USA TODAY International Edition
ISIL HAS CHOKEHOLD ON CIVILIANS IN MOSUL
Hundreds of thousands face starvation, beatings, and execution
“If your beard is not perfect, they beat you. If they suspect you of moving information ( to the Iraqi army), they execute you.” Ammar Ahmed Rajb, 47
About 750,000 civilians trapped in western Mosul by the Islamic State face beatings, executions, starvation and forced military conscription of children as they wait desperately for Iraqi troops to free them.
Residents who recently escaped to liberated eastern Mosul across the Tigris River said cruel punishments such as flogging for minor infractions are growing along with executions as the militants prepare for a showdown against advancing Iraqi troops.
More civilians are being forcibly drafted into Islamic State ranks, including children, and some people risk death by trying to cross the Tigris to secure food for their starving families, according to residents who fled.
The Islamic State “became more crazy” as Iraqi forces advanced in the city, said Ammar Ahmed Rajb, 47, who escaped with his family on a smuggler’s
rowboat. “If your beard is not perfect, they beat you. If they suspect you of moving information ( to the Iraqi army), they execute you.”
Executions and beatings have gone up sharply, according to members of four families interviewed at the Khazer refugee camp outside Mosul. The family members, who escaped western Mosul within the past two weeks, said the militants slit residents’ throats or hanged them, leaving their bodies prominently displayed as a warning to everyone else.
“When under pressure, they will take it out on the civilians and place them in greater danger and enact increasingly brutal population control measures,” Air Force Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the U. S.- led military coalition in Baghdad, said in an interview.
Dorrian said half of the Islamic State’s estimated 3,000 to 6,000 fighters in Mosul were killed in the campaign that recently liberated eastern Mosul. Now that many of the group’s fighters and commanders are dead, the remaining militants use brutal tactics to enlist civilians.
“In some areas, they force young men to join them,” said Abd al Haq Abdelkader, 37, who moved to eastern Mosul in January. He said the militants sometimes recruit children during morning prayers at a mosque, then punish or kill fathers who refuse to let their children join.
Recruiting children is a staple of the Islamic State, which refers to them as “Cubs of the Caliphate” or “Lion Cubs.” In liberated neighborhoods of eastern Mosul near the Tigris, there were bodies of Islamic State fighters killed by coalition airstrikes and Iraqi special operations forces, and some appeared to be in their mid- teens.
Abdelkader and Rajb said some of the child recruits are orphans who have nowhere to turn for food or money. Some are as young as 8 years old.
Dorrian confirmed that the coalition is aware of child soldiers, calling the recruitment a “despicable practice.”
Civilians accused of selling cigarettes or other infractions are jailed and let go only if they agree to be fighters, said Marwan Thamer, 33, who escaped with Rajb.
Some agree to cooperate for the militants as the only way to obtain scarce food, which the Islamic State controls. “We didn’t eat for too many days,” Abdelkader said.
“We could only mix flour and water,” Rajb said.
He said some people could not even get flour unless they worked for the militants.
Increasing numbers of people are fleeing western Mosul because of starvation, said Shamal Dawood, an IT technician at Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement at the Khazer camp.
Dorrian confirmed that the coalition has heard reports about low food supplies.
Escape is difficult. Families reported that a handful of smugglers take people across the river at night for $ 100 each. Rajb said he persuaded one smuggler, a former fisherman, to bring him and several other families across for a cheaper rate.
When they got to the other side in the freezing cold, Rajb’s son, Rayan, went toward the Iraqi lines to get help but was mistaken for a militant in the dark and shot at.
The family pinched their baby daughter until she cried. Iraqi troops heard the crying and came to get them.
Rajb said he was surprised the army gave the escaped families food, water and cigarettes.
The Islamic State told residents in the predominantly Sunni city that Iraqi troops, most Shiite Muslims, would execute Sunnis who fled, sowing fear among families in western Mosul.
“If we were shot by the army, it would not be worse than starving to death,” Rajb said.