VENICE: A shocking new film about Daesh in Iraq warns that the group is far from defeated and may return in an even more ferocious form.
Italian documentary makers spent 18 months talking to former Daesh child soldiers and the widows of its fighters for “ISIS, Tomorrow. The Lost Souls of Mosul,” which was premiered at the Venice film festival Thursday.
What they found in the ruins of the destroyed city of Mosul, the second biggest in Iraq, was that the extremists’ violent ideology was very much alive.
If anything the commitment of the group’s diehard followers has deepened, and they were looking to the generation of children they indoctrinated to take vengeance of the West and the Iraqi authorities.
“Today is yours, tomorrow is ours,” the widow of one Daesh “martyr” who is held in what amounts to a prison camp for Daesh families, told the filmmakers.
A procession of young boys — some of whom had lost limbs in the Allied bombing — said they were still ready to die for Daesh.
“They are convinced that military and geographical defeat means nothing, so the indoctrination of children continues,” said Alessio Romenzi, who began shooting the film with Francesca Mannocchi when fighting for Mosul was still going on.
“We will have to face the same problem again and again, even if it does not have the same name, because it has not gone away,” he told reporters.
“What you cannot perceive from the outside is what motivates this movement or how deeply rooted it is.”
Very few former fighters or IS supporters “have repented,” he added.
One young former “Cub of the Caliphate” told how he dreamed of cutting the throat of American journalists just like Jihadi John, the British extremist Mohammed Emwazi believed to have been featured in several Daesh execution videos.
“Indeed, those who were loyal to that ideology are even more loyal,” Romenzi said.
“What you feel in Mosul is a cry for blood and vengeance from both sides — from the defeated and from those that have won.”
The film shows an uneasy peace since Iraqi forces retook the city in July 2017, with an unknown number of suspected Daesh fighters — many of them minors — being held in horrific jails which some fear will be breeding grounds for an even more bloody insurgency.
Denied documents, medical care and schooling for their children, their families and supporters hide out amid the apocalyptic remains of their flattened neighborhoods or fester in fury in tent cities where they have been left to rot.
Mannocchi told reporters that she always got the same answer when she asked Iraqis how they were going to deal with Daesh as Mosul fell: “We are going to kill them all, what else can we do?"
By turning away and not helping to rebuild the city both physically and socially, the world risks reaping terrible consequences, she feared.
Daesh is “likely to come back with a ferocity and a violence we have not yet seen. It is not over. Iraq today is paying the price of the negligence and lack of understanding of what has even happened,” Mannocchi told AFP.
She compared the situation to post-war Europe, when the Allies tried to de-Nazify defeated Germany, while helping it rebuild with the Marshall Plan.
But nothing is being done to counter Daesh brainwashing, she said.
“Fascist and totalitarian regimes have always given great importance to children,” she said, with the Hitler Youth and Pol Pot’s child soldiers.
Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was still working on his school curriculum when Allied forces closed in on Mosul, she said.
In a purported new audio message to his followers last week he urged them not to give up.
“We need a social Marshall Plan to deal with this,” Mannocchi argued. “Daesh is planning for the next 10 years and we are not.”
Shocking new film warns of Daesh comeback in Iraq
Shocking new film warns of Daesh comeback in Iraq
- Film says Daesh ideology still alive in ruined city of Mosul
- "ISIS, Tomorrow. The Lost Souls of Mosul" premiered at the Venice Film Festival
Russia, Syria to hold further talks on Russian military bases in Syria, TASS reports
“This issue requires additional negotiations,” TASS news agency cited Bogdanov as saying. Bogdanov is heading Russia’s delegation to Damascus for the first time since Moscow’s ally President Bashar Assad was toppled.
He added that so far there have been no changes to the presence of Russian military bases in the country.
