Podcast: Iraq After ISIS with Ben Taub

TRANSCRIPT: Iraq After ISIS with Ben Taub

Ben Taub:

We often mistake the strength of a regime for the stability of a country. Those are not the same.

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm Ian Bremmer, and welcome to the GZERO World podcast, an audio version of what you can find on public television, where I analyze global topics, sit down with big guests, and make use of small puppets. This week, I sit down with Ben Taub, a journalist for the New Yorker, who has reported on Jihadism, crime, and conflict from war torn communities in Africa and the Middle East. Today I'll ask him about his most recent reporting on a post-ISIS campaign of revenge in Iraq. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

Ben Taub, staff writer with New Yorker, and just recently back from Mosul, Iraq. Not where most of our viewers are considering taking their next vacation. Glad you're back in one piece.

Ben Taub:

Thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

And thanks for being with me.

Ben Taub:

Thanks for having me.

Ian Bremmer:

So let's go back to just Mosul for a moment, how this all started. I mean, this, of course, was large city in Iraq, run over by ISIS, was the biggest city that they took.

Ben Taub:

Second-biggest city in Iraq.

Ian Bremmer:

When they had taken over Mosul, how many people are we talking about that were actively occupying?

Ben Taub:

It's around 8,000 were likely based in the city at its peak, but the city was actually taken with just a few hundred fighters. It was quite an extraordinary scene. In June 2014, they swept across the desert from Syria. And it was a city that was guarded by some 30 to 60,000 federal Iraqi police and military forces, who essentially shed their uniforms and fled within a week. So the group captured Mosul-

Ian Bremmer:

Against 800 fighters?

Ben Taub:

Yeah. 800-

Ian Bremmer:

40,000 fled?

Ben Taub:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

Because?

Ben Taub:

Well, the group was very cleverly harnessing its multimedia propaganda machine in real time. So as they would capture neighborhoods and commit atrocities on anyone they found who was connected to the security forces, they would broadcast these brutal executions online. And the Iraqi forces station nearby would see that just a couple neighborhoods over, their colleagues, and friends, and relatives who were fighting there had been murdered in grizzly ways. So there was a climate of fear that was perpetrated and perpetuated largely through the internet.

Ben Taub:

But also, Mosul has a history of being a place where there was support for Al-Qaeda and the insurgency in the past, over the past 15 years, and most of the security forces there were Shiite security forces who, in large part, I was told, were not especially interested in dying in defense of a largely Sunni city that they suspected had a lot of support from local population, which had been alienated by these same security forces, the Iraqi security forces, over the prior years.

Ben Taub:

They'd been rounding up men and torturing them into false confessions of jihadi affiliation in the past. And so, a lot of... I spoke to women whose husbands joined ISIS, and who told me that their husbands had never been sympathetic to any jihadi group until they'd been rounded up by the security forces in 2009, '10, '11, accused falsely of affiliation with Al-Qaeda, tortured, or beaten, or imprisoned for long periods of time, and then eventually released.

Ian Bremmer:

What was Mosul then like, as part of the caliphate?

Ben Taub:

It was their strongest city. It was the most... It was their economic powerhouse. An interesting-

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, a terrorist group controlling and governing the second-largest city in Iraq.

Ben Taub:

It was a terrorist group that was beginning to behave like a state. And they had experience with it, because much of the senior leadership within ISIS were former Ba'athist military and intelligence officers under Saddam Hussein. And when they were ousted from power in 2003 after the US invasion, these were not hardcore jihadi. These were hardcore spies and military officers who had incredible tactical competence and knew how to run a police state, as they had been for the prior decades.

Ben Taub:

Now, they end up in prisons and detention centers with hardcore jihadis and realized this brilliant and unholy alliance between them can combine the structural prowess of a police state with the cosmic certainty of a radical jihadi group that can mobilize large groups of disenfranchised young men. And so, a lot of these ISIS leaders were really returning to power in areas that they knew how to govern and control from before.

