Notes From Khanistan Vol II

Over the course of the night of June 13th 2017 (13/6/17) into June 14th 2017 (14/6/17) a fire completely destroyed the Grenfell Tower. This was a 129 apartment block on the Lancaster West housing estate in the Kensington area of the UK city of London. The fire left 80 either dead or missing presumed dead.

There have been persistent rumours that this fire was an arson attack orchestrated by the UK Labour Party. The objective being to damage the reputation of and ultimately overthrow the UK's elected government. A very serious allegation indeed.

Since then supporters of the Labour Party have been threatening and conducting acts of violent disorder - rioting.

This began on June 17th (17/6/17) when a mob attacked the headquarters of Kensington & Chelsea council damaging the building and threatening to kill council staff within the building.

June 21st (21/6/17) saw the State Opening of Parliament. The Labour Party declared this to be; "A Day of Rage" and called supporters to the streets to use; "Any Means Necessary" to disrupt the opening of Parliament. Due to it being the hottest day of the year this plan fell flat with one newspaper describing the fiasco with the headline; "Too Hot to Trot."

Labour's Day of Rage at the opening of Parliament was accompanied by two successive nights of rioting in the Stamford Hill district of London on June 20th (20/6/17) and June 21st (21/6/17). Predominately Jewish the Stamford Hill area is a adjacent to the Barnet area of London. Barnet's equally large Jewish population were famously denied the right to vote in the 2016 London Mayoral election.

There is really no explanation or obvious trigger for the two nights of violence in Stamford Hill. Criminal street gangs simply started launching attacks on police and local residents.

On June 15th (15/6/17) a young black man by the name of Edson da Costa who had been working as a drug dealer/courier died after being arrested by police in the Beckton area of London.

The da Costa family supported by the Labour Party immediately claimed that Edson had died as the result of torture by racist police officers. Their claims included that he had suffered injuries consistent with a severe beating such as a fractured skull and a ruptured bladder.

Curiously none of those injuries showed up in any of the autopsies carried out on Edson da Costa. They did though discover multiple packages of Crack Cocaine lodged in his throat and stomach. His death was the result of an overdose having ingested a large quantity of drugs.

The truth though meant little to the campaign so on June 25th (25/6/17) London was subjected to another night of rioting. This time in the Forest Gate area of London where Edson da Costa had lived.

Over the night of last Friday (21/7/17) into Saturday (22/7/17) there was a similar incident in the Dalston/Hackney area of London.

A young black man by the name of Rashan Charles who'd been working as a drug dealer/courier was stopped by police. During the course of his arrest Rashan Charles swallowed multiple packages of a drug believed to be either Crack Cocaine or Heroin in order to conceal them. Despite the police's best efforts to remove the packets Rashan Charles too died of a massive drug overdose.

Again though facts seem to count for nothing. Supported by the Labour Party the Charles family have been circulating similar, unsupportable claims that Rashan Charles was choked to death by racist police officers. Throughout the week they have been threatening to riot yesterday (28/7/17).

On Thursday (27/7/17) London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) appear to have moved to reduce the threat of rioting by appeasing the Labour Party.

They took the legally questionable step of declaring they have reasonable grounds to suspect both Kensington & Chelsea council who own Grenfell Tower and the Kensington & Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) of corporate manslaughter over the fire.

I should point out that the legal bar for reasonable suspicion is so low as to be almost meaningless. The legal bar for actually filing charges is much higher and the bar for securing a conviction is much higher still.

Corporate Manslaughter is used when an organisational structure rather than an individual is reasonable for people's deaths. Although a criminal offence you obviously can't put an abstract organisational structure in prison so the maximum punishment is extremely large fines.

I hesitate to describe these organisational structures as a company or a corporation. One of the most high profile convictions for corporate manslaughter was actually secured against London's MPS over the shooting death of Jean Charles de Menezes.

