Painter documents life under Islamic State rule
HAMAM AL-ALIL, Iraq — After the Islamic State swept into his town nearly three years ago, Mustafa al-Taee resolved to bear witness to the militants’ brutal rule by secretly painting what he had seen with his own eyes.
The result was a gallery of horrors: car bombs, dead children, an Islamic State defector beheaded in a public square, a former police officer strung up by his legs for hours before being shot dead.
“They committed countless crimes, and those crimes needed to be documented,” said the 58-year-old grandfather, speaking in his home in the northern town of Hamam al-Alil, near the city of Mosul.
Shuffling through his paintings, he comes to one showing a child with an amputated hand.
“Because he was starving, this child was going through the garbage, collecting empty Pepsi cans to sell and food leftovers to eat later,” al-Taee said. A roadside bomb planted by the militants exploded, tearing off the child’s hand and legs.
Islamic State militants swept across northwestern Iraq in the summer of 2014, capturing much of the country’s north and west.
Even in the privacy of al-Taee’s home, painting was a risky endeavor. The extremist group forbids all independent media, and bans artistic renderings of human beings, which it views as a form of blasphemy.
A little over a year ago, a neighbor who had seen him drawing reported it to the militants. A search uncovered a painting of a woman and a car exploding. The car bomb had killed the woman’s husband, who had been an Iraqi soldier. He was sentenced to 30 lashes and 15 days in jail.
“After 15 lashes I started to cry,” he said. “I couldn’t feel the next 15.”
Reflecting on the risks he took, he said he couldn’t bear to give up his art, which he called “an addiction.”