Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi needs to start the huge task of rebuilding Mosul because whole areas of the city were destroyed in the fighting.

Some Iraqis are comparing Mosul to Hiroshima following the atomic bomb in 1945, Berlin at the end of the Second World War or the aftermath of the Russian siege and attack on the Chechen capital of Grozny from 1999–2000. As Madiha Raza, who works for UK-based charity Muslim Aid, described it, the ‘entire city is just completely obliterated. It is like a movie set. What you can’t feel in the photos or smell is the death, sewage and smoke. It is a catastrophic situation’.

Some Iraqis have also observed that Mosul’s residents now comprise only orphans, widows, old men, the poor and the illiterate.

According to local reports, there is almost no infrastructure left intact in Mosul. Five of the main bridges that connect the city’s eastern and western banks have been destroyed, as have the city’s main electricity plant and water pumping station. The university has also been devastated, along with 241 primary and secondary schools, 10 hospitals and 76 health clinics. A total of 81 places of worship have been destroyed, along with 29 hotels, 11 banks, six sports clubs and 54 government buildings.

Some 1,800 government-owned factories and workshops were also wrecked, as were oil refineries and oil wells in the area.

It is also reported that 21,000 housing units were destroyed. This means that getting Mosul’s displaced back into their homes will be a major and expensive challenge. It is estimated that half of Mosul’s population of 1.8 million people is in the city, its suburbs or in camps for the displaced. The whereabouts of the rest are unknown and it is believed that many are living in the streets, in tunnels or are staying with family members elsewhere in the country.

The estimated rebuild cost for Mosul alone will require US$11 billion whereas the estimated cost of reconstruction for the whole country was US$100 billion, according to planning minister Salman al-Jumaili.

Given that Iraq’s current budget deficit and debts combined are estimated to have reached around US$110 billion, Baghdad will struggle to raise the sums needed for rebuilding Mosul, even with the promised international assistance.

This is an excerpt from an article in our fortnightly Iraq & Kurdistan Focus publication.