Ian Bremmer:

In Sunni areas?

Ben Taub:

In Sunni areas.

Ian Bremmer:

Absolutely.

Ben Taub:

And the moment they retook Mosul, what was left behind were all of the trappings of a state. So yes, they took over the banks and had all the money and all of this, but this wasn't all. Now they had all the police stations and all the intelligence services offices, which would have files on all of the local residents. So when it comes time for them to do all of the necessary bureaucratic measures for running various offices, identifying. Since they did a lot of ethnic cleansing. They were murdering Shiite families, enslaving Yazidis, and so on. And they had all of the files on everyone to do so, know exactly where everyone lives. So the structure of the Iraqi state that was left in such a hurry by Iraqi forces was one that they immediately were able to co-opt, and knew how to co-opt because they'd done it before.

Ian Bremmer:

So for the Sunni population that was living there under ISIS, how did their life actually change? What was it like to experience that?

Ben Taub:

So you have a terrorist group that is behaving like a state, but is also, in certain ways, filling in the gaps of a failing state. They did certain things better than federal Iraq does. The courts were brutal and operated under strict Sharia law, but in some ways, were more fair, less corrupt. There was greater accountability within the legal system for ISIS fighters who committed crimes against the Sunni civilian population than there had been in the past for Iraqi security forces who committed crimes against the population.

Ben Taub:

People could file complaints against ISIS fighters in court, and they would be taken seriously. That was not true and is not true in federal Iraq. This is all underscored by the incredible cruelty of the Islamic State, the incredible brutality of their punishments, and their crimes, and the arbitrariness with which they mediated out punishments. But they did have serious aspirations to run a state, and they took that part of governance very seriously.

Ian Bremmer:

One thing that always struck me about ISIS strategy was this idea that you declare a caliphate, you take over a state, not only do you have to run it, but it then becomes something you have to hold. And it's a territory. As you said, you can't bomb an idea, but you can take a territory away.

Ben Taub:

Yeah. And they have. It's gone.

Ian Bremmer:

And they have. It's gone. So what were they thinking?

Ben Taub:

This was a big... Basically the split between ISIS and what is now separate Al-Qaeda, was really over this question. The leaders of the Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria were initially dispatched to Syria by Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State. They had a big split in April 2013 over the question of the timing of the declaration of the caliphate. Al-Qaeda did not think that the group was ready to move forward in that way, and ISIS's leadership was more brazen, and more bombastic, and more eager to do it right now.

Ian Bremmer:

Did they want stuff? I mean, nihilism doesn't usually go well with governance, right? I mean, did they want stuff?

Ben Taub:

Stuff as in...

Ian Bremmer:

Like the trappings of a government. Was it partially about, "We want epaulets, we want the ability to be in an office and tell people what to do." Was that part of it?

Ben Taub:

I imagine it's... I mean, I'm sure that was a consideration. I'm not one of them. I can't speak to what was going on in their heads. But I would say-

Ian Bremmer:

You tell me now.

Ben Taub:

I would say that I don't think that we should discount how important it was for the former Ba'athists to feel like this was a return to power. And I think for many of them, they were not terribly religious guys in the past. They were successful in this state building project because of the whole religious narrative tied to it. But I think for them, this was 15 years after they lost their lives and careers and had to go on the run, they were controlling part large parts of Iraq again, and were not far from taking Baghdad. At a certain point in 2014, that summer, they were getting close. There was a real chance that Baghdad would fall, and these guys would once again be in the positions of power they had been 15 years before.

Ian Bremmer:

So you get to Mosul. You've obviously never been there before. Given your expectations, I mean, the place that so many of us had been talking about in the news, was dominating coverage of Iraq for quite some time, what was the first thing that threw you for a loop, that really surprised you, when you get on the ground?

Ben Taub:

The question of what counts as affiliation is really a lot murkier and complex in Iraq than it is contemplating it from afar. Or when we think of-

Ian Bremmer:

Affiliation with...

