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Home > Indiscriminate Killings by U.S. and Iraq in the Panic to Push Back
the Islamic State
________________________________________
Indiscriminate Killings by U.S. and Iraq in the Panic to Push Back the
Islamic State
By Patrick Cockburn [1] / OR Books [2]
April 28, 2016
The following is an excerpt from the new book Chaos & Caliphate [3] by
Patrick Cockburn (OR Books, 2016):
It is one of the strangest states ever created. The Islamic State wants to
force all humanity to believe in its vision of a religious and social utopia
existing in the first days of Islam. Women are to be treated as chattels,
forbidden to leave the house unless they are accompanied by a male relative.
People deemed to be pagans, like the Yazidis, can be bought and sold as
slaves. Punishments such as beheadings, amputations and flogging become the
norm. All those not pledging allegiance to the Caliphate declared by its
leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, on June 29, 2014 are considered enemies.
IS may be regarded with appalled fascination by most people, but conditions
inside its territory remain a frightening mystery to the outside world. This
is scarcely surprising, because it imprisons and frequently murders local
and foreign journalists who report on its activities. Despite these
difficulties, it is possible to build up a picture of what life is inside
the Islamic State by interviewing people who have recently lived in Sunni
Arab cities like Mosul and Fallujah that are held by IS. The interviewees
are necessarily Sunni Arabs living in Iraq, with the exception of some Kurds
still living in Mosul, as most Christians, Yazidis, Shabak and Shia have
already fled or been killed.
A great range of questions need to be answered. Do people support, oppose or
have mixed feelings about ISIS rule and, if so, why? What is it like to live
in a place where a wife appearing on the street without the niqab, a cloth
covering the head and face, will be told to fetch her husband, who will then
be given 40 lashes? How do foreign fighters behave? What is the reaction of
local people to demands by ISIS that unmarried women should wed its
fighters? More prosaically, what do people eat, drink and cook, and how do
they obtain electricity? The answers to these and many other questions show
instances of savage brutality, but also a picture of the Islamic State
battling to provide some basic services and food at low prices.
A crucial early success for the Islamic State came when ISIS-led forces
seized the city of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, on January 3, 2014,
and the Iraqi Army failed to win it back. This was the first time that ISIS
had ruled a large population centre and it is important to understand how it
behaved and how and why this behavior became more extreme as ISIS
consolidated its authority. The stories of two men, Abbas (generally known
as Abu Mohammed) and Omar Abu Ali, who come from the militant Sunni
strongholds of Fallujah and the nearby town of al-Karmah, explain
graphically what happened during those first crucial months when ISIS was in
power.
Abbas is a 53-year-old Sunni farmer from Fallujah. He recalls the joyous day
when ISIS first entered the city: At the beginning we were so happy and
called it the Islamic Conquest. Most of the people were offering them
feasts and warmly welcoming their chief fighters. ISIS told people that it
had come to set up an Islamic state, and at first this was not too onerous.
A Sharia Board of Authority was established to resolve local problems. Abbas
says that everything was going well until ISIS also took Mosul. Then
restrictions on our people increased. At the mosques, local imams started to
be replaced by people from other Arab states or Afghanistan. During the
first six months of ISIS rule, the movement had encouraged people to go to
the mosque, but after the capture of Mosul it became obligatory and anybody
who violated the rule received 40 lashes. A committee of community leaders
protested to ISIS and received an interesting reply: The answer was that,
even at the time of the Prophet Mohammed, laws were not strict at the
beginning and alcoholic drinks were allowed in the first three years of
Islamic rule. Only after Islamic rule had become strongly entrenched were
stricter rules enforced. So it had been in the seventh century and so it
would be 1,400 years later in Fallujah.
Abbas, a conservative-minded community leader with two sons and three
daughters in Falluah, says he had no desire to leave the city because all
his extended family are there, though daily life is tough and getting
tougher. As of February 2015, people suffer from lack of water and
electricity which they get from generators because the public supply only
operates three to five hours every two days. The price of cooking gas has
soared to the equivalent of £50 a cylinder, so people have started to use
wood for cooking. Communications are difficult because ISIS blew up the mast
for mobile phones six months ago, but some civilians have managed to get
satellite internet lines.
