An estimated 45,000 students have enrolled at the University of Mosul after it was reduced to ruins at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), prompting the school’s officials to voice optimism about the future of the facility, the second largest higher education institution in Iraq.
“Thankfully, the government has begun taking steps to resume full-time educational activities at the university,” Abdulkarim Hatroshi, a spokesman for the higher education facility, told the Turkish state-run Anadolu University (AA) on Monday.
“Now that its electrical infrastructure has been repaired, we expect it to soon return to its good old days,” he also said. “We just need more support.”
Some students are eager to rebuild the university and put ISIS’ failed attempt to destroy it behind.
“Farah Khaled stands in front of the scorched and twisted steel beams of the destroyed Mosul University library. Red and green ribbons stand out against the blackened metal—remnants of a book drive Khaled and other students organized,” National Public Radio (NPR) reported on January 7.
“Their aim was to destroy our culture,” Khaled, 22, told NPR, referring to ISIS. “To destroy every ancient thing, every beautiful thing.”
However, continued an irrepressible Khaled, the jihadists failed.
Under ISIS’ vicious rule, marred by enmity against women who did not follow their strict version of Islam, Farah told NPR that she, along with her 19-year-old sister Raffal Khaled, felt “like we were in a cage.”
“Women could go out in the street only if they were completely covered, including their hands and faces,” she continued. “If there were any infractions, such as not wearing gloves or wearing cosmetics under the black veil, their brother or father would be taken in and punished.”
Despite the Iraqi government declaring Mosul to be liberated from ISIS, Islamic extremists across the country are still oppressing women, complains Farah.
“I hate Iraq. Every single day I hate it more and more. There is no freedom here, particularly for girls,” she proclaims, noting that she wants “to live in America or Australia.”
Meanwhile, her sister has a different viewpoint, a common position among siblings across the world.
“I love Iraq,” declared Raffal. “I love staying in Iraq, and I think I am going to make Iraq a better place—me and my friends and people my age.”
According to some assessments, the so-called ISIS caliphate territory and the number of jihadists have been reduced by 98 percent in recent months from their peak in 2014, when the group officially became the Islamic State.
When Iraqi troops, backed by the U.S.-led coalition, liberated the Mosul University complex, they found “radioactive material” and chemical agents to make weapons, prompting concern about the group’s capabilities to build a “dirty bomb,” the Telegraph learned from the United Nations.
Noting that ISIS had gained access to radioactive material from hospitals and research centers in territory it seized in Iraq and Syria, the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe think tank warned that the group had been “actively trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction [WMDs].”
ISIS reportedly transformed Mosul University, once considered one of the group’s chief bases, into a “makeshift chemical weapons factory.”
The jihadist group was reluctant to give up the university, prompting them to put up what the Telegraph reported as “the toughest resistance” the U.S-led coalition and their allies had experienced so far in Iraq and Syria.
Turkey’s AA now reports:
Iraq’s second largest university still bears the scars of the violent clashes that occurred last year between the Iraqi army and the notorious terrorist group. The university campus, many buildings of which have collapsed, remain badly pockmarked by bullet holes and traces of fire. Nevertheless, an abundance of students—running through the ruins to their classes—suggest that the war-weary university stands on the cusp of renewal.
The university touted assistance from the U.S.-backed Iraqi government and some NGOs that helped it in reopening the doors of the school.
“Before it was captured by Daesh (ISIS), the university had boasted 23 faculties, 120 departments, and 120 laboratories,” the university spokesman told AA on Monday.
“Now, roughly 70 percent of it has been either reduced to ruins or badly damaged,” he also said, adding, “For this reason, students frequently have to share the same classrooms and laboratories.”
ISIS pulverized an estimated 80 million books and electronic documents when they destroyed the library and other components of the school.
Mosul University was once one of the largest higher education centers in the Middle East.
In 2014, ISIS captured swathes of Iraq, including the nation’s second-largest city of Mosul—once described the jihadist group’s largest bastion in the country.