A brown cloud rose over Intisar. Not just killed: they had poured gasoline over his corpse and set it on fire. Each SWAT member had endured personal tragedy at the hands of ISIS, and their mission was to take revenge against its remaining fighters. 'Mosul' uses the familiar structure of an action thriller to depict a real-life Iraqi SWAT team's war against ISIS in the battle of Mosul. “Last night, they came so close,” he said. “They don’t know me yet,” he explained. Only after that do you get to butcher it.”. Ali’s wife, son, and daughter were still in Mosul, and he was haunted by a premonition that he would never see them again. I’ll put shit in Alawi’s mouth!”, “I’m going to explain something to you,” Bashar said, with chilling composure. Did Netflix really use filming locations in the Iraqi city? She did not have a lot to work with; Mohanad explained that whenever charities delivered food or other aid at the camp they always unloaded their trucks at the first row of tents inside the gate. When I asked whether he was nervous about the mission, he shook his head dismissively. No one was fucking ISIS like us! He directed the soldiers to escort Ahmed and Mohammad through the compound to an open stairwell. But, as the Federal Police, following the Tigris, neared Hamam al-Alil, the militants there had retreated to Mosul, forcing hundreds of civilians, including Dumbuk’s family, to accompany their convoy as human shields. Car bombs. “Now they’re encircled, and they lost a lot of soldiers on the eastern front.” Time will tell. Souhel and Ous’s room was modest: windowless, with a broken dresser and twin beds. Starring Suhail Dabbach and Adam Bessa, “Mosul” is an Iraqi Arabic-language war thriller that follows a SWAT police team’s mission to wipe out ISIS members who killed their loved ones. Mosul is based on a 2017 New Yorker article that told the incredible true story of how an elite Iraqi SWAT team fought to take back Mosul from ISIS, who had taken over the city. Watch on Netflix. There was little news from Mosul. Bashar told me that his older brother, Salem, had been an intelligence officer in Mosul and had fled to Kurdistan when the city fell. The Mosul Dam is failing. In February 2017, The New Yorker published a long account of Ninewa province’s SWAT team as they fought the self-proclaimed Islamic State in the embattled city of Mosul, Iraq. Then they drove off toward the smoke and noise. In Kharbardan, Lieutenant Thamer had described the SWAT team’s participation in the Mosul campaign as a form of redemption—a “passport” that would allow it to return home with honor.). They ricocheted off power-line poles, ringing them like bells. He told me that, shortly after I left Aden, three ISIS fighters had crossed beneath the mud clearing in a tunnel that the SWAT team had not noticed. “All these mortars they’re fucking us with are because these traitors are giving them our coördinates.”. He put his foot on Ahmed’s ear, pinning his head to the concrete. It wasn’t that. You keep hitting him and he never breaks.’ ”. She yelled at Baida to come back to her, and at last the girl turned and ran toward her mother, pigtails swinging. Snipers kill civilians. They were staying in a camp for internally displaced people, or I.D.P.s, in a village called Hassan Sham. It opens with red and white Arabic script on a black background, which says, “Another slaughter by the crusader coalition against a Muslim family in Ghabat”—a neighborhood in northern Mosul. As the children played with Souhel’s phone, his brother Redwan, who was twenty-two, ducked into the tent. “She was a bit confused. Moving slowly below the clouds was a white four-rotor surveillance drone, deployed by ISIS to reconnoitre the SWAT team’s position. In 2015, the reinvigorated Iraqi military liberated Ramadi and Falluja. I was really fucked up. Yes, it was black. Whereas Mezher disdained the trappings of rank—he wore his major’s patch only for meetings with superiors—Rayyan kept his uniform pressed and his pockets stocked with gold-colored ballpoint pens. “Civilians don’t understand me, and I don’t understand them,” he had told me in Kharbardan. The unpaved road paralleled the cemetery, which lay behind a row of houses. “When are they going to give us another mission?”. Mosul unfolds across no more than 24 hours, as the Nineveh SWAT team trudges through the war-torn city to carry out a rogue mission. “We let them go,” Mohammad said. Finally, they raised Ahmed to a sitting position. The doctor said it must be done as soon as possible. A lieutenant climbed out, collapsed, and screamed at his men to empty the vehicle, so that Hadi could retrieve more people. I recognized him as a young man with whom I’d stayed up talking in the abandoned house the previous night. Ad Choices, Major Mezher Sadoon (right), the deputy commander of a, Photograph by Victor J. I swear to God.”