However, it was not the harsh living conditions but two issues affecting his
children that led Abbas to leave Falluah hurriedly on January 2, 2015. The
first reason for flight was a new conscription law under which every family
had to send one of their sons to be an ISIS fighter. Abbas did not want his
son Mohamed to be called up. Previously, families could avoid conscription
by paying a heavy fine but at the start of this year military service in
ISIS-held areas became obligatory. The second issue concerned one of Abbas
daughters. He says that one day a foreign fighter on the bazaar checkpoint
followed my daughter, who was shopping with her mother, until they reached
home. He knocked on the door and asked to meet the head of the house. I
welcomed him and asked, How can I help you? He said he wanted to ask for
my daughters hand. I refused his request because it is the custom of our
tribe that we cannot give our daughters in marriage to strangers. He was
shocked by my answer and later attempted to harass my girls many times. I
saw it was better to leave.
Abbas is now in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) area with his
family. He regrets that ISIS did not stick with its original moderate and
popular policy before the capture of Mosul, after which it started to impose
rules not mentioned in sharia. Abbas says that we need ISIS to save us from
the government but that doesnt mean that we completely support them. He
recalls how ISIS prohibited cigarettes and hubble-bubble pipes because they
might distract people from prayer, in addition to banning Western-style
haircuts, T-shirts with English writing on them or images of women. Women
are not allowed to leave home unaccompanied by a male relative. Abba says
that all this shocked us and made us leave the city.
A more cynical view is held by Omar Abu Ali, a 45-year-old Sunni Arab farmer
from al-Karmah (also called Garma) 10 miles north-east of Fallujah. He has
two sons and three daughters and he says that, when ISIS took over their
town last year, my sons welcomed the rebels, but I wasnt that optimistic.
The arrival of ISIS did not improve the dire living conditions in al-Kharmah
and he did not take too seriously the propaganda about how the soldiers of
Allah would defeat Malikis devils. Still, he agrees that many people in
his town were convinced, though his experience is that Saddam Hussein, Nouri
al-Maliki or ISIS were equally bad for the people of al-Kharmah: They turn
our town into a battlefield and we are the only losers.
Al Kharmah is close to the front line with Baghdad and endures conditions of
semi-siege in which few suppliers can get through. A litre of petrol costs
£2.70 and a bag of flour more than £65. Omar tried to buy as much bread as
he could store to last his family a week or more because even the bakeries
were suffering from lack of flour. There was constant bombardment and in
February 2015 the last water purification plant in the town was hit, though
he is not clear if this was done by artillery or U.S. air strikes: The town
is now in a horrible situation because of lack of water.
Omar spent five months working for IS, though it is not clear in what
capacity, his main purpose being to prevent the conscription of his two sons
aged 14 and 16. Rockets and artillery shells rained down on al-Karmah,
though Omar says they seldom hit ISIS fighters because they hid in civilian
houses or in schools. The day I left, a school was hit and many children
were killed, he recalls. He says U.S. air strikes and Iraqi Army artillery
kill us along with ISIS fighters. There is no difference between what they
do and the mass killings by IS. Omar had been trying to flee for two months
but did not have the money until he managed to sell his furniture. He is now
staying outside Arbil, the Kurdish capital, where his sons and daughters
work on local farms which is at least better than staying in al-Kharmah.
He says the Americans, Iraqi government and ISIS have all brought disaster
and lists the wars that have engulfed his home town in the past 10 years.
All of them are killing us, he says. We have no friends.
Patrick Cockburn is a Middle East Correspondent for the Independent. He has
written four books on Iraqs recent historyThe Rise of Islamic State: ISIS
and the Sunni Revolution, Muqtada al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq, The
Occupation, and Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession (with Andrew
Cockburn)as well as a memoir, The Broken Boy and, with his son, a book on
schizophrenia, Henrys Demons, which was shortlisted for a Costa Award.