New backlash over Trump plan to move people out of Gaza
- “We emphasize that Jordan’s national security dictates that the Palestinians must remain on their land and that the Palestinian people must not be subjected to any kind of forced displacement whatsoever,” Jordanian’s spokesman Mohammad Momani said
- Israel has killed at least 47,317 people in Gaza, the majority civilians according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable
JERUSALEM: An idea floated by US President Donald Trump to move Gazans to Egypt or Jordan faced a renewed backlash Tuesday as hundreds of thousands of Gazans displaced by the Israel-Hamas war returned to their devastated neighborhoods.
A fragile ceasefire and hostage release deal took effect earlier this month, intended to end more than 15 months of war that began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
After the ceasefire came into force, Trump touted a plan to “clean out” the Gaza Strip, reiterating the idea on Monday as he called for Palestinians to move to “safer” locations such as Egypt or Jordan.
The US president, who has repeatedly claimed credit for sealing the truce deal after months of fruitless negotiations, also said he would meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington “very soon.”
Jordan, which has a tumultuous history with Palestinian movements, on Tuesday renewed its rejection of Trump’s proposal.
“We emphasize that Jordan’s national security dictates that the Palestinians must remain on their land and that the Palestinian people must not be subjected to any kind of forced displacement whatsoever,” Jordanian government spokesman Mohammad Momani said.
Qatar, which played a leading role in the truce mediation, on Tuesday said that it often did not see “eye to eye” with its allies, including the United States.
“Our position has always been clear to the necessity of the Palestinian people receiving their rights, and that the two-state solution is the only path forward,” Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said.
Following reports that Trump had spoken with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi at the weekend, Cairo said there had been no such phone call.
“A senior official source denied what some media outlets reported about a phone call between the Egyptian and American presidents,” Egypt’s state information service said.
On Monday, Trump reportedly said the pair had spoken, saying of El-Sisi: “I wish he would take some (Palestinians).”
After Trump first floated the idea, Egypt rejected the forced displacement of Gazans, expressing its “continued support for the steadfastness of the Palestinian people on their land.”
France, another US ally, on Tuesday said any forced displacement of Gazans would be “unacceptable.”
It would also be a “destabilization factor (for) our close allies Egypt and Jordan,” a French foreign ministry spokesman said.
Moving Gaza’s 2.4 million people could be done “temporarily or could be long term,” Trump said on Saturday.
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he was working with the prime minister “to prepare an operational plan to ensure that President Trump’s vision is realized.”
Smotrich, who opposed the ceasefire deal, did not provide any details on the purported plan.
For Palestinians, any attempts to force them from Gaza would evoke dark memories of what the Arab world calls the “Nakba,” or catastrophe — the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.
“We say to Trump and the whole world: we will not leave Palestine or Gaza, no matter what happens,” said displaced Gazan Rashad Al-Naji.
Almost all of the Gaza Strip’s inhabitants were displaced at least once by the war that has levelled much of the Palestinian territory.
The ceasefire hinges on the release during a first phase of 33 Israeli hostages held in Gaza in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
On Monday, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said eight of the hostages due for release in the first phase are dead.
Since the truce began on January 19, seven Israeli women have been freed, as have about 290 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
On Monday, after Hamas and Israel agreed over the release of six hostages this week, “more than 300,000 displaced” Gazans were able to return to the north, according to the Hamas government media office.
“I’m happy to be back at my home,” said Saif Al-Din Qazaat, who returned to northern Gaza but had to sleep in a tent next to the ruins of his destroyed house.
“I kept a fire burning all night near the kids to keep them warm... (they) slept peacefully despite the cold, but we don’t have enough blankets,” the 41-year-old told AFP.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
During the attack, militants took into Gaza 251 hostages. Eighty-seven remain in the territory, including dozens Israel says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 47,317 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
“In terms of the death toll, yes, we do have confidence. But let’s not forget, the official death toll given by the Ministry of Health, is deaths accounted in morgues and in hospitals, so in official facilities,” World Health Organization spokesman Christian Lindmeier said Tuesday.
