When British troops drove out their Turkish and German enemies and marched into Baghdad in 1917, their commander announced to locals that they came not as conquerors or enemies – but as liberators. ‘Your city and your lands have been subject to the tyranny of strangers,’ he said.
It is difficult not to recall these words, as a young man from Mosul recounts how, a century later, he watched foreign militants violently acquire the homes of his neighbours and spray graffiti on their walls reading ‘Property of the Islamic State’. Up to 90 per cent of the Islamic State (IS) fighters that seized more than a third of Iraqi territory from 2014-2017 were believed to have come from outside the country’s borders (with characteristic Iraqi dark humour, the young man likens their diversity to a United Colours of Benetton advertisement). Like previous invaders, IS laid waste to much of Iraq’s rich cultural heritage, imposing archaic laws in their ‘liberation’ campaign to establish a Muslim caliphate. It seems that modernity in the land often deemed the ‘cradle of civilization’ – credited with inventions from writing, algebra and perfume to ancient robotics – has been defined by the yoke of tyranny: foreign and home-grown.
