RAND Corporation senior policy researcher Shelly Culbertson is an expert on the Middle East. Her new report, "Making Victory Count After Defeating ISIS" details the steps Iraq and its international allies must take to rebuild in ISIS' wake.
She revealed to Business Insider what life was like for the civilian population in Mosul, when the second largest Iraqi city was under ISIS control. Following is a transcript of the video.
Shelly Culbertson: ISIS took over the entire city government when they came to Mosul. So, they took over leadership of all of the ministries, they took over property management, utilities management, and so forth.
The economy didn't entirely shut down under ISIS, actually, satellite photos can show truck transportation in and out of the city showing fairly robust trade during that time.
But nonetheless, there were a lot of challenges and changes under ISIS.
Religious mores became much stricter, social controls and so forth. But many aspects of city life continued on, even though they were continuing in a much more minimal state.
There was a lot of significant damage, in particular in the beginning, in power, water, schools, hospitals.
Just taking the case of education - when ISIS came in, they instantly closed all of the schools, and then they reopened them shortly thereafter, but with a new ISIS curriculum.
And the curriculum that they introduced was pretty indoctrinating. It was very much intolerant of minorities, it taught jihad education at age 6, it taught math problems, word problems for elementary school students, through calculating numbers of people you could kill with explosives.
That became very harsh over time. A lot of parents took their children out of school. And families fled.
So, over time, about a million kids studied this indoctrinating ISIS curriculum, and that is going to be one of the biggest challenges going forward, and rebuilding and repairing Iraq.
A million kids studied this, and getting them back into school with a healthier, much more tolerant curriculum will be an important step.