ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The killings and kidnappings of Yezidis by the Islamic State (IS/ISIS) are affecting the situation in Mosul, where the militants have become far less visible and where villagers have stepped in to terrorise the towns folk.
There are less IS fighters in the streets, at the markets and the checkpoints, sources in Mosul report. The militants in their black outfits are hardly seen anymore.
Meanwhile, looting has increased dramatically. IS supporters are mainly looting the homes of policemen and officers who left for fear of revenge by the radicals, and are taking the goods out of the city. Even herds of sheep are taken from the Kurdish left side of Mosul over the Tigris bridges towards Syria.
“Most supporters are from the villages,” said a journalist still living in Mosul, speaking by phone. “They treat the city folk badly. They are lowly educated and badly behaved. They are gangs. We suffer badly.”
He recounted how women, and even the men accompanying them, are beaten with sticks if the woman is wearing only a hijab (head scarf) instead of the now obligatory niqab which covers most of the face.
“A Mosul man would never do that, but it is common in the villages,” the journalist said. He added that the looting is also mainly done by the villagers who came with to the town with the IS, or daash as it known locally.
“Some of the Mosul people joined daash because they had no income, no money. But after they saw their mistake, they ran away.”
Mosul residents are fed up with IS, the journalist said. “We Muslims are in a critical situation, and we cannot speak out now. Islam is the big loser of this bloody game. It is too terrible what they did to the Christians and the Yezidis. We have always been a mixed town.”
“They are criminals,” said spokesman Ghanem al-Abed of the Sunni Resistance against former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, that started working with IS when it took over Mosul on June 10.
“What they are doing to Christians and Yezidis is not human. After they killed the Sunni leaders in prison, they became criminals.”
IS has in the past weeks picked up former Baath officials that had joined the group, as well as policemen and military men who had openly repented to IS to be able to stay in the city.
At the same time, IS fighters have been killed, said a policeman who fled the city. He knew about 20 of them being shot, possibly in connection to a ban on cigarettes imposed by the IS, which has had a major effect on the income of tradesmen.
IS has made itself unpopular not only with that ban, but also the prohibition for girls over 12 to go to schools and changing school curriculums to Arabic, maths and Islam. Many people have no income. Many hate the way their Christian neighbors have had to leave, the policeman said.
“There is the fear and the killings. Most daash in Mosul are villagers, and they operate in gangs. I just heard they killed a female doctor at home; probably because she was alone.”
He said he had been told of minor acts of resistance by the people of Mosul, of elderly people swearing at them openly, women refusing to wear the niqab or people asking IS fighters when they would leave.
“Now very few people are still cooperating with daash,” he said. “All former Baathists now are against them. Other groups stopped coordinating with them. Most of those people left.”
According to Abed, the spokesman of the Sunni resistance, the time has come “to liberate Mosul.” Former governor Atheel Nujaifi has formed a force of 10,000 men to do so, he said. “We will start the fight to chase daash out of Mosul.”
When told, the policemen openly wondered where the governor would have found such a number of able fighters, as none of the old colleagues he is in contact with seemed to be involved.
But in Mosul the story is spread by people eager to be rid of IS. The journalist said he had heard rumors about a force of 15,000 men that would be led by the former police chief of Mosul.
When asked if there will be cooperation with the Iraqi army, as is happening in Ramadi where Sunni fighters are confronting IS in the city, Abed is very clear that Mosul needs a completely Sunni force.
“We will not work with the militia of Iran,” he said, referring to the Iraqi army, which mainly consists of Iraqi Shiites and is being assisted by the Shiite militias both from Iraq and neighbouring Iran. “Only Sunnis from Mosul will fight IS and then reinstall the security in the city.”
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