The night our fellow Australians turned on us in Mosul

On the face of it, I should have been elated. It was June 29, 2017, and we were a pair of Aussie journalists sitting in the field headquarters of the coalition forces on the outskirts of war-torn Mosul, telling jokes and eating sweet watermelon with men who were days away from winning the ancient city back, block by block, from the Islamic State.

My irritation was at myself. It was approaching midnight and I’d made a promise to the most important Iraqi general in Mosul – Lieutenant-General Abdul Ghani al-Asadi, the commander of the elite…