How Mosul’s informers helped in the fight against Daesh
They hid sim cards and phones and provided information on Daesh targets. Without them the fighting would have dragged on
One informer said he hid the sim card from his mobile phone in a water filter to avoid detection by Daesh. Another concealed his in a sack of rice and made calls to his Iraqi handlers from a basement.
They were among several hundred Mosul residents who provided information on Daesh targets during the victorious nine-month battle for Iraq’s second biggest city, Iraqi military and Kurdish intelligence officials said.
They included taxi drivers, Iraqi soldiers and defectors from Daesh. Without their help, officials say, the fighting would have dragged on longer, snared in Mosul’s narrow alleys.
“I was really afraid the whole time. Because you paid with blood, you paid with your life if you were caught,” said one of the informers, 30-year-old former army sergeant Alaa Abdullah, who remained in Mosul after its capture by Daesh in 2014.
“My mother used to say, you’re still young. But I’d tell her, every time I see a Daesh fighter, I get a grey hair,” he said. “And you can see all my greys now. From all that hatred and fear.”
The city, which was home to about two million people before the war, was liberated in July. Daesh’s reversal seemed improbable in June 2014 when its fighters swept into Mosul. The militants were welcomed by many fellow Sunnis, the majority of the city’s population, who complained of injustices at the hands of Iraq’s government. The Iraqi army capitulated and fled, leaving its weapons behind.
Mosul was Daesh’s most significant conquest in Iraq, part of what it called a “caliphate” that stretched into neighbouring Syria. In Mosul’s Great Mosque, Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi declared himself head of the world’s Muslims in July 2014.
Yet, by the time Iraqi forces launched a massive ground assault to retake Mosul in October 2016, backed by Kurdish fighters, Shia militias and US air power, many residents had turned against the group, which exerted brutal control. Its opponents were beheaded or shot. Acts such as smoking a cigarette were punishable by 40 lashes, residents said.
Nine Iraqi and Kurdish military officials, informers and their relatives detailed how their battle for Mosul unfolded. As Iraqi army commanders and US advisers were preparing the ground offensive, intelligence officers were recruiting informers, building alliances with the region’s Sunni tribes and infiltrating Baghdadi’s inner circle. Iraqi intelligence had tested using informers in the successful operation to retake another Daesh stronghold, Falluja, in June 2016. Now it was time to apply the tactic on a bigger scale in Mosul.
“We were working hard to penetrate networks and establish connections that would be beneficial once the military phase began, and it paid off,” a senior Kurdish counter-terrorism official, Lahur Talabany, told Reuters. “We were able to connect to people close enough to aid us in our efforts.”
As Iraqi army commanders and US advisers were preparing the ground offensive, intelligence officers were recruiting informers, building alliances with the region’s Sunni tribes and infiltrating Baghdadi’s inner circle
Many people became informers because “they truly believed in the cause of eradicating Daesh,” Talabany said. A few were motivated by money to put food on the table. Daesh fighters defected from the militant group when they saw its downfall was “inevitable and imminent.”
From early 2016, Iraqi military intelligence began reaching out to possible informants and allies through intermediaries, Iraqi officials said.
Intelligence officers first turned to the Sunni tribes that had been instrumental in driving out Daesh’s precursor, Al Qaida, in 2006-2007. But fear of Daesh was holding the tribes back, said Lieutenant Colonel Salah Al Kinani, an army intelligence officer. One tribesman, for instance, wanted a guarantee that the group would not burn him alive if he was caught. Then, in August 2016, there was a breakthrough.
Kinani and his men made contact with a close aide to Baghda Ali Al Jabouri, also known as Abu Omar Al Jabouri, a former officer in Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard who had joined Daesh when it overran Mosul in 2014.
An Iraqi intelligence officer began negotiating with Jabouri through members of his Jabouri tribe, Kinani said. After initially hesitating, Jabouri agreed to lead 60 men in a revolt against Daesh to coincide with the start of the army’s ground assault in October 2016. But the plot failed. Daesh became suspicious of a fighter loyal to Jabouri, according to Kinani, and seized his mobile phone, which revealed details of the plan to deliver arms and ammunition to houses inside Mosul. Under torture, the fighter told all.
While Iraqi intelligence officials were talking to Jabouri, they also began seeking out civilians in Mosul whose relatives had been killed by militants. They calculated that desire for revenge might make them willing recruits. Mahmoud, a cab driver, was one such informer. He said that Daesh had jailed his brother and cousin in July 2014 for giving the Iraqi army information on its movements in Mosul. He never saw them again, he said.
He eavesdropped on militants’ conversations in his cab. Dialing in from the basement of his home to an Iraqi security officer, he provided intelligence on buildings occupied by the militants, the location of car bombs and explosives factories. “I used to take the sim card from my phone and hide it in the sugar jar or a sack of rice,” Mahmoud said.
The army sergeant turned informer, Alaa Abdullah, said he went into hiding when Daesh took control of Mosul in 2014, rarely sleeping in the same place twice. As a former translator for US troops during the US occupation, he believed he was a target for the militants. He had also spent time training cadets in the Shia south and feared the Sunni hardliners would brand him an infidel.
Abdullah hid his telephone in a water filter. His brother, like Mahmoud, drove a taxi to make a living and was a rich source of information.
“Daesh fighters would ride in his cab and he would tell me what he heard,” said Abdullah.
Abdullah worked with a police intelligence officer, Ayad Jassim, to put together a network of 30 informants in towns and villages near Mosul. Jassim, who was based in the town of Qayara, south of Mosul, confirmed the account. He said the informants provided details about militants’ movements, their vehicle licence plates and where they met. As a result, Jassim said, airstrikes by the US-led coalition killed as many as 50 militants in some weeks.
“The success of the informers created an atmosphere of mistrust in Daesh. Militants were suspicious of each other,” added Jassim, who said he lost 27 members of his family to Daesh.
A US official said Daseh was “better at making enemies than they were at grabbing territory.”
Recognising the threat from informers, it made an example of captured spies.
When the group caught Ibrahim and Idrees Nasir breaking a ban on using cellphones, they discovered the men were in contact with Iraqi security forces by dialing the last number they had called, their cousin Nawfal Youssef said. They were killed with a bullet to the head.
“They hung them by telephone polls on a main street for ten days. They stuck paper signs on their chests which said: ‘This man is a traitor. You will suffer the same fate if you cooperate with the infidel Iraqi security forces’,” Youssef said.
Some Iraqi officials concede questions remain over the ability of the main Iraqi army to retain control of territory it has gained with the help of US air power. Compared with US trained soldiers in Iraq’s highly capable counter-terrorism service, the bulk of the army is ill-equipped and lacks discipline.
The US is afraid a fragmentation of Iraq could further destabilise the Middle East. For some people in Mosul, Iraq’s wrecked economy and rampant corruption are the most pressing problems.
Abu Hassan, a former soldier and informant, is also frustrated. He used his work as a cab driver to gather intelligence for the Iraqi military. He says his handlers promised that he could have his old army job and $1,000 a month salary back when Mosul was freed. But when he went to Baghdad to reclaim his job, he was sent packing, he said. These days, Abu Hassan is bitter. He’s barely making $7 a day driving his cab. Iraq’s defence ministry dismissed his complaints.
“He should have done this to help his country and not for a job. This is the difference between real soldiers and mercenaries,” said Lieutenant Colonel Mahdi Ameer. —Reuters