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-back-islamic-state
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[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/patrick-cockburn
[2] http://www.orbooks.com
[3]
http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/chaos-and-caliphate-by-patrick-cockburn/?utm_
source=Alternet&utm_medium=Excerpt&utm_campaign=Chaos
[4] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Indiscriminate Killings
by U.S. and Iraq in the Panic to Push Back the Islamic State
[5] http://www.alternet.org/
[6] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Indiscriminate Killings by U.S. and Iraq in the Panic to Push Back
the Islamic State
Indiscriminate Killings by U.S. and Iraq in the Panic to Push Back the
Islamic State
By Patrick Cockburn [1] / OR Books [2]
April 28, 2016
The following is an excerpt from the new book Chaos & Caliphate [3] by
Patrick Cockburn (OR Books, 2016):
It is one of the strangest states ever created. The Islamic State wants to
force all humanity to believe in its vision of a religious and social utopia
existing in the first days of Islam. Women are to be treated as chattels,
forbidden to leave the house unless they are accompanied by a male relative.
People deemed to be pagans, like the Yazidis, can be bought and sold as
slaves. Punishments such as beheadings, amputations and flogging become the
norm. All those not pledging allegiance to the Caliphate declared by its
leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, on June 29, 2014 are considered enemies.
IS may be regarded with appalled fascination by most people, but conditions
inside its territory remain a frightening mystery to the outside world. This
is scarcely surprising, because it imprisons and frequently murders local
and foreign journalists who report on its activities. Despite these
difficulties, it is possible to build up a picture of what life is inside
the Islamic State by interviewing people who have recently lived in Sunni
Arab cities like Mosul and Fallujah that are held by IS. The interviewees
are necessarily Sunni Arabs living in Iraq, with the exception of some Kurds
still living in Mosul, as most Christians, Yazidis, Shabak and Shia have
already fled or been killed.
A great range of questions need to be answered. Do people support, oppose or
have mixed feelings about ISIS rule and, if so, why? What is it like to live
in a place where a wife appearing on the street without the niqab, a cloth
covering the head and face, will be told to fetch her husband, who will then
be given 40 lashes? How do foreign fighters behave? What is the reaction of
local people to demands by ISIS that unmarried women should wed its
fighters? More prosaically, what do people eat, drink and cook, and how do
they obtain electricity? The answers to these and many other questions show
instances of savage brutality, but also a picture of the Islamic State
battling to provide some basic services and food at low prices.
A crucial early success for the Islamic State came when ISIS-led forces
seized the city of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, on January 3, 2014,
and the Iraqi Army failed to win it back. This was the first time that ISIS
had ruled a large population centre and it is important to understand how it
behaved and how and why this behavior became more extreme as ISIS
consolidated its authority. The stories of two men, Abbas (generally known
as Abu Mohammed) and Omar Abu Ali, who come from the militant Sunni
strongholds of Fallujah and the nearby town of al-Karmah, explain
graphically what happened during those first crucial months when ISIS was in
power.
Abbas is a 53-year-old Sunni farmer from Fallujah. He recalls the joyous day
when ISIS first entered the city: At the beginning we were so happy and
called it the Islamic Conquest. Most of the people were offering them
feasts and warmly welcoming their chief fighters. ISIS told people that it
had come to set up an Islamic state, and at first this was not too onerous.
A Sharia Board of Authority was established to resolve local problems. Abbas
says that everything was going well until ISIS also took Mosul. Then
restrictions on our people increased. At the mosques, local imams started to
be replaced by people from other Arab states or Afghanistan. During the
first six months of ISIS rule, the movement had encouraged people to go to
the mosque, but after the capture of Mosul it became obligatory and anybody
who violated the rule received 40 lashes. A committee of community leaders
protested to ISIS and received an interesting reply: The answer was that,
even at the time of the Prophet Mohammed, laws were not strict at the
beginning and alcoholic drinks were allowed in the first three years of
Islamic rule. Only after Islamic rule had become strongly entrenched were
stricter rules enforced. So it had been in the seventh century and so it
would be 1,400 years later in Fallujah.
Abbas, a conservative-minded community leader with two sons and three
daughters in Falluah, says he had no desire to leave the city because all
his extended family are there, though daily life is tough and getting
tougher. As of February 2015, people suffer from lack of water and
electricity which they get from generators because the public supply only
operates three to five hours every two days. The price of cooking gas has
soared to the equivalent of £50 a cylinder, so people have started to use
wood for cooking. Communications are difficult because ISIS blew up the mast
for mobile phones six months ago, but some civilians have managed to get
satellite internet lines.
