Propaganda Wars in Mosul

Saad Mohammed, a resident in the area, says that teenagers and younger people often go and sit at these media hubs, watching the films of battles and executions. After each show is over, enthusiastic audience members can ask for a digital copy of the films or pictures they liked the most. They can then take these clips and images and put them on their own phones or computers so they can watch them again. In Mosul, it is posisble to access the Internet now but it is very slow and coverage is very bad.

“After each film, people talk about the power of the IS group and how strong it is and how legendary its fighters are,” Mohammed told NIQASH. “This is exactly what the IS group want to achieve. They want these feelings to take a hold in people's minds here.”

In this way the IS group is achieving two major aims: Influencing the people of Mosul, persuading them that it's “caliphate” will continue to exist and encouraging dissemination of its propaganda around the city and perhaps further, all over the world.

The IS group also uses other methods to get its message of power and superiority out, through speeches at mosques, military parades and through broadcasts on the Al Bayan radio station, launched after it took the city over. The extremists are also extremely effective at getting their message out to the rest of the world via social media.

There are also other places where locals inside the city may get information from. Today in Mosul, the northern city that the IS group has controlled since last June, there are two major satellite TV channels that locals can watch. There is Al Mosul TV, which is part of the Al Sharqiya media network owned by Iraqi media tycoon, Saad al-Bazzaz. Al Sharqiya is generally acknowledged as the voice of Sunni Muslim opinion in the country and is broadcast from out of Dubai and nearby Erbil.