The city of Mosul was liberated from Islamic State control by Iraqi forces in July 2017, but more than a year later the city is a desolate wasteland, special envoy of the United Nations High Court Commissioner for Refugees Angelina Jolie, has revealed in a poignant letter from the ground.
"A year later, West Mosul lies abandoned, ruined and apocalyptic. Walls that remain standing are riddled with holes from mortar fire and bullets’ Jolie wrote, in an open letter published by the Huffington Post.
Mosul residents eat the Iftar meal to break their fasting amid the rubble of buildings in the old city of Mosul. Source: AAP
More than 2.3 million Iraqis remain displaced, including nearly 700,000 from Mosul, with residents left to clear the debris from their houses with their own hands.
"The streets are eerily quiet: hundreds of thousands of former residents of the city are living in camps or nearby communities because there is nothing for them to go back to," Jolie writes.
Jolie goes on to say scattered and abandoned explosives still lie exposed in the street.
Just recently a bomb exploded in the city, killing and injuring 27 people.
Angelina Jolie has called on the Western world to see "recovery as a joint endeavour in the same way that we regarded the defeat of ISIS as a collective responsibility".
"I thought of the survivors of the chemical weapons attacks, the organised rape and the deliberate starvation of civilians…and asked myself, have we become numb to human suffering?’ she wrote
"If a military “win” is not followed by effective help to ensure stability, then the cycle of violence only continues."