However, it was not the harsh living conditions but two issues affecting his
children that led Abbas to leave Falluah hurriedly on January 2, 2015. The
first reason for flight was a new conscription law under which every family
had to send one of their sons to be an ISIS fighter. Abbas did not want his
son Mohamed to be called up. Previously, families could avoid conscription
by paying a heavy fine but at the start of this year military service in
ISIS-held areas became obligatory. The second issue concerned one of Abbas
daughters. He says that one day a foreign fighter on the bazaar checkpoint
followed my daughter, who was shopping with her mother, until they reached
home. He knocked on the door and asked to meet the head of the house. I
welcomed him and asked, How can I help you? He said he wanted to ask for
my daughters hand. I refused his request because it is the custom of our
tribe that we cannot give our daughters in marriage to strangers. He was
shocked by my answer and later attempted to harass my girls many times. I
saw it was better to leave.
Abbas is now in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) area with his
family. He regrets that ISIS did not stick with its original moderate and
popular policy before the capture of Mosul, after which it started to impose
rules not mentioned in sharia. Abbas says that we need ISIS to save us from
the government but that doesnt mean that we completely support them. He
recalls how ISIS prohibited cigarettes and hubble-bubble pipes because they
might distract people from prayer, in addition to banning Western-style
haircuts, T-shirts with English writing on them or images of women. Women
are not allowed to leave home unaccompanied by a male relative. Abba says
that all this shocked us and made us leave the city.
A more cynical view is held by Omar Abu Ali, a 45-year-old Sunni Arab farmer
from al-Karmah (also called Garma) 10 miles north-east of Fallujah. He has
two sons and three daughters and he says that, when ISIS took over their
town last year, my sons welcomed the rebels, but I wasnt that optimistic.
The arrival of ISIS did not improve the dire living conditions in al-Kharmah
and he did not take too seriously the propaganda about how the soldiers of
Allah would defeat Malikis devils. Still, he agrees that many people in
his town were convinced, though his experience is that Saddam Hussein, Nouri
al-Maliki or ISIS were equally bad for the people of al-Kharmah: They turn
our town into a battlefield and we are the only losers.
Al Kharmah is close to the front line with Baghdad and endures conditions of
semi-siege in which few suppliers can get through. A litre of petrol costs
£2.70 and a bag of flour more than £65. Omar tried to buy as much bread as
he could store to last his family a week or more because even the bakeries
were suffering from lack of flour. There was constant bombardment and in
February 2015 the last water purification plant in the town was hit, though
he is not clear if this was done by artillery or U.S. air strikes: The town
is now in a horrible situation because of lack of water.
Omar spent five months working for IS, though it is not clear in what
capacity, his main purpose being to prevent the conscription of his two sons
aged 14 and 16. Rockets and artillery shells rained down on al-Karmah,
though Omar says they seldom hit ISIS fighters because they hid in civilian
houses or in schools. The day I left, a school was hit and many children
were killed, he recalls. He says U.S. air strikes and Iraqi Army artillery
kill us along with ISIS fighters. There is no difference between what they
do and the mass killings by IS. Omar had been trying to flee for two months
but did not have the money until he managed to sell his furniture. He is now
staying outside Arbil, the Kurdish capital, where his sons and daughters
work on local farms which is at least better than staying in al-Kharmah.
He says the Americans, Iraqi government and ISIS have all brought disaster
and lists the wars that have engulfed his home town in the past 10 years.
All of them are killing us, he says. We have no friends.
Patrick Cockburn is a Middle East Correspondent for the Independent. He has
written four books on Iraqs recent historyThe Rise of Islamic State: ISIS
and the Sunni Revolution, Muqtada al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq, The
Occupation, and Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession (with Andrew
Cockburn)as well as a memoir, The Broken Boy and, with his son, a book on
schizophrenia, Henrys Demons, which was shortlisted for a Costa Award.
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Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/books/indiscriminate-killings-us-and-iraq-panic-push
-back-islamic-state
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/patrick-cockburn
[2] http://www.orbooks.com
[3]
http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/chaos-and-caliphate-by-patrick-cockburn/?utm_
source=Alternet&utm_medium=Excerpt&utm_campaign=Chaos
[4] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Indiscriminate Killings
by U.S. and Iraq in the Panic to Push Back the Islamic State
[5] http://www.alternet.org/
[6] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
