ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Most years, March 21 is a day of celebration for Iraqis, when Newroz (Kurdish New Year) and Mother’s Day coincide. In Mosul, families use the day to take in the spring verdure of the city’s Ghabat (Forest) district that hugs its perennial life source, the River Tigris.
Iraq’s largest amusement park, Um al-Rabiayn, had opened on an island on the river in April 2018 to great fanfare. Newroz last year was no exception, with Maslawis flocking to the island to celebrate with their families.
Like any grand-scale project in Iraq, Um al-Rabiayn’s realisation was not without obstacles. Approved by the Nineveh Investment Forum in 2009, construction began in 2011, but ground to a halt when the Islamic State group seized the city in 2014. The island then turned into a depot hub for the militant group, with Mosul acting as its Iraqi base until its liberation in 2017.
The project was resurrected after the city was freed by Iraqi security forces and paramilitary groups, including those belonging to Iran-backed Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).
Visitors at the amusement park’s grand opening in April 2018 hailed it as a milestone. Mosul residents who spoke to local TV channel al-Mawsiliya said it was the first time they had visited the island in years. They called it a turning point in the city and the country’s tragic recent history; one visitor hoped it would mark “the end of the days of sadness, the beginning of happiness.”
After an extremely wet winter, river levels were dangerously high and the surface choppy. Yet hundreds of revelers, predominantly families, were packed onto a ferry without life jackets or other safety facilities, well beyond capacity. Soon after leaving the jetty, the ferry began to tilt to the right, waves lapping onto its deck, until it overturned, pouring its passengers into the treacherous waters.
Police stationed by the river were woefully underequipped; only one broken boat was available at the time of rescue.
Some in the water managed to fight the current and swim to shore; others clung to the backs of other ferries in operation.
Vessels had to be deployed from other Iraqi provincial police forces, and even Turkey, to help search for bodies swept away.
The estimated death toll varies, the number hovering at around 150, most of them women and children. Dozens are still missing.
Iraq’s judiciary issued an arrest warrant for those it held responsible for the disaster – Rayan Hadidi, who together with his father owned a majority share of the island, as well as a number of the amusement park’s workers. Kurdish security forces arrested Hadidi in Erbil a week after the disaster.
He still awaits trial.
The Hadidis reportedly operated on the island under the protection of Haider al-Saadi, a high-ranking member of the Asaib ahl al-Haq paramilitia that falls under the umbrella of the PMF, among several armed factions accused of killing anti-government protesters across Iraq.
Saadi’s protection allowed Um al-Rabiayn to operate despite not having permission from Baghdad, according to a tourism ministry statement two days after the sinking, and in flagrant disregard for government safety regulations. In the days after the sinking, a representative of Asaib ahl al-Haq denied any business connection to the island on Iraqi TV.
‘Martyrs Island’
Writer and political analyst Abdul-Jabbar al-Jibouri lost his wife, two daughters, and a sister-in-law in the ferry tragedy. The body of one daughter – Fatima, aged 5 – remains missing. Only eleven-year-old Fatin survived. A bandage was wrapped around his right index finger, and droplets of water still clouded the face of his wrist watch when he spoke to Rudaw ten days after the tragedy.
“We and the ferry capsized, and I started swimming while the water swept over me until I reached a woman, and we clung on to each other. She died but I survived. I cried out for help, then a boat came and saved me,” Fatin told Rudaw last year.
“We are doing well,” Jibouri told Rudaw English via telephone on Wednesday. “But we have not been offered any help by the government.”
Martyrdom was heavily evoked in the sinking’s immediate aftermath. As the death toll climbed, government officials ascribed the term to the victims, and a provincial council motion was passed to rename Um al-Rabiayn as Jazeera al-Shuhada – “Martyrs Island.”
Jibouri said he and other victims’ families have yet to be registered as martyrs by the government, a move that would allow families to receive a monthly state pension. In the days after the disaster, Iraq’s three presidencies – President Barham Salih, Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, and parliament speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi – had discussed compensation measures for the families of victims.