On July 7th 2005 (7/7/05) Al Qaeda terrorists detonated bombs on three London Underground rail (the Tube) trains and a London bus killing 52 people. On July 21st (21/7/05) a second group of terrorists attempted a similar attack. However their explosives failed and they fled.

On July 22nd (22/7/05) an MPS surveillance team wrongly identified Jean Charles de Menezes as one of the terrorists. They then handed responsibility for him over to a second MPS surveillance team. That second team tracked de Menezes into the Stockwell Tube station.

Believing him to be a suicide bomber who was about to detonate his device aboard a crowded passenger train the MPS then dispatched a firearms team to shoot and kill him before he was able to do so.

Although Jean Charles de Menezes was not a terrorist the MPS firearms team did exactly as they were lawfully instructed to do so. The second surveillance team also acted as they were lawfully instructed to do so genuinely believing de Menezes to be a suicide bomber. The first surveillance team who initially wrongly identified de Menezes as a terrorists had made a simple human error.

As a result rather than any individual being at fault it was the MPS procedure's and training that were at fault. Therefore the MPS were convicted of corporate manslaughter.

The senior MPS officer in charge of the de Menezes operation - the Gold Commander - was one Cressida Dick. At the time there was talk of her being personally prosecuted for manslaughter. Although that did not come to pass you would have thought it would still have spelt the end of the aptly named Cressida Dick's career.

Strangely not though. On April 10th 2017 (10/4/17) Cressida Dick was appointed MPS Commissioner with responsibility for the entire force.

The offence of corporate manslaughter centres around the concept of; "Controlling Mind."

This requires the organisational structure to have such a high degree of control over their employees and the working environment they can be considered to have total responsibility for both. Normally this relates to the rules the organisation sets, the training it gives to its employees and the discipline it maintains to make sure the employees follow the rules and their training.

So if an organisation sets strict rules, conducts extensive employee training and ensures the rules are followed if an employee decides to break those rules then it is the individual rather than the organisation that is responsible.

Obviously to give a full opinion on the Grenfell Tower case I need all the facts.

However based on the information I do have available while highly unlikely it is possible that Kensington & Chelsea council could be guilty of corporate manslaughter. Likewise it is equally possible that KCTMO could be guilty of corporate manslaughter.

However what cannot be possible is what the MPS are claiming - that both are guilty. It's not possible for two entities to have a controlling mind over a single incident.

When it comes to fire safety who has a controlling mind is reasonably clear. In 2005 the then Labour government changed the legislation by introducing the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order. This required a so-called; "Responsible Person (RP)" to be designated within an organisation to have controlling mind over fire safety.

At the time the Labour Party's reforms were viewed as a significant weakening of fire safety. Prior to 2005 it was only the Fire Service that could hold responsibility for fire safety. The 2005 changes allowed any member of the public to be designated as responsible.

Both Kensington & Chelsea council and KCTMO have designated the London Fire Brigade (LFB) as the Responsible Person with controlling mind over fire safety at Grenfell Tower.

In doing so both organisations have not only met their legal obligations but have exceeded them. That makes it almost completely impossible for them to be prosecuted for the offence.

The MPS' attempts to play fast and loose with the rule of law to appease the Labour Party have failed. Last night there was hours or rioting in the Dalston/Hackney area of London.

Led by local Labour MP Dianne Abbott people are again beginning to gather in the area putting it at significant risk for a second night of rioting.

16:40 on 29/7/17 (UK date).

Operation Featherweight: Month 37, Week 2, Day 1

This should be read as a direct continuation of; https://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/operation-featherweight-month-37-week-1_24.html

No Plan For Peace:

Mosul was first settled in the 25th Century B.C as part of the nation of Assyria. At its peak this stretched from the island on Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea to the west to Persia in the east and from the Caucus nations of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the north to the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt in the south.

Over the course of some 3,000 years Assyria was conquered as part of numerous empires. These included the Macedonian Empire, the Hellenic or Greek Empire and the Roman Empire along with several Persian or Iranian Empires. Assyria and the Assyrian people were some of the first to adopt Christianity in the last days of the Roman Empire.

