Oral Histories of Mosul: A new way of documenting history

“If you want to heal from the war wounds, you need to deal with what happened first.” It takes a few words to explain the importance of an oral history project in today’s post-conflict Iraq.

For Omar Mohammed, documenting has always been an integral part of his life. A historian during the occupation of his city by the Islamic State group, he kept an anonymous account through a blog about life under the terrorist group.

Risking being discovered, he managed to escape to Europe, where it revealed his identity. Since then, he gave himself a mission: doing everything possible to rebuild the spirit of his city.

Transforming his blog Mosul Eye into an association run by a network of young Moslawis, the Oral Histories of Mosul project was launched recently to preserve the diverse stories and experiences of Iraqi citizens.

Starting with Mosul, throughout the year the project will cover also other cities, often on the margins of the central government’s economic and social policies: Anbar, Basra, and Dyala.

“We came up with this idea as we realised that among the post-war recovery initiatives, most of the efforts are focusing on the physical reconstruction, and the gaps on the cultural and spiritual side are many,” Omar explained to The New Arab.1

According to him, after almost six years since the liberation of the city, there is not yet an agreed narrative of what happened on June 10, 2014.

That day, in a matter of hours, Iraq’s second-largest city fell in the hands of a terrorist group, as it occurred later to around a third of the country’s territory, completely changing the lives of millions.

“Not agreeing on what happened is dangerous because it opens the door to conflicting narratives. And too many times in Iraq we have seen that the winners’ versions have prevailed," Omar continues. "Often erasing the losers’ ones and ignoring people’s stories.”

To represent the complexity of the past, “ordinary people need to have agency to tell their stories. And since not everyone is capable to do so in writing, the oral documentation is a participatory way to record history.”

"Not agreeing on what happened is dangerous because it opens the door to conflicting narratives. And too many times in Iraq we have seen that the winners’ versions have prevailed"

Home to Christians, Muslims Sunni and Shia, Yazidi, and other minorities, the Nineveh governorate, whose capital is Mosul, is one of the most diverse in Iraq.

Through first-hand accounts, the project is gaining insights into the cultural, social, and political dynamics shaping the community’s everyday life.

It all happens thanks to the work of Mosul Eye’s team of investigators, coming from various parts of the province to ensure contextual familiarity with the different areas.

Since the launch of the initiative, their schedule keeps growing in appointments, with both pre-identified interviewees and volunteer participation.

“This is encouraging because it shows that people are happy to talk and want to listen. This is not a fact that we can take for granted,” warns Omar, adding that “at times we still notice a fear to talk, and we have to be sensitive when dealing with certain topics, because it may mean touching personal traumas.”

Interviews do not have a specific historical period of reference but are based on the individual’s life span. “The idea is to give space to the individual to share personal experience in relation to their city, town, village, and the surrounding communities. We did not want to focus only on the Islamic State group era, or the 2003 war and its aftermath. To understand the history of Iraq you must go way beyond that.”

"At times we still notice a fear to talk, and we have to be sensitive when dealing with certain topics, because it may mean touching personal trauma"

Marking the 20th anniversary this year, the US-led operation Iraqi Freedom, began on March 19 2003 on the alleged claims (then declared false) that the Iraqi government was in possession of weapons of mass destruction and in connection with the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

That invasion indeed had a detrimental impact – with a regime change, a year-long full occupation by the US followed by consequent insurgencies and civil war, causing the death of over 200,000 people and millions of displaced Iraqis.

However, there is a risk to look at this historical event in isolation, according to Omar: “In the past 40 years, there have been unfortunately many other events that have shaped the lives of Iraqi people. In history, events are contextually connected with what came before. This is what the oral accounts in our project are demonstrating, especially from people in their 30s like me.”

Born in 1986, like millions of his generation, Omar’s childhood was split towards the end of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) and the First Gulf War (1991), another US-led initiative to liberate Kuwait from the invasion decided by the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

"Iraq is still seen as a country where every ten years or so something terrible suddenly happens"

To that, years of embargo, dictatorship, widespread poverty and corruption followed until 2003, when Iraqi freedom started and the illusions of a new, peaceful and democratic country soon left space for a post-war sectarian system, in which the 2014’s Islamic State had its roots.

“Daesh (the term used in Arabic to give a negative connotation to the Islamic State) did not come from nothing and it is very unfortunate that, especially in the West, Iraq is still seen as a country where every ten years or so something terrible suddenly happens," Omar says.

"But this narrative not only is historically incorrect, but it does also not respect people’s traumas,” Omar adds, stressing that “before the possibility to recover, people need to understand what really happened in every single crisis.

"The mental shock is unbelievable today for those who lived under Daesh’s occupation and yet did not recover from the previous crisis.”

There lie some of the takeaways from the oral histories collected so far, which often show signs of disconnection, lack of communication and trust among the communities.

But there are also examples of unity, collaboration, and resilience.

An example related to Bashiqa, a small town 20 minutes far from Mosul, was collected from a Muslim old man and verified by the investigators. It comes from the pre-2003 period when the Muslim community did not have enough money to build a mosque, so the Yazidis and Christians offered to help with hands and people.

Similarly, the three communities helped each other to rehabilitate their respective temples after the liberation of Bashiqa from the Islamic State occupation.

“Another beautiful testimony comes from the way people express themselves,” adds Omar, sharing the story of Hanaa Qasha, “an Assyrian teacher deported by IS and who is finding solace in embroidery, basically telling her dreams and hopes on the textile, mixing art, handcraft and history.”

"A community without memory is dead, and memory without a community is nothing"

In continuation with other cultural and social cohesion initiatives, including the reviving of the forgotten Jewish identity of Mosul and a tree-planting project, Mosul Eye's Oral Histories project is in line with the organisation’s aim to preserve the city’s recovery in its diversity and pluralism.

Started in January 2023, the project was built also on other efforts to document the history of the city. In addition to the participants’ houses, the interviews take place at a dedicated studio inside Mosul Eye’s office, the Behnam Hababba Centre, named in honour of Behnam Salim Hababba – a prominent educator and historian who devoted his life to preserving the history of Mosul and its people.

Furthermore, the project is inspired and supported by Najeeb Michael, today’s Mosul Chaldean Archbishop, who fled from the town of Qaraqosh on August 2014 to rescue ancient Christian manuscripts and prevent their destruction by the Islamic State.

After the phase of collection, the oral stories are analysed, and further research is done to corroborate them with reality.

They are then categorised into historical periods and thematic tracks, with the final stage consisting of the production of videos and voice notes that will be made available at the University of Mosul’s central library, to be accessible by students and researchers.

“As Najeeb once said to me, a community without memory is dead, and memory without a community is nothing,” says Omar.

“This is a very important yet dangerous statement and explains why we must do all we can to contribute to making history every day, one story at a time.”

Stefano Nanni is an Italian freelance journalist with a background in the aid sector