Compensation instead came through a settlement between the Hadidis’ tribe and the tribes of the victims. Each family was offered 10 million dinars (roughly $8,400) and a plot of land as recompense for the loss of their loved ones – an agreement he and most other families have accepted, Jibouri said.
The use of tribal means to negotiate a settlement – still a powerful method of resolution in contemporary Iraqi society – and the subsequent calls for the case to be dropped are a means of skirting court justice, Nineveh police chief Hamid Namis told Rudaw English on Tuesday.
A trial is being held up “because of the large number of families involved, and Iraq’s ongoing political problems,” Namis said, in reference to the many months Iraq gas gone without a prime minister or governing cabinet, but expressed hope that the case would move along “if the government is formed quickly.”
Calls for the case to be dropped even by the families of victims are unlikely to be heeded, Ari Jasim, a Baghdad-based Kurdish lawyer, told Rudaw English on Friday via telephone. Although most of the families have withdrawn their complaints because they received compensation, “the case is one of public interest,” Jasim said, “and must proceed.”
‘No receipt was found’
A jail sentence, however, may not provide sufficient justice for Mosul’s long-suffering residents. Immediately after the ferry sinking, Maslawis bereft and enraged in equal measure wanted to hold other powers to account for the tragedy and its contributing circumstances – especially the Iraqi government.
They took to the streets to protest not just the void in security and safety measures at Um al-Rabiayn, but what they considered to be deep-seated issues with corruption and grievances over a lack of reconstruction in the post-Iraq War era. Yells and insults were pelted at high-ranking state officials when their motorcades arrived to pay their condolences, including President Salih, who visited the site with then-governor of Nineveh, Nawfal Akoub.
They believed the government allowed al-Saadi and Hadidi to act with impunity, and said the situation demonstrated a blur between government authority and the continued power of PMF militias, not just in Mosul but across Iraq.
Akoub was sacked for “negligence and concrete failings” a few days after the tragedy, but his days were arguably already numbered as an investigation into rampant corruption in Nineveh was being conducted by the government-established Integrity Commission.
An investigation by the commission ending in April 2019 found that more than $60 million in funds had been stolen from the province, whose estimated annual budget is $800 million.
Saeed said “23 or 24 people” who were arrested after the investigation’s findings are currently on bail and awaiting trial – their verdict and sentencing for theft of “an amount” of Nineveh’s budget yet to be decided. Akoub himself was accused by the commission in July of having stolen $10 million dollars in aid meant for rehabilitation of two hospitals in Mosul. “No receipt was found” by investigators for invoices sent to the developers in the Kurdistan Region, a spokesperson for the commission said at the time.
A warrant for his arrest was issued soon after his dismissal. Akoub was widely believed to have fled to the Kurdistan Region capital of Erbil. When asked by Rudaw English on Wednesday about Akoub’s whereabouts, Erbil police spokesperson Hogar Aziz simply said his arrest was “a matter for the Iraqi authorities,” not those in the Kurdistan Region – despite Hadidis’ arrest of by Kurdish security forces last March.
Island deserted, ‘case resolved’
One year on, Um al-Rabiayn amusement park lies deserted, shut off by Iraqi authorities since March 23 of last year. Measures have been put in place to ensure the tragedy will not be repeated, Integrity Commission member Thabit Mohammed Saeed told Rudaw English via telephone on Wednesday.
“Tourism sites from the government are under the supervision of the Integrity Commission so that this doesn’t happen again,” Saeed said. Asked about the provision of lifeboats and safety equipment, he said “all safety requirements have been provided.”
But Iraqis like Jibouri are continuing to look beyond the mistrusted state towards other means of implementing justice.
“The tribes have asked for the case against him [Hadidi] to be dropped,” Jibouri told Rudaw English on Wednesday. “We consider the case resolved.”
