MOSUL, Iraq – One evening last September, after a grueling hot day, Khaled Ahmad returned to his home in Mosul, hoping for a quiet evening. He had taken up residence in a house partly destroyed by an airstrike the year before when Iraqi security forces backed by the US-led coalition crushed the Islamic State group (ISIS) which had ruled the city with an iron fist for three years.
Just as Khaled, 54, was putting his feet up, there was a knock at the door and a mysterious man in sunglasses appeared with a piece of paper in his hand. The man wanted to move to the Zohour neighborhood in the east of the city and asked Khaled to sign the document.
“I could not see his face but he spoke with a Mosul accent,” Khaled recalled.
His five recently adopted children gathered around him as he spoke to the strange visitor, while their mother was busy inside. Their father had been viciously murdered by ISIS militants in July 2014 for being a member of the Iraqi federal police.
Khaled had been appointed as a neighborhood chief, known as mukhtars in Arabic. Mosul officials and security forces had overhauled the mukhtar system in September 2017 shortly after retaking the city, as some of these local chiefs had collaborated with ISIS.
The mukhtars act as the eyes and ears of the security forces and are responsible for checking the identity of everyone who intends to move in or out of the neighborhood. Khaled’s signature and stamp were needed to authorize any movement.
The visitor, who was in his early twenties, wanted Khaled to sign his papers. However, Khaled said this was not his responsibility. Even when offered a bribe of 50,000 dinars, Khaled insisted he could not sign.
“He finally gave up, but said he was thirsty and wanted some water,” Khaled recalled. At that moment, the man drew a pistol and shot Khaled in the head.
Khaled slumped to the ground.
“There was a pool of blood in this room,” said the mother, who did not wish to be named, pointing at the concrete floor. “We thought he was going to die.”
The bullet had passed through Khaled’s left eye and exited just above his left ear. The shooter fled the scene.
Khaled was rushed to hospital and miraculously survived. He had already lost an eye fighting in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88). He was now completely blind.
Khaled is one of dozens of mukhtars in Mosul targeted by ISIS sleeper cells, a growing trend across Sunni provinces of Iraq and Syria that were once under jihadist control.
“I know another five mukhtars who have either died or been maimed for life after being attacked by shadowy figures,” Khaled told Rudaw English in late April. ISIS routinely claims attacks on mukhtars, tribal chiefs, and members of the Sunni militia affiliated with the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).
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Iraqi counterterror forces battle Islamic State (ISIS) militants in east Mosul, January 21, 2017. File photo: Fazel Hawramy / RudawIn an April 20 post on messaging app Telegram, ISIS claimed its ‘soldiers’ had planted an improvised explosive device (IED) in a house in Qahereh, east Mosul. On May 3 it claimed an IED attack on a house in al-Latifiya near Kirkuk, a day after killing a Sunni tribal fighter.
On May 4, ISIS claimed its intelligence unit had wounded the mukhtar of Salijiya and killed his bodyguard in Anbar province a day earlier using a silenced pistol.
In a video published late last year, a group of ISIS militants in Iraqi military uniform were shown executing two mukhtars from Diyala and Saladin.
In their most recent video from Fallujah, a group of five ISIS militants are shown raiding a house where ten individuals, possibly security forces, are gathered. The captives are led from the room one by one to be shot with a silenced pistol.
The targeting of mukhtars is nothing new in Iraq, Ghanem al-Abed, a political analyst native to Nineveh, told Rudaw English. By the very nature of the job, informing officials about the movements of people in their neighbourhood has long made them a target for insurgents.
“In the initial two months when Daesh was kicked out in 2017, the targeting of mukhtars began through the killing of mukhtars or the planting of IEDs in their place of their residence. No one can reside in a neighborhood without mukhtar support,” said Abed, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
Mukhtars create problems for ISIS fighters and sleeper cells when they try to move around without being detected.
“Daesh knows that their weak point is that mukhtars will report the relocation of their [surviving] fighters and their families to the authorities as part of their administrative duty,” Abed added.
In a rare video appearance in April, in which he laments the group’s defeat in Baghouz, ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urged supporters to resume their earlier insurgency tactics, relying on sleeper cells to target those working with security forces including mukhtars and tribal chiefs.
“The war of Islam and its followers against the crusaders and their followers is a long one,” Baghdadi said.
For Naser Edris Sharif, 53, another mukhtar in east Mosul, life is far better today compared to the days when Baghdadi declared his so-called caliphate in the city. The militants killed his brother for working with Kurdish intelligence.
“I used to drive a taxi but after the liberation I got 200 people to sign a petition to support my candidacy for the mukhtar,” Naser told Rudaw English.
Things were fine for the first six months after his appointment in September 2017. Naser knew ISIS sleeper cells posed a threat. He even received written death threats.
The militants finally struck in February and again in June last year. On both occasions they planted IEDs under Naser’s chair but failed to kill him.
“In the February attack, I had 200 pieces of shrapnel, big and small, in my body,” Naser recalled.
A federal police officer died in the attack.
Asked why ISIS had targeted him, Naser said: “I have good people and I am informed about everything in the neighborhood.”
The situation in west Mosul is far worse for mukhtars, he said.
According to one group of construction workers in west Mosul, who spoke to Rudaw English in late April on condition of anonymity, ISIS sleeper cells emerge at night when security forces withdraw to the safety of their barracks.
Back at his home in east Mosul, Khaled is still coming to terms with his blindness. He lives in a state of fear, convinced his would-be assassin will return to finish the job.
“I am scared when I hear a bang or I just shiver when I hear a loud voice,” he says.
“I am certain that this guy will come back to kill me.”
