“This is just a big joke,” Khaled said. “It’s a war on the livelihoods of the people of Mosul. There are thousands of elderly people waiting out in cold because of the stupidity of the Islamic State group. These people are now deciding the fate of the second biggest city in Iraq!”
The next day, Khaled says, he was finally able to access some cash using his Qi card. “I felt like I’d won a very valuable prize,” Khaled says. “When I left the place I got the money, people were looking at me so enviously.”
The crowds of people gathering in the Minassa area to do their “banking” has seen many others take their Qi cards and travel further away.
One 62-year-old Mosul pensioner who wished to be known only as Um Omar travelled 15 kilometres north of Mosul to the Shalalat area, which is best known as a spot for tourism and recreation. Um Omar had to take her youngest son with her because women in Mosul are no longer permitted to move around without a male companion.
A taxi took Um Omar and her son into the countryside and on the outskirts of the city, they soon found what they were looking for: groups of young men on the sides of the road waving cash at them. The young men were acting as unofficial, roving bankers on the side of the highway, giving money to those who had the right details and receiving 1 percent of every salary in return.
Um Omar gets social welfare payments from the Iraqi government every three months and since her son, who used to be a policeman, has not been able to work with the Islamic State, or IS, group in the city, she has been the sole supporter of a family of six.
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