S8 Ep763: The Battle for Mosul in 2017 was a grueling, house-to-house urban war inflicting massive psychological trauma on a new generation of Iraqis. ISIS was revealed as a "melange" of local villagers and international volunteers who alienated the population thro
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2026
⏱️ 7 minutes
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1959 BAGHDAD
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| 0:00.0 | This CBSI in the world with Haith Abdulahad. |
| 0:09.0 | A stranger in your own city travels in the Middle East long war. |
| 0:13.0 | It is halfway between Baghdad and Mosul is a city called Ramadi. |
| 0:19.6 | We heard about it much in the Sunni awakening of 2007. Well, |
| 0:23.1 | it's back, except one witticism that we learn in the telling of this story is that I believe when |
| 0:30.6 | the women want to, the women of the Sunni women want to make certain that you're going to have a bad |
| 0:36.4 | time. They say something like, |
| 0:38.3 | may you have many sheiks in your clan or your tribe? What does that mean, Haith? Why do they say that? |
| 0:44.1 | It's not only the Sunnis, but it's in every tribal society in Iraq, if women want to curse a woman from another tribe, |
| 0:51.6 | they say, may Allah increase the, you Allah increase the tribal elders in your society? |
| 0:56.1 | Because the more sheikhs, the more tribal elders you have in a tribe, the more infighting |
| 1:01.8 | you have. And every one of them will try to use outside powers to increase their influence. |
| 1:10.1 | And this is exactly what's happened at Ramadi, which is to the west. |
| 1:13.5 | Baghdad is here, Mosul is there. |
| 1:15.4 | Ramadi is to the west. |
| 1:17.7 | And, you know, different to me politicians, tribal elders, forces to, you know, some use the |
| 1:27.0 | power of Maliki to fight others. |
| 1:29.6 | Some kind of use the power of the jihadis, allied themselves, |
| 1:32.5 | align themselves to the Americans. |
| 1:34.5 | And this internal infighting between the Sunnis, |
| 1:37.7 | I mean, sometimes I call what's been happening in Iraq in the past 20 years, |
| 1:41.3 | I mean, until ISIS is the tragedy of the Sunnis. |
... |
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