In the 7th Century A.D Mosul was overrun by the Muslim Crusades. As part of the area's new Muslim identity Assyria was dismantled.

In the 9th Century Mosul briefly came under the control of the Turkish dynasty of Kundajiq before being taken over by the Shia Muslim Abbasid Caliphate. In the 11th Century Mosul was conquered by the Sunni Muslim Selijuq Empire which was predominately based in Turkey.

In the 13th Century Mosul was briefly conquered by the Mongol Empire of Hulagu Khan before being returned to the Abbasid Caliphate which was by then part of the Mamluk Empire in 1260. 

In 1516 the Ottoman Empire defeated the Mamluks in the Battle of Dabiq Meadow leading to the entire Mamluk Empire including Mosul being absorbed into the Ottoman Empire.

This 800 year period of conquest and counter-conquest saw Mosul absorb a wide variety of immigrants including Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Armenians, Circassians, Kawliya or Gypsies and of course Persians alongside the indigenous Assyrians.

The Ottoman Empire fell with defeat to the allied forces at the end of the First World War in 1918. Mosul and its surroundings were then ruled by the British as Mandatory Iraq. In 1932 the Kingdom of Iraq was established with the nation becoming a Ba'athist Republic in 1958.

In 1979 Saddam Hussein established himself as the de facto ruler of Iraq. Hussein used this position to consolidate the power of his own Sunni Arab minority.

This included the suppression of Iraq's Shia majority and a policy of "Arabisation" in the north of the country.

  

The purpose of Arabisation was to make minorities out of the Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmen Armenians and Circassians who were a majority in the north. 

This was done by forcing them out of their homes and replacing them with Sunni Arabs. It was as part of this program that Mosul was turned into Iraq's second largest city including the building of Mosul Dam which was opened in 1984.

In 2003 Saddam Hussein was overthrown and Iraq was transformed from a dictatorship into what is largely speaking a democracy. This restored power to the Shia majority and brought to an end the special privileges that the Sunni minority enjoyed under Saddam.

Mosul's Sunni population has long chaffed against the loss of their special status. They have repeatedly accused the Shia dominated Iraqi Central Government (ICG) of ignoring them and persecuting them.

When ISIL invaded northern Iraq in the summer of 2014 many of Mosul's Sunnis saw the group as a credible alternative to the ICG and sided with them. This collusion by local residents is really the main reason why ISIL were able to capture Mosul so easily.

Three years on the majority of Mosul's residents have realised that ISIL are far, far worse than the ICG. However that does not mean they suddenly like the ICG and many of the old grievances still exist. There are many ethnic groups like the Turkmen and sadly the Kurds along with local tribes such as the Nujafi tribe who are more than happy to exploit those grievances for their own ends.

Therefore there is a high risk that even though ISIL have been defeated they will simply be replaced by similar armed insurgencies against the ICG.

To prevent this it is vital that the ICG has a strong post-conflict reconstruction plan to reassert its authority over the city by making sure that Mosul's residents feel that they were being listened to and cared for.

Any post-conflict reconstruction plan has four key priorities;

1. Security: Beneath Mosul's Old City there is a famous underground market that dates back to the pre-Ottoman period. During their occupation of the city ISIL have added a vast network of tunnels and bunkers stretching across much of the city.

Besides the tunnel and bunker network there is clear evidence that as they've neared defeat ISIL have established a network of sleeper agents within the city. These people have mingled in with the civilian population in order to carry out terror attacks in the future.

So although Mosul was functionally liberated back on July 9th (9/7/17) there remains work to be done clearing the tunnel and bunker network and capturing any remaining sleeper agents. Just on Tuesday (25/7/17) ISIL were able to carry out a small and largely ineffective attack on one of Mosul's markets.

Beyond any remaining ISIL fighters there remains the problem of vast amounts of unexploded ordinance littering the city. 

This includes the Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's) that ISIL have hidden in many homes along with weapons which have been fired by the ISF but failed to explode and weapons that ISIL had stored for use during the battle.

