Once the troops penetrated East Mosul proper, the city itself, that was an inflection

point in that they quickly saw just how brutal this fight was going to be.

So within a few days of the beginning of the offensive on the west side, it was clear that every neighborhood that was moved through now was going to be, if not leveled, then really beaten up.

And they were.

Hey, and welcome back to another episode of the MWI podcast. I'm John Ambo, editorial director at MWI,

and in this episode I'm joined by James Verini. He is an award-winning journalist who has reported

from all over the world, including from Iraq, where he spent a lot of time accompanying

Iraqi security forces during the brutal fight to

retake Mosul from ISIS.

That's the subject of his brand new book called They Will Have to Die Now, Mosul and

the Fall of the Caliphate.

In this episode, you'll hear him talk about his experiences reporting on some of the most

violent urban conflict the world has seen in decades.

He also offers some really important context about

Mosul, its people, and its history that is crucial to both understanding that conflict and

thinking about the city's recovery and its future. Before we hear from James, a couple notes. First,

we have some new intro music. We've sort of outgrown the music we've used since our very first

episodes of both this podcast and our other podcast, The Spear. We have a couple new and

exciting podcasts we plan to launch over the coming months, so we're revisiting the music we use

in each of them. We might sort of experiment, so if we decide it isn't quite the right fit,

we might change it up again. But for now, hopefully you like it. and music aside, we'll keep working hard to provide great conversations about modern war.

One thing that won't change is our disclaimer.

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