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WSJ, June 10 2015
Iraqi City of Mosul Transformed a Year After Islamic State Capture
Beneath a veneer of order, residents live in fear
By NOUR MALAS
BAGHDAD—In Islamic State’s stronghold of Mosul, the extremist group is
working day and night to repair roads, manicure gardens and refurbish
hotels. Iraq’s second-largest city has never looked so good thanks to
strict laws enforced by the Sunni militants.
But beneath that veneer, the group metes out deadly punishments to those
who don’t comply with a long list of prohibitions imposed over the year
since it took control of Mosul on June 10, 2014, according to interviews
with more than a dozen current and former city residents, refugees and
Iraqi officials.
Gone are the illegal kiosks that crowded sidewalks and the tangled web
of electrical wires once connecting rooftops. New lamps light up streets
unusually clear of cigarette butts.
“I have not in 30 years seen Mosul this clean, its streets and markets
this orderly,” said Omar, a resident. He said Islamic State has shown an
unusual focus on civil works in recent weeks, which he and others
described as part of efforts to win popular support.
A luxury hotel stamped with Islamic State logos. Rifle-wielding fighters
chaperoning kids at an amusement park. Such is life through the lens of
ISIS propaganda in the besieged Iraqi city of Mosul.
Mosul and its population are changed in other ways, too. Gone are the
iconic shrines and mosques that towered over the city center. The
radical fighters blew many of them up because they believe the
veneration of shrines is unholy.
Ancient churches host garage sales where Islamic State members sell war
booty or display wares available to members only. The native Christian
population, a minority in the Sunni-majority city once peppered with
other religious and ethnic groups, was driven out last year under threat
of death.
When women step outside, they are fully cloaked with their faces
covered. Men have grown mandatory beards.
Islamic State has gone unchallenged because residents from Iraq’s
aggrieved Sunni minority are too scared of a military campaign that
could bring massive destruction and an uncertain future under the
Shiite-led government and allied forces who would retake the city, said
current and former residents.
Such is the dissonance of life for the more than one million people in
the most populous city controlled by Islamic State across the
territories it holds in Iraq and Syria.
In the past year, the group has tightened its grip on Mosul mostly
uncontested, building out its administrative and security apparatus. It
has cut the city off from the rest of Iraq and the world beyond by
shutting off cellphone towers and the Internet.
A year after Mosul fell, Islamic State’s grip on the city stands as its
biggest strategic and symbolic victory.
The campaign to retake Mosul is a linchpin of the U.S.-led coalition’s
military strategy against Islamic State. But plans for the
counteroffensive have been delayed—something the militants appear to be
capitalizing on to persuade the population they are better off under the
group’s control.
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“Islamic State is doing everything to keep Mosul. It’s the capital of
their caliphate here,” said Fuad Hussein, chief of staff to the
president of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, which borders
Mosul. “It will be a disaster if it stays in their hands.”
Airstrikes have hammered areas around the northern city since a U.S.-led
air campaign began in August. This year, Kurdish forces backed by the
U.S.-led air attacks cut off a key Islamic State supply line from Syria
into the city and now surround it from the east, west and north.
The plans for a counteroffensive have been put off because Iraq and the
U.S. have shifted their priority to driving Islamic State out of Anbar
province and its capital Ramadi, which are closer to the capital Baghdad.
Mosul is still almost fully inhabited—a contrast to cities where Iraqi
and coalition forces have pushed Islamic State out. U.S. officials say
it has about a million residents. Iraqi officials say the population is
closer to 1.5 million, including people displaced from Tikrit and Beiji.
“Every prisoner in this oppressed city wants salvation from Daesh and a
return to normal life,” said Omar, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic
State. “But everyone agrees if liberation happens like in Tikrit and
Anbar, with destruction and barrel bombs, random shelling and looting,
we do not want that kind of liberation.”
Another Mosul resident echoed that sentiment, showing how reports of
looting and abuses by Shiite militias in Tikrit weigh heavily in the
minds of residents, even though many of those accounts were exaggerated.
The second resident said even Iraqi soldiers may be still unwelcome in
an offensive.
“The best way to get rid of Daesh is to negotiate with them to leave to
Syria,” he said. That seemingly unrealistic proposition reflects a
desperation to find a local solution amid deep suspicions and fear of
the Iraqi army and its Shiite militia allies.
In the early months of Islamic State rule, some Mosul residents said
they thought the new regime was one they could live with, current and
former residents said.
“Daesh managed in a short time to create a strong security organization
similar, if not stronger, in order and harshness to that of the Saddam
Hussein regime,” said Omar. “It governs people and runs life well like
this.”
Food staples became more plentiful and cheaper because Islamic State
flooded the market with their own products grown in Syria, though the
cost of fuel and diesel—monopolized by the group—shot up.
Many stores shut down and local trade came to a halt. As Islamic State
filled the ranks of a new security and police force and nearly all other
public jobs with its members, thousands of people were left unemployed
and idle. Islamic courts and a system of punishments became increasingly
severe.
Doctors, judges, and professors who defied or questioned Islamic State
laws have been executed, sometimes by public stoning or crucifixion.
Prisons are filled with people awaiting their sentences from the Islamic
court.
“Nearly no one gets out alive,” one of the residents said.
Then came the attacks on minorities.
“There are many things we do not consider Islamic at all, like the way
Christians were treated,” said a female doctor from Mosul who is pious
and veiled.
“All of Mosul does not accept what has happened to the Christians,” said
the woman, who now lives in the northern city of Kirkuk. The group’s
attack on minorities “was a major mistake that cost them our support,”
she added.
At the markets, lists of prohibited items and imports began to grow.
Within months, restrictions that were a simple annoyance became
hallmarks of Islamic State’s excessive and extreme rule.
A 52-year old woman displaced from Mosul, now living on the outskirts of
Baghdad, recalled getting a puzzled call from her daughter in Mosul late
last year. The daughter complained that frozen chicken was banned
because of possible additives that are prohibited.
“The cigarette ban was absolutely the biggest problem,” a current
resident said. The ban has spurred an expensive underground trade in
tobacco.
In November, Islamic State instituted an exit law from Mosul barring
travel outside the city except in the case of a medical emergency, or to
claim retirement benefits in Baghdad. In both cases, the request must be
approved by a special court and requires a security deposit—including
handing over a car—to ensure the person returns. Last month, fighters
dug a deep trench around the city, adding to the feeling of many Mosul
residents that they are trapped.
—Ali A. Nabhan and Ghassan Adnan contributed to this article.
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