One man’s escape from the Islamic State-ruled city of Mosul
An Islamic State militant distributes gifts to students at a school in Mosul, Iraq, in January. (Militant Web site via AP)
BAGHDAD — For civilians leaving the Islamic State-ruled city of Mosul, doing so can be deadly.
Residents say the northern Iraqi city has effectively become a prison since the militants seized it in June 2014. The Iraqi capital, Baghdad, once a drive of about six hours down the highway, may as well be a foreign country.
One man’s story of escape sheds light on just how hard it has become to get out. In the end, the man — a former taxi driver in his late 20s — relied on smugglers to cross through Syria to Turkey to fly back to Baghdad, a 1,500-mile journey to get to a place just 250 miles away.
Such smuggling routes have become the only way out for those trapped in Mosul, the capital of Islamic State’s territory in Iraq. As a growing number of Iraqis and hundreds of thousands of Syrians flee to Europe, the Islamic State is attempting to prevent an exodus from its territory by tightening controls and releasing videos disparaging those who leave. Economic crisis in its cities after the government cut off salary payments has also spurred desperate civilians to try and get out.
Keeping civilians in its territory, however, is imperative for the group, which draws considerable revenue from taxing them. As well as generating income, the civilians could be used as human shields in the case of any assault, while their departure tears at the group’s narrative that its self-proclaimed caliphate is a haven for the world’s Muslims.
Residents used to be granted permission to leave for medical or business reasons, but that is now rare, they say. Some, mostly elderly residents were allow to leave on pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia last month, on the condition they left the deeds to their properties as a guarantee, but attempting to leave without permission can result in execution, residents said.
But many have risked it anyway.
Life in Mosul had become intolerable, the taxi driver said. Public punishments take place regularly. People suspected of being gay are thrown off buildings. The hands of accused thieves are cut off and adulterers stoned. Smokers are lashed.
“I was fed up,” he explained, speaking on the condition that his name not be used because his family remains in Mosul, and he fears they could be punished if the Islamic State finds out he has left. “You feel nervous all the time, there are so many rules.”
Since the government stopped paying state employees in Mosul this year, one of the few sources of income for civilians has dried up. Teachers and doctors who remain are forced to keep working but are no longer paid. Jobs are hard to come by, and the price of basic goods has climbed. Meanwhile, the Islamic State’s rule has become gradually more oppressive.
“It’s a big prison now,” said Suha Oda, a Mosul activist. She described the cutting of salaries as a “death blow” to the civilians left in the city, who have long given up hope of an offensive to free Mosul in the near future.
“They feel like the government has abandoned them,” she said.
She said recently a friend and her husband and child were caught trying to leave. “They were sold out by the driver that they’d paid to get them out,” she said.
The family was detained and is now back in their home in Mosul but fear they will be further punished. A couple who tried to leave a month earlier were not so lucky and were executed, she said.
The taxi driver said he had wanted to leave earlier but had stayed to look after a sick relative. He then heard that a friend of a friend had a relative in the Islamic State who was taking money on the side to get people out. He paid just under $1,000, putting himself in the hands of a chain of smugglers with little idea of where he would be taken.
“It wasn’t easy, because if they found out I was planning to leave, I would be killed,” he said. “If I sought out the wrong man or someone informed on me, I’d be taken immediately to be executed. It’s forbidden to leave Islamic State territory for infidel territory.”
As a member of the Islamic State, his smuggler could easily navigate checkpoints. There were initially three people who were trying to leave in the group. But when they reached a safe house outside of Mosul, two other families joined and the number grew to around 11.
After five nights there, they were smuggled to Syria, through Raqqa, the Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold.
“We didn’t know where we were. It was my first time outside of Iraq,” he said.
But traversing Syria is one of the only ways out. Earlier in the summer, one of his relatives had left by road to Baghdad through Iraq’s western province of Anbar, but that route involves crossing active front lines, and residents say they also fear running into Shiite militias on the way.
“It’s dangerous, you’re on open land, there’s bombing, many people get killed that way,” he said.
After leaving Raqqa, he was passed onto a new set of smugglers to get him over the Syrian border into Turkey, by which time the group he was with had swelled to 50 — mostly Syrians desperate to leave. The first time they attempted to cross, they were stopped by Turkish authorities and turned back.
The second time, following in the footsteps of their smuggler through a minefield, they managed to make it over. It had taken him eight days to get to Turkey. He then traveled to Ankara to turn himself in at the Iraqi Consulate, but it took him more than a month to get the papers to fly. They gave him a “very hard time,” he said.
Iraqi Sunnis from Mosul complain of widespread discrimination by state authorities, which view them with suspicion.
When he finally arrived in Baghdad late last month, he was immediately arrested. He was detained for eight days and charged with illegally leaving the country before being bailed out.
“To get to my homeland after all that and be arrested,” he said. “It’s like they don’t see us as Iraqi.”
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Loveday Morris is The Post's Baghdad bureau chief. She joined The Post in 2013 as a Beirut-based correspondent. She has previously covered the Middle East for The National, based in Abu Dhabi, and for the Independent, based in London and Beirut.