These weapons remain as dangerous now as they did when the battle was raging. In fact as they age and become unstable they may actually become more dangerous.

Unexploded ordnance can of course kill. However particularly landmines and IED's pose a great risk of injury such as the loss of limbs. Children are especially at risk of this type of injury.

Talking to people in Mosul there are already an estimated 900 children who've suffered this type of explosive amputation and have lost limbs. Having covered several Para-Olympic games this is an issue I'm actually quite familiar with so you'll excuse me if I take a tangent to talk about it in more detail.

Treating amputees including by fitting prosthetic limbs is actually quite a complicated task. It requires multiple medical disciplines working together over a long period of time.

Firstly you need surgical specialists. If an amputation has not been performed properly or has not healed properly then fitting a prosthetic can actually make life worse for the person by causing them further health problems. Therefore you need ideally an orthopaedic surgeon to confirm that a person would benefit from a prosthetic limb.

This can take a very long time. In the US there is currently much coverage of Gabe Davis a 9 year old double above the knee amputee. It has taken six years and 14 surgeries to get him to the point where he is able to have prosthetics fitted. His is a particularly complex case but its normally in the region of six months to a year after amputation that prosthetics would be considered.

Even the best prosthetics do not attach to the nervous system meaning that they don't have sensation. They also do not connect to muscles meaning that you cannot move them the way you would move a normal limb.

Therefore particularly with legs people need to spend a lot of time with a Physical/Occupational Therapist learning how to use their prosthetics. For above the knee amputees this often includes a period using mini-prosthetics before graduating to full sized ones.

Hopefully illustrating my point this is a video of British double above the knee amputee Richard Whitehead winning T42 200m at the 2016 Paralympics. Although effective I'm sure you'll agree his running style seems strange and unnatural the first time you see it; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmnRjk9oRZ4

Finally each prosthetic needs to be custom made for its user. This normally involves a cast being made of the amputation site or stump. That cast is then used to make a fastening cup out of carbon fibre or plastic which attaches the prosthetic to the stump. This work requires a medical technician who specialises in prosthetics.

Obviously prosthetics do get broken and as people's bodies change over time their prosthetics need to be replaced to grow with them. This is particularly true for growing children.

So providing care for children and adults who've lost limbs to explosives is not as simple as a charity swooping in and just handing out prosthetic limbs.

Instead it falls to the Iraqi Health Ministry to establish specialist hospitals or specialist clinics in existing hospitals to provide care for these people over the course of their lifetimes.

Charities will certainly be prepared to assist in setting up those specialist centres. If Iraq can ensure a steady supply of customers the prosthetics manufacturers will probably train the technicians for free.

Obviously the most effective treatment is to remove all the unexploded ordinance before it has a chance to injure anyone. This is a substantial task with estimates ranging from a few months to a full year.

It may even take longer than that. Some 70 years after the event both Britain and Germany still regularly uncover and have to make safe explosives dating back to the Second World War. However I should point out that during that war both Britain and Germany essentially spent five years absolutely carpet bombing each other.

It is hard to prioritise where to focus the bomb disposal effort. 

There is little point making all the civilian homes safe if none of the support services like shops and employers that civilians need to survive in those homes have not also been made safe. Likewise there's no point making the shops and employers safe if the city is a ghost town because none of the homes have been made safe.

The priority really should be on inspecting all buildings and then triaging them. The ones that a free from  explosives can be reopened immediately while those with explosives can remain closed off until the explosives have been cleared.

There also needs to be some form of public information campaign so people know to avoid areas that are awaiting demining and know not to touch or in the case of children play with unexploded munitions.

Beyond the security challenges associated with the war there of remain all the usual crimes problems you get in a city of more than a million people. These include things like theft and personal disputes. Looting is always a huge problem with it being extremely easy to grab hold of valuables being left in the ruins of abandoned buildings.

