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NY Times, Dec. 14 2014
Islamic State Imposes Strict New Order in Mosul, and Deprivation Is a Result
By BEN HUBBARD
ERBIL, Iraq — As the school year began in Mosul, the largest city
controlled by the Islamic State, the extremists sent a message to
teachers: Report for work or lose your jobs.
Then, directives bearing the group’s black flag and hung in schools
dictated the new order. Males and females were split up. Girls were to
swap their gray skirts and blouses for black gowns and veils that
covered their faces. Sports were only for boys. Civics classes were
scrapped. At the University of Mosul, one of Iraq’s top institutions,
the schools of fine arts, political science and law were deemed
un-Islamic and shuttered.
The teachers were in a bind. Not showing up meant defying a group that
often murdered its foes. But going to work could anger the government in
Baghdad, which still paid their salaries. Out of fear, many teachers
complied.
Six months after the Islamic State seized Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest
city, its efforts to overhaul the school system reflect the limits of
its progress toward building a self-governing caliphate on the land it
controls in Iraq and Syria.
Although the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, presents itself as a
liberating, governing force for the region’s Sunnis, it has largely
failed to provide civilian services, instead focusing its limited
manpower on social control.
The result has been a life of deprivation, fear and confusion for the
city’s roughly one million remaining residents, according to interviews
with 15 people, reached by phone inside Mosul, whose full identities
have been withheld to prevent retribution.
Electricity has been cut off for months, and spotty maintenance has made
tap water undrinkable. Residents now chlorinate it, boil it or filter it
through rugs. The Islamic State trucks in fuel from Syria for cars and
generators, but the fuel is expensive and fills the street with black
smoke. Shops still sell food, but prices are up because the Islamic
State taxes trucks entering its areas.
The salaries of public sector workers illustrate the paradox of jihadist
governance. Although the Islamic State has vowed to erase the Iraqi
government, it relies on Baghdad to pay doctors, nurses, teachers and
others who keep civil institutions running.
Mohammed, a high school teacher, said that since the Islamic State
looted Mosul’s banks, one of his colleagues has crossed the front lines
to Kurdish-held Kirkuk to fetch salaries. Back in Mosul, an Islamic
State fighter monitored distribution, seizing cash meant for those who
did not show up.
In hospitals, factories and schools, the Islamic State has appointed
“emirs” to oversee operations. From his office in the Islamic
State-occupied education administration, an Egyptian known as Thu
al-Qarnain, a name from the Quran, has called for wide-ranging changes,
including striking the word “Iraq” from textbooks.
But implementation has been spotty, Mohammed said, because the Islamic
State lacks personnel. Gunmen near his school ensure there is no gender
mixing, but there are too few to redact material in textbooks or to
monitor classes. “They are too occupied with their war,” Mohammed said.
“The most important thing for them is that we say they are the state.”
The Islamic State has used similar means to shape life in other cities
it controls. Many of Falluja’s residents have fled since the militant
fighters took over this year, and services are minimal. But morality
police patrol, and recently castigated young men for swimming in the
Euphrates River because women might see them.
“We don’t want to keep you from swimming,” a man said in a video posted
online. “But we must follow the Shariah that Prophet Muhammad brought to
us.”
The group has made the most progress in the Syrian city of Raqqa, which
it has controlled for nearly a year. But the United States and its
allies often bomb Islamic State bases and oil facilities near the city,
interrupting the group’s operations. And the Syrian government regularly
bombs the city itself, killing civilians.
In Mosul, the group’s fighters have become less visible since the United
States and its allies launched an air campaign in August that has struck
near the city. They drive civilian cars and have moved into homes
vacated by Christians and Shiites, sometimes with their wives and
children. Dozens of fighters sleep in a historic church, a target the
United States is unlikely to bomb.
This month, amid talk of gathering ground troops from the area to fight
the Islamic State, the group instituted a “sponsorship” system, whereby
anyone wishing to leave the city must register with a “sponsor” who
would remain in the city and could be arrested if the traveler did not
return.
The group maintains some local support. It has heavily recruited men
from Mosul’s poor hinterlands for its Islamic Police, giving them guns,
salaries and patrol cars, and arranging their marriages. Other residents
distrust Baghdad and its heavy reliance on Shiite militias, which have
committed abuses in Sunni areas.
“The question is: If not ISIS, then who? The militias and the military?”
asked Haidar, a shopkeeper. “People say it is better to have ISIS.”
Mosul is largely free of the daily car bombs that shake other Iraqi
cities, although the Islamic State broadcasts its violence, screening
videos of battles and executions at media booths at intersections and
mosques.
Navigating the new order is a struggle for many residents.
After the militants seized the city, Ban, a 46-year-old pharmacist,
donned the veil and stopped driving herself to work. But the Islamic
Police confronted her in her pharmacy, asking where her husband was and
why she did not cover her face.
“I was thinking that they might take me somewhere and of all the stories
of the women who have been kidnapped and raped,” she said.
Her husband visited the Islamic Police and signed a pledge that his wife
would stop working. But to keep the pharmacy open, the family hired a
man to work in the front while Ban hid in the back and filled
prescriptions for patients she could not see.
Checkpoints appear randomly. Gunmen check IDs and search men’s
cellphones, looking for secular songs or chats with girls. Punishments
range from religious lectures to fines to lashings.
One man, Khalid, said that gunmen came to his house in July while his
family was eating breakfast and arrested his father, who is in his 60s,
along with other men from the neighborhood.
Khalid was too scared to follow up, but his neighbors went to a Shariah
court set up by the Islamic State to ask about their relatives.
“They never responded,” he said. “All of their talk is lies, lies, lies.
They said that he’d be back in a few days, but there has been no news.”
In videos released online, the Islamic State portrays itself as a
benevolent force and characterizes resistance as an attack on Islam.
After the Egyptian jihadist group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis pledged
allegiance to the Islamic State, the group released a video of its
fighters parading through Mosul and distributing candy.
Another video showed it training a few dozen young boys in black
uniforms to fight with knives and carry rifles. Yet another showed
bearded men giving toys to children in a park and quizzing them.
“What is the name of the month when we fast?” one man asks.
“Ramadan!” a crowd of young girls screams.
“Who is the leader of the believers?” the man asks.
“Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi!” the girls yell, giving the name of the leader of
the Islamic State.
Yasir Ghazi contributed reporting.
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