The Last 12 hours in Mosul: Conflicting Narratives

 

Mosul Yesterday, Captured by Ahmed Al Omary, close to the Military Airport 

In the last 24 hours, Iraq has witnessed a major development in its politics. Headlines in Arabic media was quick to frame this as suqoot سقوط Mosul city, which roughly translates to the Fall of Mosul city allegedly in the arms of ISIS or ISIL, The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a globally-recognised insurgent active group with ties to Al Qaeda. This terminology is very reminiscent of the framing of the news on Baghdad on the 9th April 2003, when Baghdad was officially captured by American troops.

Images circulating on the web shows  burnt Iraqi Army vehicles and army clothes on the streets of the city in a sign of the defeat of the Army after almost 4 days of clashes with the armed groups. Two Iraqi army officers said security forces had received orders to leave the city after militants managed to capture the Ghizlani army base in southern Mosul and set more than 1000 prisoners from different high-security prisons around the city.

On Monday, the governor of Mosul Atheel Al Nujaifi made a public plea to the people of the city to fight militants, before he escaped the provincial headquarters in Mosul.

Almost all media narratives both global and local have called for international action against what could be a catastrophic regression in the current affairs of Iraq. After All, Mosul is not only the largest city in Iraq, but it is also in close proximity to Irbil and the Kurdish borders, which in result risks the spill of violence to the relatively-peaceful Kurdish region in Iraq.

With the escalating headlines and developments in Iraq, one is faced with conflicting stories and on-ground testimonials from Iraqis in the city that stayed behind and could not flee the city.  Reasons for that are many including the closure of the Kurdish borders for some time which forced families to go back to their homes. Upon their return, and according to several Iraqis I spoke to who prefer to remain un-named, they were welcomed by the militants who assured them that the city was accessible and safe, with a sense of ownership to the place: “ Of course you can come back, please feel free to go wherever you want, no one will stop you.”

Many facebook statuses and tweets then started documenting Mosul post-capture, in a surprising twist to usual media narratives on ISIS’s politics in sieged cities. Reports that only army vehicles and headquarters were burnt and destroyed, but barricades that once adorned every street were removed, and for the first time as one facebook user claims “ I managed to drive freely in my city”. Other residents also claimed that the armed groups were helping young men patrol and protect their neighbourhoods from any possible looting, and were active in protecting banks, abandoned homes and roads.

Interesting testimonials from several residents in Mosul which clash with the main narrative circulated in Media that the city is in fact in more danger than it used to be. Several political analysts on Iraqi non-governmental TV channels claimed that this ‘dignified treatment of civilians’ is something they are pleasantly surprised with and also prefer to what they described as a continuous dehumanisation and humiliation of the Iraqi Army in checkpoints around the city. This could be very much understood as sectarian bias against the army,  but it also serves as an indication that the armed-groups are indeed not targeting civilians in the city (yet).

Many other ‘rumours’ are also circulating on social media platforms, some argue that the armed groups are in fact a group of revolutionary iraqis led by members of the old Iraqi Army, and is in process to ‘free’ the country from the current regime and the control of the Iran-backed government. Several ISIS twitter accounts proclaiming the end of Sykes-Picot in an alarming signal that this could indeed mean - if not immediate - the redrawing of the region map.

Now Al Maliki urged the Parliament to consider this an emergency state, and the Iraqi Parliament in an act of “urgency” decided to meet on Thursday to discuss the much-needed solutions for this catastrophic development in Iraq. With the speed of events in the country, and the clear inability of the army and the police to protect civilians and the city; the next couple of days could see the seizure of other smaller but crucial cities in Iraq, such as Salahudeen, Samara and perhaps even reaching the borders of the capital Baghdad.

The expected reactions from the central government could very well mirror the assaults on Fallujah and other cities in Iraq that have been under siege and attack for more than 6 months. Especially now that Al Maliki has asked for international support from the UN and the EU and Arab League in an attempt to ‘cleanse’ the cities from the insurgents. The government will probably use all kinds of weapons and means without counting for civilian casualties, like the cases in Fallujah and other cities in Iraq.