. Mosul [Iraq], Jan 18 (ANI): The SWAT team of Iraqi forces recently scored a "big" catch in the city of Mosul when they nabbed a morbidly obese ISIS cleric who has been dubbed as "Jabba the Jihadi" on social media. The video transitions to slow motion as the militant beheads Salem. But, no matter how much they kicked and punched him, he never cried. Soldiers herded them toward a nearby madrassa, where the men sat on the floor while an informant with a scarf covering his face looked for militants among them. The men had no helmets, and most of them wore flak jackets that lacked bulletproof plates. Ahmed’s mother had called his brother, Saef, who was also on the SWAT team, and Saef had relayed the news to Ahmed. They have tanks! Aside from martial aptitude, there were two principal requirements for recruits: they had to have been wounded by ISIS or its Islamist precursors—either physically, by bullets and blasts, or psychically, by the death of a loved one—and they had to crave revenge. Where else can I go? Partly backed by Iran, the P.M.U. The convoy proceeded haltingly, often pausing for engineers to detonate mines or for soldiers to conduct reconnaissance in lonely farming settlements where the exteriors of houses were draped with white bedsheets and pillowcases—flags of peace. At ten o’clock, while I was in a house midway down the line, a terrific explosion sounded near the elementary school. Several of us were bruised and bleeding. Jawad’s left leg slipped off the stretcher and hung limply until someone put it back. “Let them come!” Mohammad shouted. The video cuts to ISIS fighters placing four men inside a maroon Opel Vectra. He was one of several SWAT-team members whom Colonel Rayyan usually kept away from the front lines, because they suffered from particularly traumatic injuries. As night descended, mortars continued to land around us. Mosul, Netflix review - gruelling story of Iraq's Nineveh SWAT team Close-up view of the brutal battle against Islamic State by Adam Sweeting Saturday, 12 December 2020 “Only my brother. For his efforts, Al Qaeda had tried to kill him; it failed, and killed his brother instead. Along the way, they overran several military bases, seizing the heavy weapons, armored vehicles, and ammunition depots inside them. “I haven’t been able to talk to her in six months.”. “I gave the order anyway,” he said, and smiled darkly. Another Humvee delivered a man whose face was wrapped in oozing gauze. Underwater cameras capture the men drowning. When I asked about women, there was an awkward pause. Walking toward the gate, he turned around with a last word for Ahmed. Through four primary action set-pieces, Carnahan constructs an engaging drama that is full of great character work, editing, … The next day, when we returned to the house where we’d left Hadi and Thamer, it was evident that they had passed a difficult night. Ahmed is then shown inside a small cage, along with two of Lieutenant Basam’s uncles and one of his cousins. The woman in the blue hijab was his daughter from his second wife. She says the snipers shooting at us are Russian. Of the forty-odd men who’d been in Intisar, twenty-two had been seriously injured and two killed. Peeking over the windowsill, we could glimpse dense blocks of identical-looking houses with water tanks on their roofs, the domes and minarets of mosques scattered here and there. When the offensive began, Dumbuk had arranged for his family to move to Hamam al-Alil, an ISIS-held town south of the city, which Dumbuk hoped would be quickly liberated. The fragile coalition depended on the hope that internal disputes would remain minimal as long as the various factions were united against ISIS. “The Golden Division isn’t going to leave this place,” Mohammad told the men. Another Humvee arrived, and a second dead SWAT-team member was carried out. Nevertheless, it was an impressive spread: rice, beans, radishes, tomatoes, and scallions. It occurred to me that Bashar possessed the same uncanny self-command that Salem had shown in his execution video. Blood flowed brightly down one fighter’s face and dripped off his chin. Mezher stood over the sergeant, muttering reassurances. We crawled on our stomachs, under the bedsheet. I’d been touched by how enamored of the men the boy had become, and how eager he was to please them. At forty-six, he had a flattop and a paintbrush mustache that were equal parts black and gray. Later, he told me, “They fucked us.” According to Mezher, the 9th Division had directed them to an untenable area, out ahead of its tanks, and had then refused to back them up. Once, his mother and I were talking. Nearby oil fields, which ISIS set alight last summer, were still burning. Ous, who until now had been staring mutely at his hands—each of which was tattooed with the name of a brother still in Mosul—looked up. Wearing a striped button-down and new jeans, his mustache and hair freshly groomed, he was hard