The remaining ISIL fighters and particularly the removal of unexploded munitions are obviously military problems that need to be handled by the military elements of the ISF. However the everyday policing such as catching looters and generally interacting with the public should be handled by civilian police force elements of the ISF.

The current security situation in Mosul remains something of a disorganised mess.

The western half of the city was liberated by three elements of the ISF; the Counter-Terrorism Force (CTF/Golden Division), the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Federal Police. Security around the city is being provided by the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga and militias from the Popular Mobilisation Force (PMF).

Within the eastern half of the city which was liberated back in January security patrols are being mounted by a variety of militias - some part of the PMF structure, others not. Many of the militias in the east operate without oversight and neither like nor trust each other. It must be said that many are distinctly untrustworthy committing most of the looting rather than stopping it.

All of these different security forces operating without a single unified command means that the operation is confused and lacking in direction. The different groups all look after the area they are in control of meaning that resources are not being shared between the areas where they are needed most.

2. Restoring Basic Services: Whether it is caused by war or natural disaster the most effective way for an area to recover is to get it back to as close to what was normal as soon as possible. The government's main role here is to restore the basic services people use to get on with their lives.

The most important basic service in Mosul as in any city is water and sanitation. To live people need clean drinking water. In order to keep that water clean people's sewage and waste need to be removed. Particularly within Mosul one of the main sanitation problems are all the dead bodies that remain hidden in the rubble. These need to be located, removed and safely disposed of as quickly as possible.

If the sanitation situation is not taken under control then particularly with malnourished people Mosul is running a high risk of a second tragedy in the form of widespread outbreaks of diseases like Cholera and Typhoid.

Along with clean water to drink in order to live people also need food to eat. Therefore it is important to restore the food distribution networks. Or to put it in less technical terms; get the shops and markets reopened.

In order to do this the authorities need to make sure that existing merchants have premises to operate from, the ability to purchase stock from suppliers and transport links to get that stock delivered.

As I mentioned in my previous post the authorities can help merchants purchase stock from suppliers by providing loan guarantees. This allows merchants to get stock on credit with the supplier assured that the government will cover the cost should they default.

The authorities also need to make sure that customers can then buy that stock from the merchants. When public sectors employees are back at work and getting paid this problem should really take care of itself.

However the authorities can introduce price controls to prevent profiteering and a ration voucher system to cover any potential cash shortfall. That involves giving people vouchers which they can exchange for goods. The merchant then exchanges the vouchers with the government for cash.

In order for a city to function people need to be able to move around it. Therefore the authorities need to get the roads both within Mosul and in and out of Mosul re-opened as quickly as possible. This involves clearing rubble, making repairs and keeping delays at security checkpoints of a minimum.

To operate a shop, run a business or make repairs people need electricity to provide light, refrigeration and to power tools. Therefore the authorities need to restore the power supply grid as quickly as possible.

3. Recovery: Many buildings and even entire neighbourhoods in Mosul have been totally destroyed by the fighting. However there are also many buildings that have only been lightly damaged with a hole in the roof here and a knocked down wall there.

The best thing for the owners of these properties to do is to repair the damage themselves. 

After all it is extremely complicated for the government to arrange for builders to visit and carry out repairs of some 700,000 properties. However it is relatively easy for residents of each one of those properties to arrange for builders to visit and repair just their building.

The ICG can speed the process up by making compensation available to people who are carrying out their own repairs. This can be done in two ways;

The first is obviously to just hand out cash. However with no real system of checks and balance this approach is open to widespread fraud and corruption. Also it tends not to be that effective. If people are given cash no questions asked they tend to spend it quickly rather than on repair work meaning that the repairs end up not being done.

The second option is a compensation scheme modelled on a insurance payout. The closest example to what I mean I can think of is the UK's Riot Damages Act of 1886.

As the name suggests this allows for government compensation to be paid to people who have property lost or damaged during riots. Much to the annoyance of particularly Housing Associations linked to the Labour Party it was used extensively following the August 2011 riots. The law was then repealed.

