‘I defeated ISIS’: Young scholar lived secret double life is a fascinating and intense story the AP put up today.
He wasn’t a spy. He was an undercover historian and blogger . As IS turned the city he loved into a fundamentalist bastion, he decided he would show the world how the extremists had distorted its true nature, how they were trying to rewrite the past and forge a brutal Sunni-only future for a city that had once welcomed many faiths.
He knew that if he was caught he too would be executed.
“I am writing this for the history , because I know this will end. People will return, life will go back to normal,” is how he explained the blog that was his conduit to the citizens of Mosul and the world beyond. “After many years, there will be people who will study what happened. The city deserves to have something written to defend the city and tell the truth, because they say that when the war begins, the first victim is the truth.”
He called himself Mosul Eye . He made a promise to himself in those first few days: Trust no one, document everything.
In those first few days, he wrote observations about the Islamic State group on his personal Facebook page — until a friend warned that he risked being killed. With the smell of battle still in the air, he wandered the streets, puzzling over its transformation into a city at war. He returned to find his family weeping. The smell of smoke and gunfire permeated the home.
On June 18, 2014, a week after the city fell, Mosul Eye was born .
“My job as a historian requires an unbiased approach which I am going to adhere to and keep my personal opinion to myself,” he wrote. “I will only communicate the facts I see.”
By day, he chatted with Islamic State fighters and vendors, and observed. Always observed. By night, he wrote in his native Arabic and fluent English on a WordPress blog and later on Facebook and Twitter.
The city turned dark, and Mosul Eye became one of the outside world’s main sources of news about the Islamic State fighters, their atrocities and their transformation of the city into a grotesque shadow of itself.
Mr. Mohammed is a brave man; his actions are worthy of much praise. I hope he not only compiles all his internet writing into a book, but also offers some post- commentary both looking back and looking ahead.