“Ninawa's phone companies have been milked by extremist organisations in this area,” Jaber explains. “That's why the companies have been able to continue to work in this area for the past few months. The theory being put about by some media outlets that the IS group stopped the telecommunications companies because of a possible attack on the city is false.”
A lot of people in Mosul believe the same things that Jaber does. They have received messages via anonymous numbers containing blackmail threats, they know explosive devices can be activated using mobile phones and they think that the companies only stopped paying “protection money” to the IS group because of pressure from the Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish authorities.
“Over the past 11 years, almost every business operating in Mosul, whether big or small, was making monthly payments to extremist groups,” says Omar Majid, a journalist who used to live in Mosul but has since moved to a safer location. “It's only logical that people think that telecommunications companies would have paid that money too. The city used to have over 2 million people in it and the province of Ninawa had even more, so it's a big market for them – but to do business here you needed to cooperate with the extremists.”
But other locals have a different theory. They believe it is the only way that the IS group can prevent spies inside of Mosul – basically locals trapped in the city who don't agree with their policies – from communicating with anyone outside, including security forces that might wish to attack their locations in the city.
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