The Mosul dam shuffle

Workers at the Mosul Dam . Picture by Benedetta Argentieri
Workers at the Mosul Dam . Picture by Benedetta Argentieri

Between February and March the Mosul Dam, Iraq, captured media attention. At the height of the emergency it seemed the dam was about to break, but an Italian company was awarded $300 million to take care of it. After reading some articles and talking to some people I started to see a pattern of contradictions. What is going on here? The  opinions on how bad it was started to change dramatically. Is the Mosul Dam in danger or not?

Short answer: It depends who you talk to.

Particularly revealing were calls in Italy. Details of the story would change from one source to another. Often when asked for official comments  it would become another version or no answers at all. Nobody really wanted to talk about it in depth.

After a couple of months investigating the issue, I wrote an article for War is Boring. Please read and tell me what you think.

Keep Calm because Raqqa is not happening anytime soon

SDF commanders announced the Raqqa operation

While the drums of war are all over the internet, we should keep calm. Raqqa, the capital of the so-called Islamic State, is not happening anytime soon. “The current battle is only to liberate the area north of Raqqa. Currently there is no preparation … to liberate Raqqa, unless as part of a campaign which will come after this campaign has finished,” says Talal Silo,  spokesman for the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance to Reuters.

In other words, SDF is marching around the city, and most probably trying to cut off all the supply routes.

On Tuesday afternoon most of the media around the world announced the operation. Pictures of  YPG and YPJ preparing for the battle circulated widely. Morale was hyped up in every front. Finally the US could formally announce what the Obama administration was eager to accomplish in the war against ISIS. Many believes that the US president wants the two major ISIS cities (Raqqa and Mosul) to fall before he leaves office, and that is no easy task.

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On April 13 Syria will hold parliamentary election, but who is going to vote?

Homs has been completely destroyed
The city of Homs

While the civil war continues with no possible solution ahead, the Syrian government has scheduled parliamentary  election for April 13. I found it pretty surreal. Citizens are asked to choose 250 members of the People’s Council  from 15 multi-member constituencies but nearly half of those are not under the government control.

As we well know Raqqa is occupied by the Islamic State which recently partly lost control of Deir ez-Zor. Homs is completely destroyed, and in Aleppo the ongoing fight makes it almost impossible to vote. Latakia is also partly controlled by the Syrian Army. The Kurds who established an autonomous region, known as Rojava, will not hold the elections.

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Women who join ISIS, are they really just victims?

The teenager who joined ISIS

Marlin was 15 years-old when she decided to travel to Syria last May.  She grew up in Boras,  Sweden. She wanted to join the Islamic State with her boyfriend and be part of the jihad. According  to Swedish press, when she traveled to the Islamic State, she was also pregnant. Allegedly she got “mislead” by an ISIS recruiter in Sweden who convinced her to make the journey.

On February 17 she got rescued by Kurdish anti-terrorist force, CTD, during a raid in Mosul. The girl, who is now 16,  is in Kurdistan and she will be hand over to Swedish authority. Her boyfriend, most probably at this point husband, got killed by a Russian airstrike. It is unclear what the girl was doing in Mosul, and why she was moved there.

A statement from the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) said the family was informed of the human rescue mission.

Most of the articles that have been published so far emphasis the “misleading” part, treating this girl as a victim. There is a sense of pity around them, as if we are unable to process their choice, so we tend to believe someone else forced them into the jihad. Some girls maybe so, but not all of them.

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Benedetta Argentieri

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