As a major stronghold of ISIS in its brutal sweep across Iraq, the city of Mosul has been central in the war to defeat the terror group.Iraqi forces began their campaign to crush ISIS in October 2016 just outside of Erbil, with a coalition of Kurdish peshmerga forces, and Western advisory allies. It was a long and arduous process of slowly advancing first from town to town along the Nineveh plains toward the city and then from block to block as they worked to liberate sectors of the city.In Karemlash, the vast web of interconnecting tunnels ISIS had dug to hide from airstrikes and surprise Iraqi forces was uncovered and destroyed.And after they finally reached the Shahrazad District in East Mosul, the reality remained that even though the physical battle against ISIS had been won, Iraq's decimated infrastructure and weakened state has ensured Iraq will remain unstable for the foreseeable future.In the Old City alone, more than 50,000 buildings have been damaged and some of Mosul's neighborhoods are more than 80 percent destroyed. While ISIS is officially out of Iraq, the monumental task of rebuilding Iraq's second-largest city is still ahead.Read: The U.S.-led coalition in Syria and Iraq killed a staggering number of civilians in March, new report saysVICE’s Aris Roussinos embedded with Iraqi forces as they began the campaign to retake Mosul.Watch more full episodes of VICE on HBO here.
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