It works by people filling in a form detailing the damage, when and how it was caused and the value of repairing or replacing it. This form is then sent to the relevant authority - in this case the Police Authority. 

They then assess the claim to make sure that it is genuine and valid. Obviously you can't claim for riot damage if you are one of the rioters. Finally the person making the claim receives payment.

This approach massively reduces the possibility for fraud because it is easier to detect multiple claims being made by the same person or for the same address. Also having to submit a plan of what repairs you are going to carry out forces you to actually plan those repairs. This makes it more likely any compensation will actually be used on repairs.

The main disadvantage is that it can take an extremely long time for payments to be made. I think the final case following the August 2011 riots was not settled until April 2016.

However if people can be reasonably assured that compensation will be forthcoming they are more likely to spend their savings getting repairs done knowing those savings will be replenished. If there is significant trust in the compensation scheme they may even be able to get the work done on a buy now, pay later credit basis.

4. Reconstruction: Across Mosul there are areas that have been completed destroyed. The people living in these areas will require a lot of support from the ICG.

The question is whether the authorities simply want to restore Mosul to the way it was before the battle. Or do they want to use it as an opportunity to improve Mosul. "Build Back Better" as it’s known in the jargon.

In any city anywhere in the World there are always things that can be improved. A prime example of this is the US city of Los Angeles in California.

Los Angeles was first established as a city at birth of the era of the motor car. As such the principle behind Los Angeles was to build vast freeways and allow development to spring up around those freeways. The result of this is that to get anywhere in this sprawling city you need to drive. That causes massive gridlock and traffic chaos.

I get the impression that many people in Los Angeles wouldn't be that bothered if the city was destroyed in a massive earthquake. That would give them the opportunity to start again from scratch eliminating many of the city's design flaws.

If it is decided to simply restore Mosul to the way it was you're talking in terms of a multi-year project in which architects are employed and buildings rebuilt. If you're talking about building back better that is an even longer - possibly decades long - process in which new urban design plans are drawn up, new building are designed and finally built.

Throughout either process the people who have lost their homes will need somewhere to live. In the event of a year or two restoration process it may be possible to house them in IDP camps during that time.

However in the event of a longer process the best approach is for the government to buy their destroyed properties. This allows them to buy new properties elsewhere. 

If there are concerns about the reconstruction process changing the demographics of the city the people who've sold their destroyed properties can be given first refusal to buy the new homes once they've been completed.

For simplicity's sake I have listed priorities separately. However in reality not one of them can happen in isolation of each other.

For example if you want to restore water and sanitation systems you are going to need to restore the electricity supply to power construction tools and water pumps. To do either of those tasks you need to have the worksites secured and free from unexploded ordinance. You also need the roads open to move equipment to the sites and have food and water supplies along with accommodation for workers.

To get the work done quickly there needs to be a high degree of coordination between the different agencies involved. To achieve this the ICG needs to establish a single command centre or cell to handle the reconstruction.

This involves bringing all the relative agencies such as single body for security, the water and power providers, the road maintenance agency, the urban planning agency, the finance ministry etc together under one roof.

As I've said formulating a plan to evacuate the city would have provided a headstart in this process by establishing an agency for IDP's/Residents. Such an agency still needs to be created to give residents a clear voice within the command cell.

The command cell is headed by a single individual who has the responsibility and authority to coordinate the different agencies to work together.

19:25 on 27/7/17 (UK date).

Operation Featherweight: Month 37, Week 1, Day 5

This should be read as a continuation of; https://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/operation-featherweight-month-37-week-1.html

No Plan For Civilians:

The start of the Mosul operation coincided with a Syrian and Russian effort to liberate the eastern side of the Syrian city of Aleppo from the Al Qaeda-led, ISIL allied Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition.

This Aleppo City operation was almost a textbook example of how to conduct urban warfare.

The first step was to surround the Army of Conquest occupied areas of the city on all sides. This isolated the enemy preventing them from escaping and from bringing in supplies and reinforcements.

