Mosul’s Silent Witness: A Scholar’s Clandestine War Against ISIS

A historian recounts remaining in Mosul after ISIS's takeover, documenting events to preserve the city's memory and counter fabricated narratives. The narrative highlights the personal cost and discipline required for survival and truth.

On the night of June 21, an ISIS fighter drove via an area with a speaker placed to his car, introducing that every house was required to send a volunteer to sign up with ISIS forces. The phrasing was accurate: Join, defend, live in dignity and honor– or deal with fatality.

The Onset of Occupation

In the early morning hours of June 10– while gunfire still seemed from the western districts– I had actually published on my individual Facebook web page, just keeping in mind that I might listen to the strikes. A close friend messaged me within minutes, warning that I was running the risk of whatever.

I did not recognize the names that would later on control Mosul, the systems that would solidify out of those very first checkpoints and councils, the punishments that would certainly make private thought hazardous, or the number of dead who would vanish right into report and category unless somebody insisted on fact.

I stayed due to the fact that I comprehended what cities need when they are taken: They require a person who will remember them precisely. Not heroically. Precisely. A person that will certainly jot down the name of the man performed in the public square and the name of the square and the mentioned fee and the date and the variety of people urged to watch. Someone that will tape the rate of bread and the closing of the colleges and the burning of the collection and the vacant Christian quarter and the implementations after prayers. Someone who will not let the conquerors create the only history.

The Decision to Stay and Remember

I did not recognize after that what that choice would certainly require of me. I did not recognize for how long I would have to continue, how elaborate camouflage would end up being, or the number of layers of worry would certainly clear up over every day life.

My hand was steady as I keyed in. The remainder of me was not. What I saw that day was hard to express. There were incorrect tales and many constructions being spread by the media, negated by reality on the ground. My work as a chronicler required an honest method. I would keep my individual viewpoint to myself. I would certainly communicate only the facts I saw. That was not an aesthetic choice. It was a discipline for survival and fact.

Discipline for Survival and Truth

When the order came, I was at the College of Mosul. The security pressures provided clear guidelines: Everyone needs to go home. We began running. It is never ever safe to stay on the roads when Mosul locks down, and even before I comprehended why this curfew felt different from the others, I can see it despite individuals around me. They were not moving with the annoyed haste of people managing another interruption. The skies was red and dirty.

I stayed in Mosul not because I was courageous– I hesitated each day for 18 months, terrified in the specific and draining pipes way of somebody that lives with the irreversible understanding of what happens if they are found, an understanding that comes to be the background radiation of every waking moment without ever coming to be average.

Their entry into Mosul, he said, had been planned as a vengeance goal. They prepared explosives to protect their withdrawal and expected to continue to be for two days at most. He called it a liberation like the freedom of Mecca– conjuring up the Prophet Muhammad’s conquest of that city, framing what had occurred as the gratification of spiritual fate.

I did not stop taking notes, yet I quit publishing under my own name. That change– from public voice to hidden recorder– was the initial step toward what came next off, though I did not yet comprehend where it would certainly lead.

On June 10, 2014, the city of Mosul– Iraq’s second largest, home to virtually two million individuals, improved and around the ruins of the Assyrian funding Nineveh– was up to the Islamic State in a single night. The Iraqi Military liquified. Soldiers deserted their uniforms in the streets. By early morning, a city that had actually been constantly occupied for 7,000 years came from a pressure that planned to abolish every little thing it had been.

I continued checking reports, since falsehood was ending up being one more front in the fight. Rumors distributed that the Mufti of Mosul– the elderly Islamic religious authority in the city– was killed by ISIS. I spoke to a participant of his family and validated that he had in reality left Iraq numerous days before the crisis and remained in Qatar.

In the city, ISIS started ruining historic, religious sites. On June 24, the demolition of al-Fatih al-Mosuli started. The temple, understood in your area as al-Sheikh Fathi, was taken down with cranes working in darkness.

The Fall of Mosul

By the afternoon of June 17, I developed a confidential blog on WordPress and created the words that mark the actual start of “Mosul Eye: A Scholar’s Clandestine War Against ISIS.” I selected the name Mosul Eye because I wanted the city to have an eye that saw what was being done to it– an eye that can not be nearby the men that were trying to change its memory with their own.

False atrocity stories, false reassurances, incorrect insurance claims of protection, false records of siege, false moral panics– Mosul was drowning in all of them, and the sinking offered ISIS as long as any of its other techniques. When the population can not identify fact from construction, when fear affixes to reports that have no basis along with concerns that are entirely warranted, the outcome is a type of paralysis that profits whoever holds the guns.

Combating Disinformation

I was inside the city when it fell. I am a historian. When ISIS took Mosul, I chose that would certainly specify the following three years of my life and reshape every little thing I recognized about myself: I stayed. I documented. I rejected to allow the occupiers become the sole authors of what was taking place to my city.

I just understood that Mosul was inhabited, that memory was currently under attack, that truth itself was being falsified in real time, which if someone inside the city did not start recording carefully, the occupiers would inherit not only the streets however the narrative.

The Birth of Mosul Eye

On June 10, 2014, the city of Mosul– Iraq’s 2nd biggest, home to nearly 2 million individuals, built on and around the damages of the Assyrian capital Nineveh– dropped to the Islamic State in a solitary night. When ISIS took Mosul, I made an option that would certainly specify the next 3 years of my life and reshape every little thing I understood about myself: I remained. It is never risk-free to stay on the streets when Mosul locks down, and even before I comprehended why this time limit really felt different from the others, I might see it in the faces of the individuals around me. A few of the Arab boxers I had seen in the very early days– Tunisians and Algerians who came to Mosul from abroad– were securing its entrances. Reports distributed that the Mufti of Mosul– the senior Islamic religious authority in the city– was killed by ISIS.

What I was afraid was not just fatality or profession in the slim armed forces feeling. I feared civil collapse– the destruction of the conditions under which Mosul could still think about itself as a city belonging to history rather than to sect, retribution, and barbarism.

The Paralyzing Effect of Falsehoods

The previous Counter-Terrorism Center became the main ISIS headquarters. A few of the Arab fighters I had seen in the early days– Tunisians and Algerians who came to Mosul from abroad– were protecting its gates. One of them was white-haired, in his sixties, lugging a handgun at his midsection.

Al-Fatih was a Sufi mystic who lived throughout the regime of the Abbasid caliph Haroun al-Rashid in the 8th century. Sufism– the mystical custom within Islam, stressing spiritual experience and dedication to saints– was exactly what ISIS, with its rigid scriptural literalism, regarded as idolatry. The temple had actually been a location of Sufi trip for more than seven centuries.