In an undeniable timely-events, with the results of the Iraqi elections, this could very well mean the ‘need’ to assert Maliki’s position as Prime Minister for the next 4 years; to rid the country from terrorism. It could also possibly mean the eradication of the second-largest city in Iraq and the eruption of sectarian violence and war. The next couple of days and arguably hours are quite critical and detrimental in the current power-play in the region. Narratives are indeed changing.

Half the Story is Better than No Story

Image courtesy of time.com

Cover Photo by: Adam Ferguson

The War on Afghanistan through the Eyes of Adam Ferguson

The Front Line Club hosted a talk yesterday with Adam Ferguson; he is introduced as an up and coming star in the world of photojournalism and his work recently awarded.

Ferguson begins the talk with showing the audience some of his earlier work produced as a freelance photojournalist; he then plays a slide show with background music on his work as an “embedded” photographer for Times Magazine, with the American army in Afghanistan.

One cannot help but notice the difference between the photos produced as a freelance photojournalist, and the works produced for Time Magazine. The first batch shows what he likes to refer to as the “quieter” moments in a war zone, with photos depicting day to day life in Afghanistan that are usually not covered in mainstream media. However, it is the contrast between the two sets of photographs that strikes the viewer and poses a question about the relativity between camera angles and the editorial policy of a publication.

In his work produced for Time Magazine, Ferguson showed mainly photos of American soldiers in their quests on the foreign land that is Afghanistan. Soldiers are seen smoking, working on their Macbooks, standing proudly in front of carefully placed American flags, and going about their daily routines in what seemed to be a civilian-free photo shoot. The photographs quality is superb and almost artistic but the subject matters do indeed show how strongly “embedded” Ferguson was during his time in Afghanistan.

When the time for the Q&A came, the presenter asked him about possible criticisms about his work as a photojournalist with the American army, and Ferguson simply answered that although he understand the problem and justifies the criticism he still believes that “half a story is better than no story at all.”

I took the opportunity of the Q&A session to pose a critical comment: “It is when half the story becomes the whole story that is what is problematic.” Ferguson stuttered a bit, but then in a refreshing honesty answered that he agrees with me, and that a two-dimensional perspective on the war is indeed “wrong”, but he also justified it by saying that he is not “Islamic”, and if he was then he would have had more access to the other side of the story, the other half.
He also reassured the audience that the editorial policy of Time Magazine doesn’t affect his work, which I found to be a slightly misleading statement from his side since the difference in the subject matters of his work is striking and leaves no room for questioning.

“I turned off my left-wing politics when I joined the American army in Afghanistan” Ferguson said when asked about his own personal opinion about what was happening, and how he conversed with soldiers on the ground. “I do feel like an occupier sometimes when I don’t show respect to the people and just go into a house with the soldiers while women are howling and men are being stripped of their right of privacy.” He added.

A member of the audience asked him about his personal opinion about the war on Afghanistan, and whether it was a winning battle, and Ferguson answered that he doesn’t believe it is a winning situation, and that “democracy in a box isn’t working.”

He was then bombarded with questions about techniques and lighting and black and white photography, but what was evident the whole time was the fact that these images of war which can be at times very emotionally provoking are viewed as art. The fact that documentation of massacres and killings transforms into black and white blurry “artistic” photographs was controversial and is still stirring hot debates with media professionals on the issues of representation and coverage.

Ferguson did call himself an artist at some point, but the word that kept repeating itself in the course of discussion was “embedded” which was at least true to the nature of the photographic coverage. Ferguson also shed light on the agreement he had to sign with the American military agreeing to- and in his own words: Not taking a photograph that he is not supposed to.

When asked if he was tempted to document a rather different reality from what the military wanted, he answered that he could have “broken the laws” on several occasions but he preferred not to “compromise” the rest of the trip and the potential film roll.

The talk was interesting because it simply restated the worst assumptions one might have about photojournalism and the coverage of the “other”, however Ferguson’s photography is superb and his work as a freelance journalist holds the potential of photographs sans agenda.