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Chronicler of Islamic State ‘killing machine’ in Mosul goes public
He packed his bag with his most treasured possessions before going to bed: the 1 terabyte hard drive with his evidence against the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... group, an orange notebook half-filled with notes on Ottoman history, and, a keepsake, the first book from Amazon delivered to djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... He passed the night in despair, imagining all the ways he could die, and the moment he would leave his mother and his city. He had spent nearly his entire life in this home, with his five brothers and five sisters. He woke his mother in her bedroom on the ground floor. "I am leaving," he said. "Where?" she asked. "I am leaving," was all he could say. He couldn’t endanger her by telling her anything more. In truth, since the IS had invaded his city, he’d lived a life about which she was totally unaware. He felt her eyes on the back of his neck, and headed to the waiting Chevrolet. He didn’t look back. For nearly two years, he’d wandered the streets of occupied Mosul, chatting with shopkeepers and Islamic State fighters, visiting friends who worked at the hospital, swapping scraps of information. He grew out his hair and his beard and wore the shortened trousers required by IS. He forced himself to witness the beheadings and deaths by stoning, so he could hear the killers call out the names of the condemned and their supposed crimes. He wasn’t a spy. He was an undercover historian and blogger . As IS turned the Iraqi city he loved into a fundamentalist bastion, he decided he would show the world how the faceless myrmidons had distorted its true nature, how they were trying to rewrite the past and forge a brutal Sunni-only future for a city that had once welcomed many faiths. He knew that if he was caught he too would be killed. "I am writing this for the history , because I know this will end. People will return, life will go back to normal," is how he explained the blog that was his conduit to the citizens of Mosul and the world beyond. "After many years, there will be people who will study what happened. The city deserves to have something written to defend the city and tell the truth, because they say that when the war begins, the first victim is the truth." He called himself Mosul Eye. He made a promise to himself in those first few days: Trust no one, document everything. On Nov. 15, 2017, Mosul Eye made his decision. "I can’t be anonymous anymore. This is to say that I defeated ISIS. You can see me now, and you can know me now." He is 31 years old. His name is Omar Mohammed. Posted by: trailing wife 2017-12-08 |
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