Reuters - Abbas Ali wept
as his wife slowly pushed him in his wheelchair out of their village in
northern Iraq, a risky escape along a route where Islamic State snipers three
days earlier had shot dead a couple seeking freedom from their rule.
Flanked by
their four children, they looked behind them to see if any jihadists were still
around to carry out their threats of shooting anyone who tried to flee Islamic
State's self-proclaimed caliphate.
Kurdish
peshmerga fighters stood on a berm, watching closely for any signs of suicide
bombers, who sometimes pose as civilians. Two men behind them lifted their
shirts to show they were not strapped with explosives.
"A nearby
village held by Daesh was attacked. We heard the five remaining Daesh members
in our village went to help their comrades there," said Ali as he was
pushed along to a base held by Kurds that is often attacked at night by
militants.
Daesh is the
Arabic acronym used by opponents of Islamic State to describe the group. The
hardline militants seized the northern city of Mosul two years ago, declared a
caliphate and then grabbed villages like the one where Ali once worked as a
trader.
Iraqi military
forces and the peshmerga fighters have seized dozens of villages as part of an
offensive launched on Oct. 17 to clear Islamic State militants out of Mosul,
their biggest stronghold.
People who
live in the IS-occupied villages have been encouraged by those advances, which
are backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.
Still, they
face a difficult decision -- do they risk death to take advantage of Iraqi
forces momentum, or do they stay put?
The Sunni
group has spread fear in towns and villages they control with a clear warning.
Anyone who tries to escape will be shot dead. Another villager who escaped said
someone who was caught was whipped 95 times.
"They get
word around," Ali said. "But we could not take it anymore. Life was
so difficult."
The peshmerga
will take the refugees to tented camps that have been set up by Iraqi
authorities to deal with an expected flood of people fleeing from Islamic
State's harsh rule.
INSTANT DEATH
As Ali began
to weep again, his wife Bushra, covered from head to toe in black as required
by Islamic State, poured water on his head, the only comfort in a dusty desert
area not far from another hamlet where 120 jihadists are in control.
"They
barred us from everything you can imagine. You can't do this. You can't do
that," Bushra said, wiping the dirt off her children's faces with bottled
water.
"May God
show Daesh no mercy."
Crouching down
on a wall near her were relatives, young men with beards of the length required
by Islamic State. Militants micro-managed every aspect of life with brutality,
from facial hair to schools.
They sat
patiently while peshmerga officer Qamar Rashid inspected their identification
cards.
"We have
to make sure they are not Daesh," he said.
"I am
smoking for the first time in so long," said one of the men smiling,
recalling how cigarettes were banned under jihadist rule. A violation meant 50
public whippings.
Among those
being questioned was Omar, who happened to be visiting relatives in Ali's
village, Abou Jarbouh, the day Islamic State seized it.
A resident of
the Kurdish regional capital of Erbil, he lost contact with relatives and
friends and still has no idea what happened to his carpentry business.
"Using a
cell phone could be instant death," said Omar, holding a notebook with
financial records of his Erbil shop.
People who
were able to run a business under Islamic State rule could only do so by paying
them a cut, according to villager Kassim Hassan. He was an unemployed labourer
who depended on his wife's small sewing business to survive.
"We had
to pay Daesh every month. We had no choice," he said
Reuters
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