to recognize. Take a look at the official trailer below that was uploaded with the following description, Describing western Mosul, Colonel Brett Sylvia, the commander of the American-led Task Force Strike, which advises and assists the Iraqi military, told me, “It is much more dense, in terms of the urban terrain. Souhel drew my attention to a house with a corrugated-tin roof and several square windows missing their panes. (They flanked him whenever he was stationary, underscoring his under-average height.) Recent rains had turned the bulldozed paths between the rows of tents to mud. “My sister’s house is on the other side of the cemetery,” Haytham told me. camp, Walid had installed them in an empty house two blocks away. Major Mezher, after leaving the SWAT team, had assumed command of a new police unit there. “We had killed too many of them,” Rayyan told me. Tags :New Movie Releases,Avengers: Endgame (Netflix) Directed by Matthew Michael Carnahan, 'Mosul' is based on a New Yorker article 'The Avengers of Mosul'. It was time to leave. “We killed one with a grenade.”. Hadi paced around the room, shouting at no one in particular. It had been occupied since June, 2014, and was now home to about six thousand militants from the Islamic State, or ISIS. Het Nineveh SWAT Team onderneemt heftige missie. “If Adnan had joined ISIS, I would have, too,” he said softly, as if to a child. Her name is Tamara.”, “She knows—she’s waiting for me,” Souhel said. Formidable: Suhail Dabbach as Major Jasem. Released from the fear of ambush, the men loitered on the street, smoked cigarettes, drank tea. The bulletproof windshield, cracked by past rounds, looked like battered ice, and a large photograph of a recently killed SWAT-team member obstructed much of the view. The U.N. has stood by an estimate of civilian casualties in Mosul in November: nearly a thousand, killed by coalition bombardments, by suicide cars, and by ISIS snipers, who deliberately target them as they flee toward government forces. “If we get into trouble, who is going to support us?” Hadi said. Absurdly, a woman was suturing a gash on his face with a needle and thread. A scar spanned his face, crossing his nose, and the area around his left cheek was peculiarly concave, like a dented mask. His father’s house had been blown up. My interpreter shook his head. Mezher and his lieutenants were unenthusiastic about the assignment. The air in Qayyarah was dark. “They’ll be right behind us. I’d dismissed the story as anxious gossip. One of the surprising aspects of ISIS’s governance of Mosul has been its interest in presiding over a sustainable economy. Although the camp in Hassan Sham—a vast grid of white tents enclosed by cyclone fencing—was paid for by the United Nations’ refugee agency, it is overseen by the Barzani Charity Foundation, a nonprofit created by Masrour Barzani, a son of the President of Kurdistan and the chief of Kurdish intelligence. “We have a sign,” he said. The old man pretended not to hear, and kept walking. A few dragged wheeled suitcases, but most hauled whatever belongings they’d chosen to salvage in shopping bags or in rice sacks converted into backpacks. “And how many houses do we have to take?”, A few minutes later, Mohammad went to talk to the Golden Division colonel, who was out on the street. “I don’t want it anymore,” Hussein said. I’ve been in love with her for five years. Whatever will happen will happen. His five-year-old son’s name was tattooed on his biceps. Over the next few days, Iraqi forces tightened their noose around Mosul. The unit already bought everything for the wedding.”. As Naseem struggled to set a broken finger, she did not make a sound. Mahmoud had served in the Army under Saddam Hussein, and had been a policeman in Mosul since 2005. “While we were trying to reach him, they shot our Humvee with an R.P.G.,” Hadi said. I was impressed that the driver could steer at all. “They shoot three bullets at us, and we shoot a hundred. I asked him whether his parents and Ahmed’s wife and children were near us. Thirty-five members of the SWAT team left at sunrise, in seven armored Humvees. But Hussein said that he had no interest in going back. The Nineveh SWAT team, headed by Major Jasem (Suhail Dabbach), shows up and kills them, then, after a tense interrogation, extends Kawa an offer to join. The SWAT team was created in 2008 and, in conjunction with U.S. Special Forces, conducted raids in Mosul to arrest high-value terrorism suspects. I suspected that Souhel and Ous, sequestered in their dingy hotel room, spent most of their time off recalling their interrupted lives in Mosul. We climbed onto the roof. The bridge of his nose was bleeding. NINEVEH SWAT TEAM. It had no ambulance, which meant that it had to sacrifice a fighting vehicle to transport casualties. “All of them died.”. “When he was a boy, the bigger children always used to beat him up,” Mohanad said.