Sustainable Peace in Mosul

While Mosul had been a regionally and internationally influential and important city for centuries, it became infamous with the rule of the Islamic State militia from 2014 to 2017. Although the city, like the country as a whole, had experienced war and destruction as well as political, ethnic and religious fragmentation only a few years earlier following the U.S. military invasion in 2003, the jihadist militia brought a new quality of destruction: This time, large parts of the city, including the old town, some of whose buildinds are thousands of years old, with its holy places of worship of a wide variety of denominations, were completely destroyed - by both IS and U.S. bombs. In addition to the physial destruction, there was also the psychological damage, not only from the destruction, but from the many martyrdoms that the population had to suffer under the rule of the jihadist militia(s).

Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Mosul appear resilient and quite optimistic. They seek to become a center of learning and religious and ethic diversity again, as they were until the 1980s. The RESI project seeks to contribute in this regards. RESI is led by Heike Wendt from the Institute of Education Research and Teacher Education at the University of Graz and coordinated together with the Technical University of Dortmund and the University of Mosul with the support of the DAAD. The aim is to support scientific and intercultural exchange between these institutions, to foster peace, to promote scientific discourse, and to promote the sustainable development of the University of Mosul, as well as the city and the region.

In early March, RESI initiatied a major conference on the Sustainable Development Goals with several hundred students. They discussed and developed plans for the sustainable reconstruction of their city and region(s) in various workshops: from the reconstruction of the old city of Mosul, sustainable waste disposal, a bee-friendly design of the environment to questions of education, security, and peace.

During his workshop, Maximilian Lakitsch discussed the idea of international peacebuilding with his students. The idea of the liberal peace was discussed in its inadequacy for Iraq after the rule of Saddam Hussein. "The students reflected on and formulated their own local conepts of peace," Lakitsch recounts, adding, "Only a local peace is a sustainable peace. There were numerous ideas for concretely implementing a local peace in Mosul, such as trying to integrate families of dead IS fighters who are currently being held outside the city under questionable circumstances."

While it may indeed have been a vanishingly small contribution to sustainable development and peace that was made at the conference, the enthusiasm and optimism of the students justified any efforts to at least try.