According to journalists’ professional organizations in the province of Ninawa, of which Mosul is the capital, there are around 250 reporters working in the media there. It’s thought that about half of them have left Mosul. If they are still working in the city, the ones who are left try to avoid anyone knowing what they do – they know the Caliph’s eyes are on them. Some local journalists are now working for the IS group, for the radio station they run among other media outlets.
One Mosul journalist tells NIQASH about how frightened he was when he was abducted from out the front of his house; he was blindfolded and forced into a vehicle. When he and his kidnappers reached their destination he thought he was going to be killed – his blindfold came off and he found he was surrounded by a group of bearded, armed men.
“It was hard for me to breathe,” the journalist says. “I thought I was dead.”
However it turned out that the IS fighters simply wanted him to work for them, doing things like reading out the IS group’s press statements.
“When I felt like my life was actually safe, I asked them to give me some time to think about it,” he explains.
However the next morning the journalist, whose name cannot be revealed for security reasons relating to friends and family in Mosul, decided to leave town.
Almost immediately he ran into trouble getting into Erbil, the capital of neighbouring Iraqi Kurdistan, which has its own borders and military and which has succeeded in keeping the IS group out. He tried to get into Erbil three times but failed each time – his press card didn’t help at all.
Since then the former Mosul local has managed to travel to Baghdad and from there he’s made his way to Istanbul. However he’s now facing a new problem, he says, and its one shared by many other Mosul media: unemployment.
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