“As people go back to their houses, as they will start looking for their loved ones under the rubble, this casualty figure is expected to increase,” he added.
More than 376,000 return to north Gaza since Monday: UN
- OCHA: Over 376,000 people are estimated to have returned to their places of origin in northern Gaza
- “This is our homeland and we have to go back,” said one displaced woman, Ola Saleh
UNITED NATIONS: More than 376,000 Palestinians displaced by the war between Israel and Hamas have returned to northern Gaza, the UN’s humanitarian body OCHA said Tuesday.
“Over 376,000 people are estimated to have returned to their places of origin in northern Gaza, following the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the two main roads along the Netzarim corridor” that leads into the north, OCHA said in a humanitarian update.
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Many Palestinians said they were happy to return, even though their homes in northern Gaza are likely damaged or destroyed. Others said the feeling was bittersweet, as nearly everyone has friends or relatives killed by Israel during the 15-month war against Hamas.
“This is our homeland and we have to go back,” said one displaced woman, Ola Saleh.
The ceasefire is aimed at ending the war and releasing dozens of hostages and hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned or detained by Israel.
Paramilitary attacks displace thousands in North Darfur
PORT SUDAN: Thousands of families fled their homes in Sudan’s North Darfur state over two days, the UN’s migration agency said on Tuesday, amid intensified attacks by paramilitary forces.
“Between 25 and 27 January 2025, an estimated 3,960 households were displaced from various villages across El-Fasher locality,” the International Organization for Migration said.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces — at war with the army since April 2023 — have captured every state capital in the vast western region of Darfur except for North Darfur capital El-Fasher, which they have besieged since May.
In its latest attempt to capture the city, the RSF last week issued an ultimatum demanding that army forces and their allies leave the city.
The IOM said the displacement occurred due to RSF attacks, which included reported incidents of “looting and burning of personal property.”
Army and allied forces have repeatedly repelled attacks by the paramilitary forces, who local activists said launched intense artillery shelling on residential neighborhoods in the city.
On Friday, a drone attack on the city’s only functioning hospital, which local monitors blamed on the RSF, killed 70 people, drawing condemnation from the UN.
Nearly 1.7 million people are displaced in North Darfur state alone, according to the UN, with an estimated two million experiencing extreme food insecurity and 320,000 in famine.
In the area around El-Fasher, famine has already taken hold in three displacement camps — Zamzam, Abu Shouk and Al-Salam — and is expected to expand to five more areas including the city itself by May, according to a UN-backed assessment.
Protests in Libya disrupt oil loadings at 2 ports
BENGHAZI: Local protesters blocked crude oil loadings at the Es Sider and Ras Lanuf ports in Libya on Tuesday, five engineers said, putting about 450,000 barrels per day of exports at risk.
Laer, Libya’s National Oil Corporation said operations at all oil terminals were continuing normally after communication with protesters.
In a statement to the NOC dated Jan. 5, the protesters demanded the relocation of several oil company headquarters to the Oil Crescent region, calling for fair development of their coastal area to improve living conditions.
Ports in Libya’s hydrocarbon-rich Oil Crescent include Es Sider, Brega, Zueitina and Ras Lanuf, accounting for about half of the total exports from the country, while several oil companies are based in the capital Tripoli.
“All we want is equality,” one of the protesters Houssam El Khodor said. “The oil is produced in our regions and all we get from it is the toxic fumes.”
The disruption came as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Libya is a member, is due to discuss its policy of gradually increasing oil output after US President Donald Trump’s calls for OPEC to lower oil prices.
NOC said on its official X account that its crude production had reached more than 1.4 million bpd, about 200,000 bpd short of its pre-civil war high. It was not immediately clear if the blockade had affected production so far.
A loading program showed that Es Sider was on track to export about 340,000 bpd of crude in January, with another 110,000 bpd slated to ship from Ras Lanuf.
