"It is a splendid city, beautifully built," a famous Muslim geographer once wrote.
"The climate is pleasant, the water healthy. Highly renowned, and of great antiquity, it is possessed of excellent markets and inns, and is inhabited by many personages of account, and learned men."
The author, Mohamed Al-Maqdisi, writing in the 10th century, was waxing eloquent about the Iraqi city of Mosul.
It has been a while since anyone spoke of Mosul in such pleasant terms. Recent history -- a thin slice of time for a city almost 3,000 years old -- recalls it was the site of intense fighting between U.S. troops and Iraqi insurgents, followed by the June 2014 surprise ISIS take over of this and a string of other cities, followed by the near collapse of Iraq's army.
I was in Mosul in April, 2003, shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The city was in chaos, with extensive looting and lawlessness. Many people had set up makeshift barricades outside their neighborhoods to keep out potential troublemakers, and had armed themselves with sticks, shotguns and automatic rifles looted from government arsenals.
The atmosphere then was dark and threatening. As we drove down one of the main roads, a man cradling an AK-47 pointed at me, then drew his thumb across his neck.
When Mosul fell into the hands of ISIS two years ago, it entered that same twilight zone where those outside can only find out what's happening inside from those who flee, or through the kaleidoscope of ISIS propaganda, which portrays a city prosperous and happy, basking in the sun of the so-called Islamic State's self-declared Caliphate.
ISIS rule coming to an end?
Now the days of ISIS rule appear numbered. In just over a year, Iraq has driven ISIS out of Tikrit, Ramadi and Fallujah. Now Iraq's military and the U.S.-led coalition is preparing for what's expected to be the "mother of all battles" in the war against ISIS in Iraq: The liberation of Mosul.
Mosul is Iraq's second largest city and the largest controlled by the extremist group.
I recently traveled with Iraqi Defense Minister Khalid Al-Ubaidi, a Mosul native, to the plains south of the city, to the village of Mahana, only liberated from ISIS two months ago. Many of the houses had been destroyed, while the inhabitants were nowhere to be seen. Thick, black columns of smoke rose from the horizon to the north, fires set by ISIS to obscure the vision of Iraqi and coalition pilots. The loud thuds of an airstrike suggested such Saddam-era tactics weren't working.
Ubaidi confidently declared the leadership in Baghdad has determined that "2016 will be the year of the liberation of Mosul and the rest of Iraq."
That's the plan.
Source : http://edition.cnn.com/
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