Careful: ISIS uses our information in its lies

The video of an Iraqi soldier killing a teenage ISIS fighter and running him over with a tank has gone viral on the Internet. It was produced by ISIS to induce fear about the Iraqi army.

The Iraqi major general Najim al-Jabouri calls on media and human rights organizations to check these kinds of videos before making accusations, calling them part of “the misleading media”.

The general points to the non-military clothes worn by those in the video, “different from that worn by the Iraqi army” and from the guns shown “that they are the same guns used by Daesh militants,” as ISIS is called.

ISIS is actively using disinformation as a tool in its warfare, and the video is just one examples reported from Mosul.

Civilians living in Mosul have reported to families living outside the city that ISIS men dress up in the uniforms of the enemy to trick people to come out of their homes. They spread the news that the area is liberated then appear in the uniform of the Peshmerga (with Kurdish music, according to the reports) or that of the Iraqi army.

And once people come out to greet them, thinking they are the liberators, they punish them harshly.

ISIS is trying hard to make sure inhabitants of Mosul do not work in any way with the enemy: taking away their phones, killing at least fifty people just for having a sim card, executing all those they think might be in contact with the outside world.

One of the few sources still feeding the civilians information they can depend on is Radio Alghad, broadcasting from the Kurdistan Region. But ISIS has also outlawed the ownership of radios.

This means that many in Mosul and other places still under occupation of ISIS can easily be manipulated by information that ISIS puts out, as they have no way to check it.

From the beginning, ISIS used fear as a tool in the war, and is still doing so.

To keep civilians from helping the enemy, it is important to put fear into them; hence the imposter in Iraqi and Peshmerga uniform, the punishment for greeting the liberators, making people unsure who to trust, and hence the video of the brutal murder of an ISIS youth.

The truth is even more brutal, considering that for the sake of the disinformation campaign, ISIS simply killed one of its own.

It is easy to feed into the fear for the Hashed al-Shabi, as the Shiite militias are known and who allegedly abused hundreds of civilians for working with ISIS during the operations to free Sunni cities like Falluja and Tikrit.

But this is more difficult for the Iraqi and Kurdish troops, that have been reported, time and again, to have been kind to the civilians, hugging, kissing and giving them food and water.

So now ISIS has resorted to using some critical publications by human rights organizations, and tells civilians in Mosul that if they flee to the Peshmerga, they will be arrested and tortured – based on reports about incidents during the screening system by Human Rights Watch.

And the media department of ISIS, that we know is manned by professionals, has come up with the fake videos to stain the good reputation of the Iraqi army.

Amnesty International might also have taken the bait, when it called on the Iraqi government to investigate reports that “fighters wearing Iraqi Federal Police uniforms tortured and extrajudicially executed residents in villages they captured south of Mosul.”

Knowing how ISIS works, these were most probably their own fighters, dressed in the wrong uniforms.

ISIS is playing the war as dirty as possible, using civilians as human shields, stockpiling explosives, weapons and even chemicals near them.

Civilians are for them just a tool in the war, and they need them to stay close to keep air attacks away.

That means that we all should be very vigilant, starting with journalists and human rights activists, because ISIS will try to use us for its lies to frighten the occupied communities.

Is ISIS indirectly curtailing our freedom of speech? Well, so be it. Let’s be careful so the radicals cannot turn our information into disinformation, affecting the battle for Mosul and the lives of all those thousands civilians there.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.