Ben Taub:

With a terrorist group of any sort, really. But especially ISIS, in Iraq, is a different thing than it is when we think of ISIS recruits coming from Europe, carrying out attacks in Europe. People who traveled from far away to be part of this project were there to form a caliphate. And that was the fulfillment of this prophecy, and this vision, and this dream. People who lived in Iraq, it was a much more complex issue. You had not just the recruit traveling, you had the recruits, someone who joins the group, it affects their entire family in very complicated ways. You would have people who hated ISIS and people who joined ISIS living in the same house, and they were family before they were... Joining ISIS didn't-

Ian Bremmer:

Didn't ruin Thanksgiving? Because in the US, I mean, politics, which are fundamentally almost identical in terms of the spectrum compared to what we're talking about here, I mean, people just going completely nuts over, "My God, they voted for Trump. Wanted Hillary." Here, you're talking about literally people that supported a terrorist organization as opposed to no, in the same household.

Ben Taub:

In the same household.

Ian Bremmer:

How do you deal with that?

Ben Taub:

I think that's actually a really interesting and good comparison in the sense that people can very easily relate to the idea that you have this uncle and aunt who support Trump, and no one in your family does, or the contrary. And that seems very normal and kind of annoying here. It's a source of tension and frustration within the family, but it doesn't result in a bloodbath at home over dinner. That's the same in Iraq in this circumstance. But the consequence now is that, in the aftermath of the Islamic State, anyone who is so tangentially related to anyone else who is in the group is now considered to be a part of the group.

Ian Bremmer:

Not by the family, but by the government?

Ben Taub:

By the government. By the government, and by various militias, sectarian militias that are carrying out massacres of Sunnis. And in fact, which the government is providing cover for by lying about the providence of mass graves. Taking journalists to scenes where Shiite militia groups have murdered large numbers of Sunnis who are thought in some... Women and children who may have had male relatives who joined ISIS, massacre the whole group, bury them in a mass grave, bring journalists in, show the journalists and say, "Look what ISIS did."

Ian Bremmer:

So if I'm a member of a family of someone who joined ISIS, then I am fundamentally effectively guilty of murder?

Ben Taub:

If I murdered someone on camera with my face shown, and you were my brother, it's pretty likely we would both experience a three or four minute trial, which would result in death sentences.

Ian Bremmer:

Equally likely?

Ben Taub:

Equally likely.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. That's pretty insane.

Ben Taub:

Yeah. It's a 98% conviction rate.

Ian Bremmer:

How far out does this go? Is it just immediate family? Or is it like-

Ben Taub:

Cousins.

Ian Bremmer:

Cousins?

Ben Taub:

Officially, there are camps for internally displaced Iraqis. In practice, they're turning into camps for ISIS families, and they're essentially detention camps out in the desert. These are women and children and distant relatives of men who joined the group. And some of them, in fact, had no relatives who joined but are simply perceived as having relatives who joined.

Ben Taub:

I spoke to a woman, for example, whose husband didn't join ISIS, but his brothers did. So then, he was detained as an ISIS fighter, tortured into a false confession, probably sentenced to death, and she, who wasn't married to an ISIS fighter, is now considered an ISIS widow. And so her children are considered to be ISIS children.

Ben Taub:

If they were under four or five years old, the only documents they would have would be ISIS birth certificates, which the Iraqi government will not replace or recognize, and therefore, these children are growing up stateless within their own state. We're talking about tens of thousands of people. And if you take entire networks of families, including cousins, aunts, and so on, hundreds of thousands of people are being punished by their supposed liberators for essentially the crime of having lived in Mosul under the Islamic State.

Ian Bremmer:

So you profiled this one fellow that lived in the old city. How did you find him? Who is he?

Ben Taub:

So his name is Thenoon Younnes Abdullah, and I found him in the old city climbing up a three-story pile of rubble, which had been the site of his former home, trying to retrieve some belongings with his wife and their kids. And he described to me his escape in the final days of the battle, when the bombardment was so intense, he and his family made the decision.

