Asaad Ali, 33, from the administration’s village of Qalla, near Kifri town, was kidnapped alongside a shepherd friend by the White Flag group in February 2019 near Sarqala sub-district while the two were hunting. The shepherd was released after a short while, but Ali remained missing.
The White Flag group is thought to be one of a number of groups to have emerged from the fragments of ISIS since its ejection from Iraq's major urban centers in 2017.
"We had information that the White Flag militants had killed this Kurdish man [in the past], but they published the video just now to terrorize people," Jamal Salah, mayor of the Zinana sub-district in Garmiyan, told Rudaw.
A brother of the deceased told Rudaw that they had "knocked on many doors," but their efforts to rescue Assad from the clutches of the group were futile.
"After Assad was abducted, we did not hear anything from him," Hussein Ali, the brother of the beheaded, recalled to Rudaw.
"This is another Eid where our happiness is mixed with sorrow," the distraught brother said.
Karwan Hama Tal, the friend who had been kidnapped alongside Assad recounted the day they were abducted.
"They popped up all of a sudden. They forced us to face down. Then, they tied our hands behind our backs. After a short while, they released me," he said. "Although I begged them to let Assad go as well, they did not listen," the shepherd recalled.
ISIS first swept into Iraq in 2014, capturing cities across northern and central Iraq including Mosul, Iraq's second largest city and the capital of Nineveh province. At the height of its power, ISIS controlled a contiguous area equivalent in size to the United Kingdom. During their occupation of Iraq and Syria, ISIS subjected as many ten million people to an extreme and violent interpretation of Islam.
Although Baghdad declared the territorial defeat of the group in Iraq in December 2017, its remnants have since reverted to insurgency tactics; ambushing security forces, kidnapping and executing suspected informants, and extorting money from vulnerable rural populations.
Sirwan Barzani, Peshmerga commander of the Makhmour-Gwer front told Rudaw last week that the Kurdish Peshmerga's top priority is to return to areas disputed between Baghdad and Erbil. He said he was optimistic that ongoing talks with the Iraqi army will bear fruit to fill the security void in the disputed territories that have turned into a breeding ground for ISIS militants.
According to Peshmerga's monitoring of ISIS, the terrorist group has continued to be plenty active in 2018 and 2019, especially in Kurdish-poulated areas outside the KRG administration, including Diyala, Hamrin, Kirkuk, Tuz Khurmatu, and Qarachogh, Jabar Yawar, secretary general of the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs told Rudaw in April.
