Governor Najim al-Jabouri (R) talks to Mosul residents in the Nabi Yunus market
Credit: Sam Tarling
From the bombproof windows of his governor’s office in Mosul, Najim al-Jabouri looks at out at one of the toughest urban renewal challenges in the world.
Half the city was destroyed during the battle to reclaim it from Isis three years ago, and much of it is still in ruins. Indeed, Mr al-Jabouri himself played a role in flattening it — when, as Major General al-Jabouri of the Iraqi army, he oversaw the gruelling siege that ended Isis’s "Caliphate" here.
Today though, having swapped his military uniform for a governor’s suit and tie, the chain-smoking 65-year-old is leading a new battle: a PR offensive to persuade the world that Mosul is now a safe place to live, work and invest in. It is a battle that once again, he approaches with no-holds-barred.
"People don’t walk the streets in Washington or London at 3am, but they do here,” he declares recalling his years living in Woodbridge, a quiet suburb of the US capital. "I tell you, Mosul is now as safe as America."
Really? Why, then, the concrete blast walls around his building, and the scores of heavily-armed police guarding it?
"No problem — I myself can walk around alone in the streets, without bodyguards or a flak jacket. I could take you to the market — you will see how safe it is by your own eyes."
Buildings damaged during the battle to oust Islamic State from Mosul
Credit: Sam Tarling
With that, he sprang into tour guide mode and commandeered an SUV to take The Telegraph on a solo trip. After some heated negotiations with his police bodyguards, who look somewhat alarmed, he allows some officers to follow at a discreet distance. But it is no more than a dozen: by local standards, a token presence.
As we head out, Mr al-Jabouri recaps his long and intimate history with Mosul. Born just outside the city, he spent much of his adult life in Saddam Hussein’s army, which recruited many top officers from Mosul.
While he then worked with US forces, he says his background gives him a useful empathy for those who joined al-Qaeda and later Isis, many of whom were from Saddam’s old security forces.
That did not stop them trying to kill him at every opportunity.
During a previous governorship he held in Tal Afar, west of Mosul, he says there were around 20 separate plots against him. By 2008, the threats got so bad that he fled with his family to Washington, where he lived until 2015, when Iraq’s then prime minister, Haider al Abadi, asked him to return to help retake Mosul.
He accepted the challenge partly for personal reasons. His tribe, the al-Jabouri, is one of the most powerful in Iraq, with thousands of members around Mosul. Several relatives who were taken prisoner by Isis later featured in a notorious Isis video in which they were drowned in a cage.
Another man with the tribal surname, Hassan Saeed Al-Jabouri, was Isis’s governor in Mosul, until he was killed by an airstrike in late 2014.
Al-Jabouri claims that since his election last year, Mosul has become safer than an American city
Credit: Sam Tarling
"I am proud to have helped liberate Mosul from Isis, which was one of the most aggressive Mafias in the world," he says, as we drive past bombed-out buildings. "But when I came back to see everything destroyed, it was a huge shock."
The reconstruction task is formidable. Up to 8,000 homes were destroyed in the battle, and much of the Old City, where Isis fought to the end, still looks like a powerful earthquake has hit it.
Coronavirus has slowed reconstruction, and the slump in Iraqi oil prices has meant Mr al-Jabouri gets less funds from central government than he would like. "Experts say we need $15bn to rebuild, but right now, we only get $0.5bn per year," he says.
While he enjoys some popularity because of his local roots, he knows that it was discontent with government that allowed Isis to thrive in Mosul in the first place. Even before their take-over in 2014, they controlled around a third of the city — mostly Sunni Muslim areas that resented Iraq’s Shia-dominated security forces.
He claims to be doing more than his pre-Isis predecessors to "build bridges" with the community. "Pre-2014, we had even more security forces here than now," he says. "But Mosul still fell because of their bad relations with the people."
It is true that today, Islamic attacks in Mosul itself are relatively rare thanks to heavy security, with checkpoints ringing the city. However, the group still has cells in the surrounding Nineveh Province area — on December 13, the Iraqi army claimed to have killed 42 militants during raids on hideouts in caves south of Mosul.
We pull up at one of Mosul’s main markets — a teeming bazaar whose main thoroughfare stretches half a kilometre. While it would be easy for an Isis assassin to wander up, the governor decides to go on walkabout here to show how busy it is.
Al-Jabouri poses for selfies at the Nabi Yunus market
Credit: Sam Tarling
He is quickly mobbed by the public. Some greet him with smiles and selfie-requests — including a youth whose hipster hair-cut would have been outlawed in Isis’s time.
Many, though, seek help with problems — a sign that in Iraq’s government bureaucracies, personal patronage is still seen as the only way to get things done.
One woman complains that her son is wrongly in prison on suspicion of supporting Isis. A former policeman, sacked for a misdemeanour, says his boss has demanded a bribe to re-employ him. There are pleas for government jobs, hospital treatment for chronic ailments, cheap housing, better sewage.
Bashar Qanan, 32, complains that in his own neighbourhood, bodies of Isis fighters and dead civilians still lie under rubble.
"They were supposed to be removed ages ago," he says. "The governor’s an honest guy, but he’s under a lot of pressure."
Mr Al-Jabouri promises everyone "he’ll see what he can do", while at his side, a policeman takes names and phone numbers.
Yet while it may have proved that Mosul is indeed safer to walk around these days, his 20-minute stroll through the market also offers a snapshot of the discontent beneath the surface.
"Sometimes it’s hard because there’s nothing I can do," he admits, as his relieved-looking bodyguards drive us back to his office. "I can’t offer everyone jobs — that wouldn’t be right. But these are my people, my family, and I want to help."
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