Ben Taub:

For three years, they had been living under ISIS. They hated the group, but they saw no choice. They were too poor to find other places to live. And they also had been following the advice of the Iraqi army, which was to stay behind until you're liberated. At a certain point, it became clear that their neighborhood was surrounded, and it was going to be a total bloodbath, and that the forces that had surrounded it considered civilians like him to be sympathetic to the group by virtue of the fact that they hadn't left.

Ben Taub:

So his neighborhood and his home are very close to the Tigris River. One night, when the conditions had become unlivable, people were starving and being killed every day, he took his family, he took some inner tubes, and took his wife and his kids and ran down to the river in the dead of night. He and his wife climbed into the inner tubes and put their children in two large coolers and floated down the Tigris until they reached a liberated territory on the other side.

Ben Taub:

A year and a half later was when I found him going through the rubble, for the first time having returned in a car whose windshield had been destroyed by an errant shell, trying to find what they could, recover what they could. Everything of value had been stolen or destroyed. And inside the home, he found that it had been taken over by ISIS fighters and had been used as a staging ground for... We found bomb making materials inside, IEDs, and several bodies of fighters as well, as well as the body of his mother-in-law who was too frail to leave.

Ian Bremmer:

Were you harassed at all when you were there on the ground?

Ben Taub:

I was detained by militia in the old city of Mosul.

Ian Bremmer:

For how long?

Ben Taub:

Three hours. They were questioning me, photographed my passport, photographed my visa and my face. And this was a group that is widely known to be funded, trained, and equipped, and have an intelligence sharing agreement with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. And I suspect that my details were sent to members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Ian Bremmer:

Another place you will not be trying to get a visa anytime soon.

Ben Taub:

I would actually be very curious to visit Iran as a tourist.

Ian Bremmer:

Did they know you were a journalists when they picked you up?

Ben Taub:

Yes. Yes, they knew. As is the typical accusation, they were trying to screen me to make sure I wasn't a spy or an ISIS fighter. After three hours, and many questions, and going through every photo on my camera, everything on my phone, they received word that I should be released, this was a group of around 12 people, including a commander, and then escorted me out of the old city and said if I ever turned, I'd be arrested.

Ian Bremmer:

To what extent is Mosul coming back?

Ben Taub:

So Mosul is bisected-

Ian Bremmer:

And you said 2 million people, right?

Ben Taub:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

And some of it completely destroyed?

Ben Taub:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

I assume a lot of infrastructure was completely destroyed.

Ben Taub:

Just ruined. Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

So these people need livelihoods. What's happening now?

Ben Taub:

Mosul is bisected by the Tigris River. And East Mosul is really returning to a sense of flourishing normal life. People are trying hard to open up cultural institutions and get back on track, and there's been a great deal of reconstruction in that area. West Mosul is a completely different story. That was where ISIS made its final stand. It's being completely neglected, seemingly as a kind of punishment, and the rubble is not being cleaned up.

Ian Bremmer:

So now that you're back, having spent the time that you've spent on the ground in Mosul, experienced what you've experienced, if you could tell the American government to do anything differently going forward, the benefits of that experience, what would it be?

Ben Taub:

There are two wars. One is the reality on the ground, where American forces will rightly say, "We did not supply Shiite paramilitary groups weapons and support." But Iraqi civilians might perceive them as having done so, and that matters just as much as if they actually had done it. In a nutshell, we have to recognize that strengthening a security apparatus, a regime, or an autocrat, is not the same thing as building stability in a country.

Ian Bremmer:

Ben Taub, thank you very much.

Ben Taub:

Thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

That's our show this week. We'll be right back here next week, same place, same time. Unless you're watching on social media, in which case, it's wherever you happen to be. Don't miss it. In the meantime, check us out gzeromedia.com.

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The GZERO World is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company. Imagine a bank without teller lines, where your banker knows your name, and its most prized currency is extraordinary client service. Hear directly from First Republic's clients by visiting firstrepublic.com.