Isis in Iraq: Mosul residents are paying traffickers and risking their lives to escape cruel grip of Islamic State

Civilians are paying traffickers to take them to a ‘safer’ part of Iraq. Loveday Morris hears the story of one man’s remarkable 1,500-mile journey

Crowds with Isis flags march in Mosul, Iraq. But what should we call the extremist 'caliphate' in the Middle East? (AP)

For civilians leaving the Isis-ruled city of Mosul, the ending can be deadly. Residents say the northern Iraqi city has become a prison since the militants seized it in June 2014 and imposed brutal control. The Iraqi capital, Baghdad, once reached by 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 to Baghdad: a 1,500-mile journey to get to a place just 250 miles away.

Smuggling routes have become the only way out for those trapped in Mosul, the capital of Isis territory in Iraq. As a growing number of Iraqis and hundreds of thousands of Syrians flee to Europe, Isis is trying to prevent an exodus from its territory by tightening controls and releasing videos disparaging those who leave.

Economic crisis in its cities after the central government in Baghdad cut off salaries has also spurred desperate civilians to try to get out.

Keeping civilians in its territory, however, is an 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 an assault on the city, 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 said to be rare. Trying to leave without permission can result in execution, residents said.

Many take the risk anyway. Life in Mosul had become intolerable, the former taxi driver said. Public punishments occur regularly. People suspected of being gay are thrown off buildings to their deaths. The hands of accused thieves are cut off and adulterers stoned. Smokers are lashed.

“I was fed up,” he said, speaking on the condition that his name not be used because his relatives remain in Mosul, and he fears they could be punished if Isis finds out he has left. “You feel nervous all the time. There are so many rules.”

Since the central 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 without pay. Jobs are hard to come by, and prices for basic goods have risen. Meanwhile, Isis’s rule has become steadily more oppressive.

“It’s a big prison now,” said Suha Oda, a social activist who used to live in Mosul and monitors the situation there. She described the cutting off of salaries as a “death blow” to the civilians left in the city.

“They feel like the government [in Baghdad] has abandoned them,” she said. A couple who tried to leave recently were executed, she added.

The former taxi driver said he had wanted to leave Mosul earlier but stayed to look after a sick relative. He then heard that a friend of a friend had a relative in Isis who was taking money on the side to get people out. He paid just under $1,000 (£645), putting himself in the hands of a chain of smugglers, with little idea of where he would be taken. As a member of Isis, his smuggler could easily navigate checkpoints. A group of about 11 were smuggled to Turkey, through Raqqa, the Isis stronghold in Syria.

“We didn’t know where we were. It was my first time outside of Iraq,” he said.

But traversing neighbouring Syria is one of the few ways out of the Iraqi city. Earlier in the summer, one of the man’s relatives left by road to Baghdad through Iraq’s western province of Anbar, but that route involves crossing active front lines, and Mosul residents, virtually all of whom are Sunni Muslims, say they also fear running into Shia militias on the way.

After leaving Raqqa, the former taxi driver was passed on to a new set of smugglers to be taken across the border into Turkey, by which time the group being smuggled had swelled to 50. The first time they tried to cross into Turkey, authorities at the border turned them back.

The second time, walking in the footsteps of their smuggler through a minefield, they made it, the journey having taken eight days. The taxi driver then travelled to Ankara, the Turkish capital, to turn himself in at the Iraqi consulate. Then he waited more than a month to receive a travel document to be able to board a flight back into Iraq.

When he finally arrived in Baghdad in late September, he was immediately arrested, detained for eight days and charged with leaving the country illegally, before being bailed. “To get to my homeland after all that and be arrested,” he said. “It’s like they don’t see us as Iraqi.”

© The Washington Post