Almost six minutes pass in the video focusing first on death and loss, and then on the sweetness and transitory nature of life: a grave is filled in with dirt; a young man gazes up at the heavens in the midst of Raqqa's rubble; an old man pulls a battered bicycle out of the ruins of a house; gold coins are counted and spin into eternity; a blacksmith labors wearily at his task; another man treads a path through fallen, sere leaves; a father gazes at his newborn baby; you see images of innocent children, of smiles and of flowers, of gold and of trees. You see normal streets and then those same streets that have been reduced to rubble.
This is Raqqa and it is in a way about the ongoing Coalition air campaign against ISIS. But the commentary is about much more than that. The commentator notes that those who have chosen the path of Jihad in the Path of God have made a better choice than the things of this world, of al-Dunya. You then hear the voice of a dead man, of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, just as you see an ISIS fighter on a sand berm shot and falling slowly to his death. Al-Zarqawi notes that there is in life, in the end, nothing for the Muslim but jihad and worship of their Lord. Focus, instead of this passing world, on the eternal, on al-Akhira, rather than this life.
From Islamic State's Raqqa Elegy shows both Weakness and Power by Alberto Fernandez.
What are we defending?
A West which bombed and killed innocence with zero regard for the sovereignty of nations.
A West which treated its own citizens as charlatans, and jailed them at will.
A country which fined people for having too much mud on the mud flaps of their vehicles.
Which achieved perfection when everyone was dependent on the state.
Where traditional tolerance was now a sin against God. Changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born.
Old Alex interviewed an Iraqi expert from Human Rights Watch. We have never seen people so traumatised, she said. They have experienced three years of Islamic State rule. Their families have died in the air strikes, their homes destroyed. They have lost everything.
The mujaheddin were fighting to the last drop of blood. Their sacrifice they hoped, or knew, would shelter, shatter, into the spiritual realm. The despised West was dying. They succeeded where all else thought they were failing. In the noble pursuit of truth. In the noble pursuit fo God's blessing. In rubble no Westerner could understand. Everything was comfort, even sacrifice, here at the end of days.
The Aztecs had sacrificed the slaves, cutting out their hearts in ritual, there on the high reaches of the Pyramid of the Sun, summoning the gods.
Old Alex had climbed it as a boy, their pain a muffled, distant echo across two thousand years, across the flat plains, in high heat and low dudgeon. Now, ensconced, trapped on the other side of the world, trapped in suburban walls, there was no way to comprehend the disintegration of the West and the suffering of those who sacrificed themselves in the fight. They had no choice. They knew they were to die. That they were sacrificing their souls to Allah, high on amphetamines as they fought their final battles, that was all they knew as sheets of pain consumed them into the rapture.
Terrified populations.
All that was accessible, filtered though a heavily manipulated media full of wall to wall propaganda, was the same muffled, distant echo of pain and spiritual compromise and and deaths which splashed through the heavens.
Words fail.
They know not what they do.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/world/2017/06/28/iraqi-military-says-it-has-retaken-two-mosul-neighbourhoods-from-islamic-state/#u8Gmr8OXsTquqxqO.99
MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq's military pushed deeper into Mosul's Old City on Wednesday, taking two more districts from Islamic State and bringing it closer to total control of the city.
The army's 16th infantry division captured Hadarat al-Saada and al-Ahmadiyya, the military said in a statement. The areas are northwest of the historic Grand al-Nuri Mosque which the militants destroyed last week.
Islamic State still controls the mosque's grounds and about half of the territory in the Old City, its last redoubt in Mosul.
"Fifty percent of this area has been liberated, al-Mashada and al-Ahmadiyya and al-Saada," Major General Jabbar al-Darraji told Iraqi state television.
"Our troops are now moving towards Farouq Street," he said, referring to the Old City's main north-south thoroughfare.
Federal police and elite units of the Counter-Terrorism Service have also been fighting inside the district's maze of narrow alleyways since the battle began 10 days ago.
A U.S.-led international coalition is providing air and ground support in the eight-month-old offensive.
Authorities expect the battle to end in the coming days, though the advance remains arduous.
MEDIEVAL CITY
Federal policemen walked through piles of rubble amid wrecked houses on Wednesday to reach the frontline, southwest of al-Nuri mosque. A Reuters correspondent said they exchanged mortars and sniper fire with militants.
The Old City's stone buildings date mostly from the medieval period. They include market stalls, a few mosques and churches, and small houses built and rebuilt on top of each other over the ages.
The minaret of the Ziwani mosque, which is cleared of militants, has been partially destroyed, and the cross had been removed from the bell tower of Shamoon al-Safa church, a Reuters correspondent said.
The military estimates up to 350 militants are dug in among civilians in wrecked houses and crumbling infrastructure. They are trying to slow the advance of Iraqi forces by laying booby traps and using suicide bombers and snipers.
Five IS fighters tried to flee across the Tigris River to the eastern side of Mosul but were killed by security forces, the military said on Wednesday.
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