Shock of Mosul

The Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki explained to his people on state television this week that his government had now awoken from its state of shock. "We have started our counterattack, taken the initiative, and we will strike back," he said, promising that the terrorist organization Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) would be defeated.

Inside a week, ISIS has taken over Mosul, the second biggest city in the country, Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit, the Syrian border town of Tal Afar, and certain parts of Bakuba, the provincial capital of Dijala. Their next goals are Baghdad and the holy Shia cities of Karbala and Najaf. Mosul is already using different time measures.

"Nothing will be like it used to be in Mosul," said Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the autonomous region of Kurdistan, whose capital Erbil is only 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Mosul.

Early warning

Meanwhile, Bashar Kiki, chairman of the provincial council of Ninevah - of which Mosul is the capital - doesn't understand the "state of shock" that Maliki and his entire cabinet supposedly fell into. What happened was no surprise for him - indeed he and his colleagues, as well as the provincial governor, had been warning the government of the danger for a long time.

Terrorist attacks, like kidnappings and summary executions, had become daily occurrences in the past few months. Since the province has a long border with Syria, Mosul had turned into a transshipment point for both weapons and Islamist recruits. Extremists could find all they needed to operate on both sides of the border, including the necessary logistics. Military equipment is easy to buy on the streets of Mosul.

ISIS as resistance movement

ISIS has also been making more and more waves in Syria, where it can claim the biggest land advances of any of the rebel groups. Since a number of ethnic and religious groups live there, there have long been tensions that have tipped into aggression and violence. The mood in Mosul is equally volatile, which makes the situation there so dangerous. Bashar Kiki knows that ISIS is made up of more than just the 10,000 Islamist terrorists it is sometimes estimated to have.

Rather, ISIS is what Kiki calls a "resistance movement against the government in Baghdad." Alongside terrorist splinter groups, several former members of the Baath party have joined the movement - all of whom theoretically have no interest in setting up an Islamist state. Instead, their anger and disaffection towards Baghdad results from the political marginalization suffered by Iraq's Sunnis under Maliki's Shiite-dominated government. On top of that, many ISIS fighters are made up of ex-soldiers, who were laid off by US governor Paul Bremer, and who subsequently could not find a place in the new Iraqi army.

Frustrated military

The frustration is great and often vented. "All we've learned is how to shoot," the ex-soldiers regularly complain, which might explain why many of Mosul's 2.8 million inhabitants even welcome their "new masters."

As early as December 2006, ISIS extremists in Mosul declared an "Islamic emirate of Iraq." A self-declared war ministry distributed flyers announcing new laws. Terrorist incidents increased significantly: policemen, journalists, and women not wearing headscarves were threatened and murdered, as were owners of photo studios or restaurant owners whose food was considered not halal.

The US "surge" ended all that two years later, but only provisionally. Now the self-declared holy warriors are back and have captured 49 members of the Turkish consulate, as well as 31 Turkish truck drivers. And the Indian foreign ministry has also announced that 40 Indian workers have also been kidnapped.