Daesh turns truffles into a deadly delicacy
Fighters kidnap Iraqis who hunt gourmet item, often executing them
BAGHDAD, IRAQ— As he hunted for a seasonal delicacy, Mohaned Salah Yasseen scanned the ground intently, searching for places where the soil is cracked and slightly raised — the telltale sign a desert truffle lies below.
So he failed to notice the two pickup trucks, driven by men in military uniforms, until they were almost upon him.
“They ordered me to get into the truck,” said Yasseen, a 31year-old pharmacist.
“I thought about saying no, but they were armed.”
As he climbed in, he became the latest victim in a new campaign by Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL).
Driven out of most of the territory it controlled in Iraq and Syria, the group has gone underground.
Since late January, they have been kidnapping and, in some cases, executing Iraqi truffle hunters, mostly in the deserts of western Anbar province.
The Iraqi security forces confirmed the kidnapping of 44 truffle hunters this year.
The abductions are only a fraction of the Daesh attacks now taking place in Iraq, where every day brings one or more reports of a checkpoint shooting, skirmish or kidnapping.
But the attacks on truffle hunters reflect a renewed emphasis on inciting sectarian tensions.
While Sunni Muslim truffle hunters typically pay a ransom to win release, as Yasseen did, Shiite Muslim truffle hunters never get that chance. They are killed.
Daesh considers Shiites infidels, and since its inception the group has killed them and destroyed their mosques.
Iraqi intelligence and military authorities view the group’s treatment of hostages as an attempt to incite the kind of sectarian strife that tore Iraq apart from 2003 to 2008, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and was reprised from 2012 to 2014.
The kidnappings are a way for Daesh to raise money and signal to the civilian population it remains a potent force.
Despite the danger, desert truffle hunters seem unde- terred. The delicacy is prized and can bring up to $6 (U.S.) a pound in local markets.
Yasseen had driven several hours into the desert to a place so idyllic and remote it was hard to imagine it could be dangerous.
Truffle hunting is a favourite activity of many families in western Iraq during the cool winter days when the arid landscape is briefly verdant.
“It was a flat area, beautiful, very green, nothing but earth and sky,” Yasseen said.
He and his cousins were driven to the mouth of a tunnel that led into a small underground room where there was already another group of captives.
The Daesh fighters did not speak, but brought food and invited them to pray.
Salah Malik Flayah, a 62-yearold school principal, was told he would have to pay $50,000 for his freedom, an inconceivable amount on his $1,200-a-month salary. Eventually, the price dropped to $20,000. Some were asked to pay $10,000.
For Yasseen’s group, the ransoms were similar.
Hamza Kadhim al-Jubori, 42, a Shiite farmer, had a very different story. The remote area where he and two of his brothers, his nephew and two neighbours went to gather truffles was about 100 kilometres south of where Yasseen was kidnapped.
Like Yasseen, they were captured by men wearing military uniforms and were taken through an underground tunnel into a room where there were other captives. The similarities ended there.
The extremists brought Jubori’s group only a single date and a half cup of water each while the Sunni captives were given a full meal. The Sunnis were invited to pray, but not Jubori and his relatives.
During the night, the fighters drove Jubori and his companions into the desert.
Fearing he would be killed at any moment, Jubori said he pulled at the ropes that bound his hands until he freed them, whispering to his brother to do the same.
He and his brother and neighbour grabbed their captors from behind. The driver turned the car engine off, jumped out and ran into the desert. Jubori dove into the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition but the engine would not start.
He grabbed the M16, poked it into the other fighter’s stomach and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. He later realized he had failed to take off the safety lock.
“I lost hope,” he said. “The car doesn’t work, the rifle doesn’t work, I can’t see anything because we’re driving without lights.”
Terrified, he jumped out of the pickup. “I wasn’t thinking about anyone else, I couldn’t think of anything,” he said. “I was just holding the rifle and running.”
Then other Daesh fighters in a second vehicle began shooting toward him in the dark. Jubori flung himself under some desert scrub and lay still until they drove away.
He said he walked for a week before he was rescued by Bedouins, desert nomads, who were out collecting truffles.
Three days later, he was home — but without his two brothers and his nephew, leaving Jubori feeling like he had failed his family.
A few days later, they were found shot to death.