ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Leaders of the Islamic State now in control of Mosul are demanding residents pay a tax of $80 per month for the protection of the extremist group, a member provincial council member has said. “[ISIS] militants have forced families in Mosul to pay 100,000 dinar [$80] each month, claiming that their gunmen are protecting people so they must pay for the service,” Ibrahim Tati, member of Mosul provincial council, told Rudaw on Friday. “No matter rich or poor, all families are forced to pay the amount required by the militants,” Tati added. Mosul, Iraq’s’ second largest city fell to ISIS militants in June. Iraqi security forces are planning a future operation to retake the city with air support from the US-led coalition formed to fight the extremist group. The city's dwindling civilian population is reportedly still more than one million. Tati announced earlier that ISIS militants in Mosul have introduced their own education system with material designed to teach young children the Sunni extremists’ ideology. “In order to brainwash young children with violent ideology, the militants have opened a school called a 'reformation' school. They force families to send their children there,” Tati said. According to Saeed Mamozini, the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party branch 14 in Mosul, the Islamic group also forces young men from Mosul to join their forces and fight in the ongoing war. Women in Mosul are held captive for “Jihad al-Nikah,” a sexual from of slavery in which women are forced to offer themselves in sexual comfort roles to fighters, Mamozini explained. The Islamic State, which occupies parts of Iraq and Syria, claims it has created a “caliphate” and is governing its territory under strict religious laws.
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