“The fact that the IS group have shut down telecommunications companies is an indication of major fears that there will be a big battle for Mosul soon,” says Rabea Awni, an Iraqi activist. Awni says the fact that the organisation also started preventing locals from leaving Mosul for longer than ten days is another indication of the group's fears. Locals have started leaving in greater numbers, given the lack of electricity, drinking water and other supplies. Now if they want to go, they must provide a guarantor who promises they will return and they must return before ten days is up. The IS group have set up checkpoints at city exits to enforce this new rule.
One of the questions many in Mosul are also asking is how exactly the IS group itself is maintaining contact with members of it's group and its allies, given that it is fighting in many different places.
According to sources close to the group, IS fighters and leadership are dependent on mobile satellite phones like those operated by the Thuraya company. They also use text messages on mobile phones to communicate but apparently this is more rare as these are easier to monitor. The IS group is also able to utilise a limited amount of communications equipment left behind by the Iraqi army when they fled Mosul in the face of the IS group's advance in June.
The consequences of this decision by the IS group are multiple. The only mobile telecommunications company now working in the city is an Iraqi firm called Kalimat. Mosul is almost cut off from the rest of the world. Additionally all of the people in Mosul who make a living from telecommunications, selling phones, phone credit, phone numbers and other related businesses, must now join the ranks of the many unemployed inside the area controlled by the IS group.
(Telecommunications image via Shutterstock)
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