IRIN Middle East | Bearing witness to the crimes of the Islamic State | Iraq | Aid Policy | Conflict | Human Rights

3.9.15

IRIN Middle East | Bearing witness to the crimes of the Islamic State | Iraq | Aid Policy | Conflict | Human Rights: Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, was seized by so-called Islamic State (ISIS) last June and now serves as the militant group’s de facto base in the country. A population of roughly 1.7 million pre-ISIS is thought to have shrunk to around one million as hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced by the fighting or fled an unwanted occupation.

Salih, head of the Iraqi Institution for Development (IID), comes from Mosul originally and has a network of contacts still feeding him information from within the occupied city. His informants are not only recording incidents of brutality, but also providing updates on the city’s diminishing health services, drinking water shortages, the rising costs of fuel, even the taxation and street-cleaning systems introduced by the Islamists.