as Iraq, Syria, Yemen, or the rich countries of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. Women's task is to feed the next generation, plus women do not have jobs, can not go out casually, so more energy to take care of staying at home to take care of children, a lifetime of tasks and activities, are surrounded by four walls.
In short, it has experienced the torture of extreme factions, but Mosul has not escaped extreme conservative thinking, which is a vicious circle. This reminds me of Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya, the Rohingya of Myanmar, the four provinces of southern Thailand, Mindanao in the southern Philippines, Chechnya, Kosovo...
High birth rates→ resource constraints→ civil wars → population spillovers
So, I'm pessimistic about the future of Mosul, where the urban population is still rapidly expanding with a high birth rate and no industry, and the growing population is an "ineffective population" with no productive value, and they will only repeat the ancestral occupations: farming, basic labor.
It is also difficult for the city to develop into a high-tech city, and the level of education is low. It is not easy to develop into a tourist city, and there are no tourism resources.
It is even more impossible to develop into an industrialized city, too far from the sea, and the residents are lazy... Without the ability to form such an accumulation from low-end industries to industrial breakthroughs in China, Japan and South Korea, it may only linger in low-end industries...
The last resort can only because of the population explosion, another outflow of population, through refugees into the developed countries that need the population.