MOSUL: One night last week, Islamic State militants in an SUV with tinted windows pulled up at the home of a former Iraqi army officer, one of the men they see as an obstacle to their goal of establishing a caliphate from Iraq to the Mediterranean.
As the retired major-general was led away to the vehicle draped in the trademark black and white Islamist flag, his son and wife feared the worst.
“I have been asking the families of other officers and no one knows why they were taken,” his son said by phone, breaking down in tears.
In the past week, Sunni militants who overran the city of Mosul last month have rounded up between 25 and 60 senior ex-military officers and members of former dictator Saddam Hussein’s banned Baath party, residents and relatives say.
The crackdown potentially signals a rift in the Sunni alliance that helped secure Islamic State fighters swift victory when they rode in from the desert to capture Mosul last month.
The northern city of around 2 million people is by far the largest to fall to the group now known as the Islamic State and a central part of its plans for an Islamist caliphate.
When the group, then known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, seized large swathes of Iraq at lightning speed last month, it was supported by other Sunni Muslim armed groups.
Tribes and former loyalists of Saddam’s Baath party were eager to hit back at Iraq’s Shia leaders, even if they did not share ISIS’s vision of a caliphate ruled on mediaeval Islamic precepts.
But now, leaders of those groups are being ordered to swear allegiance to the new caliphate.
“I think (the Islamic State) wants to give the message that they are the only group in the land, that people must follow them or give up their weapons,” said provincial governor Atheel Nujaifi, who is in touch with residents by phone after having fled to the Kurdish-controlled city of Arbil as Mosul fell. Shia MP Haidar Abadi said the Islamic State was taking pre-emptive action to head off potential challenges.
“ISIL knows very well they can’t stay if these groups move against them. They are not giving them the opportunity.”
Mardini, non-resident fellow at the Washington think-tank Atlantic Council, says, “They’re not going to allow other insurgent groups to operate in Mosul,” he said. “They may have their sights set on consolidation and transformation of the city into the de facto capital of the caliphate.”
While Mardini said the Islamic State is strong enough to “strike, consolidate, and push other groups out” for now, he sees the long term fate of the group in Mosul as less clear.
“It’s the worst-kept secret that the other insurgent groups that represent the Sunni movement are going to eventually turn against ISIS,” he said.
Mosul has long harboured members of the Baathist militant group the Naqshbandi Army, believed to be headed by Saddam’s lifelong confidant Ezzat Ibrahim al-Douri – king of spades in the US deck and the highest-ranking Baathist to evade capture.
Sunni tribesmen with far looser ties to the old regime could also pose a threat to the militants, but the Islamic state seems to be focusing for now on Baathists and former army officers.
Asserting Islamic State ideology so far has meant issuing a “city charter” banning tobacco, drugs and alcohol and ordering women to stay home.
The militants have also bulldozed and blown up ancient Shia and Sufi shrines and mosques in Mosul and nearby towns, home to some of Iraq’s richest cultural heritage.
Over the weekend jihadist forums and a Twitter account associated with the group posted images of fiery blasts and plumes of smoke rising under white minarets and golden domes.
Most of the city’s minority population, including Christians and small groups like the Shia Muslims, have fled.
The rejection of any power sharing or alternatives to its purist Sunni state fits the group’s vision of absolute rule.
Photos have recently surfaced on social media of men said to be in Mosul standing in line in rooms where the Islamic State’s flag is hung, with captions describing them as apostates come to repent and accept Islamic State rule. Reuters-UNI
Follow this link to join our WhatsApp group: Join Now
Be Part of Quality Journalism |
Quality journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce and despite all the hardships we still do it. Our reporters and editors are working overtime in Kashmir and beyond to cover what you care about, break big stories, and expose injustices that can change lives. Today more people are reading Kashmir Observer than ever, but only a handful are paying while advertising revenues are falling fast. |
ACT NOW |
MONTHLY | Rs 100 | |
YEARLY | Rs 1000 | |
LIFETIME | Rs 10000 | |