The second step was to established several humanitarian corridors out of the besieged area. This allowed civilians to escape from the fighting and be housed in the relative safety of Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP)/Refugee camps.

The third step was to subject the besieged area to heavy aerial bombardment. This destroyed defensive positions, weapons stores and command and control centres alongside the extensive tunnel and bunker network the Army of Conquest had established beneath the area.

The fourth step was to send in ground troops to liberate the area.

The encirclement of eastern Aleppo City was completed with the liberation of the Castello Road on July 7th 2016 (7/7/16). The total liberation of Aleppo City was completed on December 12th 2016 (12/12/16).

However the Aleppo City operation was delayed by not one but two ceasefires. The first of these lasted from August 9th 2016 (9/8/16) until September 20th 2016 (20/9/16). The second ceasefire lasted from October 17th (17/10/16) until November 15th 2016 (15/11/16).

So in terms of operational periods Aleppo City was liberated in just 82 days. That is significantly less than the 100 days it took the ISF to liberate eastern Mosul and the 141 days it took them to liberate western Mosul. A total of 266 days include operational pauses for troop movements.

The reason why the Aleppo City operation kept being delayed is that the international community supported the Army of Conquest. This is particularly true of the US under former President Barack Obama and France under former President Francois Hollande.

As part of this support they would make entirely false claims of the Syrians and Russians committing atrocities against civilians. These claims would then be used to demand ceasefires with the intention of allowing the Army of Conquest to continue their occupation of Aleppo City. By causing delays those ceasefires actually worsened the situation for civilians in Aleppo City.

Although neither Hollande nor Obama survived the battle ultimately they wanted the Army of Conquest's occupation of Aleppo City to continue long after Mosul had been liberated. This would require them to continue to be able to make these false accusations against the Syrians and Russians and demand ceasefires.

So in the planning stage the US in particular put great pressure on the Iraqis to conduct the Mosul operation in a way that would contrast with the Aleppo City operation. The US wished to demonstrate that you could conduct an urban battle without extensive use of airstrikes and without civilians being forced to leave their homes during the fighting.

To this end the only provision made for Mosul's civilians was to airdrop leaflets telling them to remain in their homes during the battle.

The problem is that as the Mosul battle has gone on to prove the US' proposition was entirely false. In this type of battle you do need to use airpower and even using just ground forces civilians will always be put in danger by the fighting going on around them.

Although many will probably not believe me the air campaign conducted in Mosul by both CJTFOIR and the Iraqi Air Force has been one of the most accurate in military history. They have made extensive use of technology that allows them to deliver bombs onto targets little more than the size of a coin.

The problem is though that once you deliver a 227kg (500lb) bomb onto its target it still explodes with the equivalent of 227kg of TNT. That creates a blast radius that does damage across an area that is significantly larger then a sixpence.

Therefore it is an inevitably that civilians and their property that are close to ISIL positions are going to get injured and damaged.

CJTFOIR's unwillingness to use these highly targeted airstrikes particularly within the Old City district actually seems to have had the effect of making the problem worse.

Without ready air support troops on the ground have felt exposed. This has caused them to use what are termed; "Area weapons" such as artillery, rockets and mortars instead.

As the name suggests you don't aim these area weapons at specific targets. Instead you aim them at an area containing the target. You then fire a lot of warheads into that area in the hope of destroying the target along with everything else in the area.

ISIL of course have no airforce so they have relied entirely on these area weapons.

Prior to the opening of the northern axis in western Mosul this was a particular problem. With Federal Police units fighting in the Old City district ISIL would use the Zanjili north through the 17 Tammuz district to just rain artillery fire down on the Federal Police positions. It should hardly come as a surprise then that it is this area of Mosul that has seen much of the worst destruction.

The other main weapon in ISIL's armoury has been the Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED). Many of these VBIED's are truck bombs similar in size to the Provisional Irish Republican Army's (PIRA) bombing in Manchester, UK in 1996 or the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City, US in 1995. These have the power to wipe out entire city blocks.

