ISIL undermines own smoking ban
ESKI MOSUL, IRAQ — It was a heart-racing moment. The cigarette smuggler was stuck in line at a checkpoint as, up ahead, ISIL fighters were searching cars.
He was running a big risk. The jihadists have banned smoking, and lighting up is punishable with a fine or broken finger. Selling cigarettes can be a death sentence.
Falah Abdullah Jamil, 30, relied on his quick wits and silver tongue.
When the fighters came to his vehicle at the checkpoint leading to his home village of Eski Mosul, northern Iraq, they asked what he had in his trunk. “Nothing,” he lied. They popped open the trunk and found 125 cartons of cigarettes.
“I swear, it’s out of hunger,” the father of six told them, adding he was the only breadwinner for his extended family and was helping his neighbours as well.
The fighters took him to the checkpoint commander, who warned Jamil he would go to prison and his car would be confiscated. Jamil promised never to do it again.
“Just let me go this time for the sake of my children,” he said. “If I don’t have money, what can I do? Should I steal? If I steal, you’ll cut off my hand.”
In an interview with The Associated Press in May, Jamil sat in his modest living room, describing how he survived nearly seven months of ISIL rule before the extremists were run out of town by Kurdish fighters.
The checkpoint commander ordered his subordinates out of the room, then said: “I will let you go if you give me cigarettes.”
Jamil asked him what brand. “Anything, just give me two cartons,” the commander replied.
The commander “said he hadn’t had a smoke for three days so when he saw the cigarettes, he was very happy,” Jamil said.
Iraqi civilians living under ISIL rule in Mosul said militants control the cigarette black market, banning smoking in public while privately controlling the sale of cigarettes at an inflated price.
Saad Eidou, 25, a displaced Iraqi from the town of Sinjar near the Syrian border, said like everyone else, militants smoke in private. The cigarettes come in through Syria, where movement in and out of Turkey and non-ISIL areas is easier.
“They brought in cigarettes from Syria, where you probably won’t pay more than 250 dinars ($0.25) for a pack, but they were selling it here for 1,000 dinars,” said Bilal Abdullah, another resident of Eski Mosul.
With ISIL gone, he took deep draws from a cigarette in public as he spoke.
In another incident, Jamil was accused of selling cigarettes by a member of the vice patrol that ruthlessly enforces the group’s regulations.
“He said, ‘I will go and inspect your house, and if I find one pack of cigarettes I will execute you,’” Jamil recalled.
Jamil’s bluff had just got more dangerous — he had 1,600 cartons of cigarettes.
“I told him, ‘Go ahead, I haven’t got anything.’”
Apparently convinced, the official had him sign a document vowing to never sell cigarettes or risk execution.
“I signed it — but I sold again. I didn’t stop,” Jamil said. “We had no flour, no rice, no food. I have children, and it was winter and was cold and there was no oil, no gas. ... We were living a hellish tragedy.”