Talk radio broadcasts frantic calls from Mosul

IRBIL, IRAQ• The listeners who call in to Radio Alghad are typical of talk radio audiences around the world. It's complain, complain. Except the callers to Radio Tomorrow are in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant-controlled city of Mosul, and they don't want to yak about traffic or sports.

They want to unload on suicide bombers and errant airstrikes, on the lack of food and medicine. They have questions about when to wave white flags and what to do with bodies in the rubble.

“Shrapnel hit the tanks on the rooftop,” a caller named Hasan told FM-95.5 the other day. “We have lost all water we have saved.”

On calls made from the front lines in Mosul, listeners to Radio Alghad can hear mortar rounds falling as the government battles to retake the city. They can hear windows rattle, bursts of gunfire, children crying in a backroom.

“There is a difference between hearing about the crimes and seeing them with your eyes,” another caller told one of the station's hosts.

She begged Iraqi forces to hurry to recapture the city. Many of her neighbours still support ISIL, she said. “So it's hard to tell who is a friend and who is an enemy.”

A cellphone, even a SIM card hidden in a pocket or purse, can be a death sentence in Mosul, where ISIL militants have ordered “collaborators and spies” to be summarily executed.

The station's founder is a 30-something tech entrepreneur who calls himself Mohammad of Mosul in interviews because he does not want to be targeted by ISIL or its supporters. He also insists on keeping the location of his station and most of the names of its hosts secret. He is concerned about car bombs. He will allow a reporter only to say the operation is in the Kurdish area of Iraq.

On a recent evening, during one of four call-in shows hosted each day, a dozen people from Mosul and the surrounding towns and villages telephoned the station and went live on-air.

Callers are told to use an alias. So instead of Sleepless in Seattle, the callers identify themselves as with monikers like Tear of an Oppressed, Prisoner of Memories and others such as Mother of Ali or Son of Mosul.

The guests are also warned not to mention their exact location, both for their own protection and to foil intelligence-gathering by ISIL militants, who monitor the radio station.

Radio Alghad went on the air in March 2015. Mohammad said he decided Mosul needed an alternative radio station after watching how ISIL operated.

“Their social media skills are high. Their psychologists are impressive,” he said. “They get a lot of hits.”