Quite apart from the danger of being caught in the crossfire ISIL as a particularly vile enemy posed a direct threat to civilians themselves.

Throughout the battle for Mosul ISIL - as they have done in other battles - made extensive use of civilians as human shields. They would take over control of several civilian homes and turn them into fighting positions by establishing tunnels between them. They would then gather the civilians from those buildings together in one of the homes so they would be killed if ISIL's fighting position was attacked.

While completely forbidden under the laws of war human shields are normally used to deter attacks against the positions where they are being held. ISIL however have taken particular pleasure in killing Mosul's civilians often rigging the buildings with explosives to kill the civilians should there be a risk of the building being liberated.

ISIL have also gleefully killed civilians who try to escape areas of Mosul under their occupation. Throughout the battle they have deployed snipers specifically for this task.  The start of June was a particularly dark period for this with snipers killing 70 civilians in a five day period in the Zanjili district alone. The Pepsi plant by the Third Bridge is said to have been used by ISIL as a slaughter house for civilians.

As it became apparent to all that the advice for civilians to remain in their homes was wrong many civilians started to ignore it and try and flee. Towards the end of the battle in the western side of the city the ISF's tactics changed and they did begin to focus on rescuing civilians.

Again due to the lack of organisation exact figures are not available. However it is estimated that somewhere in the region of 700,000 of Mosul's roughly 1.2 million civilians ended up fleeing.

The problem was that there was only provision for 45,000 IDP's. As a result having fled these civilians were then left without adequate food, water and shelter. With local businesses and charities stepping in to try and make up the shortfall there have been numerous cases of mass food poisoning with poorly prepared or stored food making sick.

What should have been done for Mosul's civilians was to copy what the Russians and Syrians were doing for the civilians of Aleppo City. Establish humanitarian corridors to allow them to escape the fighting and prepare IDP camps to provide for them until the battle was over.

Following this plan would have helped save the lives of many of Mosul's civilians. It would also have given the Iraqis a headstart in the next phase; post-conflict reconstruction.

Establishing properly serviced IDP camps for 700,000 is no small task. It would require the establishment of if not an entire government ministry but certainly a dedicated department within a government ministry. This would have helped provide a voice for Mosul's civilians within the Iraqi government.

It is tempting to say that throughout the battle Mosul's civilians were ignored by the government. However the truth is more complicated than that. With those civilians being held in ISIL occupied areas it was impossible for the government to communicate with them. So rather than being ignored it was more a case of ISIL denying those civilians their voice.

If those civilians had been evacuated from Mosul and then housed in IDP camps operated by the government it would give them a voice. This would make it easier for the government to understand their needs.

This really goes back to the issue of the goats.

Throughout the battle the land around Mosul has been filled with stray sheep and goats. The reason for this is that many of the families living in the villages around Mosul are livestock farmers. With the fighting causing their animals to escape these people have now lost their livelihoods.

Whether the damage has been caused by war or natural disaster the lesson that has been learned time and time again is that the best way to manage recovery and reconstruction is to get people back to their normal lives a quickly as possible.

If the government can get local businesses up and running then people can start getting paid again. This makes it much more likely that they will repair the damage to their homes themselves rather than waiting for the government to do it for them.

If the farming families from in and around Mosul were in government operated camps it would help give the government a clearer idea of how many people had lost how much of their business. From there the government could start rounding up the stray animals and reuniting them with their owners so they can get back to looking after themselves.

The issue of course doesn't just apply to livestock farmers. Say for example there's someone who runs a grocery store in the middle of the Zanjili district who'd been evacuated to an IDP camp.

From that camp he could work with the government to make sure he has loans or loan guarantees to suppliers and transport for stock to be delivered to get his shop reopened as soon as possible providing it hasn't been destroyed.

Obviously you can't work out the extent of the challenges facing the post-conflict reconstruction effort until the fighting is completely over. 

However by working with local residents before they return to the city you can get a clearer idea of the problems that will be faced and start working on solutions to them.

19:00 on 24/7/17 (UK date).