ISIS, driven out of Mosul, leaves behind a city in ruins and a society shattered by distrust
This is the headline story in news. July 10, 2017.
“City in ruins. Society shattered.”
This is the way war ends: homes, houses of worship, places of business, schools, hospitals, all reduced to rubble, piles of stones. Dazed humans occasionally pulled from the rubble, emaciated, wounded; babies covered with dust and dehydrated. Community destroyed along with the physical city. Trust in one another gone.
On July 10, the same day as the above headline, the United States Institute of Peace in Washington invited subscribers of their newsletter to a July 14 event where Ambassador Ekkard Brose, German Special Envoy for Crisis Prevention and Joseph Pennington, American Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq, would discuss strategies to advance a sustainable peace in Iraq and the area. Far off in California, I want to know what they said in their one hour and fifteen minutes. I wonder what power they have to implement anything they talk about.
This is why I believe that a Department of Peace, equal in authority to every other department of our government is necessary. A Department of Peace would have been working for a long time on what to do when the battle for Mosul ended. A Department of Peace could do more than discuss.
- It could help a president formulate policy.
- It could go to the Congress with a program.
- It could focus the best minds in our country on promoting ideas and ideals instead of inventing and selling weapons.
- It could unite Muslims and Christians in giving the jobless, purposeless youth of the world a better narrative than the one that invites them to become killers and rapists.
War is merely a way for one group to seize temporary power over another by violence. The violence is met by more violence. Its very existence promotes its necessity. Thus war gives birth to war. This is an endless cycle of futile suffering, unless we have a plan for afterwards,
The Mosul its people knew is gone and will not come back. Another city may be built, maybe a better, more beautiful one, but it will not be home to those who escaped early and are living now in a refugee camp in Jordan or in the streets in foreign countries. It will not be home to those who stayed in Mosul ‘til the bitter end and were pulled from the rubble by the army that rescued them.
What the battle has cost these people no human can be given back. Dead fathers, sisters, children, best friends will not rise again to join those who survived to grieve for them. Childhood and innocence missed will never happen. Education forfeited is lost opportunity forever crippling lives.
Not only that, but, as a reporter pointed out, taking Mosul and defeating ISIS are two different things. Even as the Iraqi Army celebrated, there were booms and the rattle of gunfire. Ideas, doctrine, dangerous ambitions have not been killed. The reason for ISIS still exists. Violence as a way of life remains alive.
A Department of Peace in the most powerful country in the world, a cabinet-level department of government, prepared and empowered, could use history to create a better future. It could create meaning out of the agony of Mosul.