There was nothing suspicious about the men except the Iraqi police hardly venture out at night and are often confined to their barracks.
The farmers in the hamlet were happy that once again they could plough and smell the soil, after three years of brutal war between the Peshmerga and ISIS militants, which left much of the area around oil-rich Kirkuk in ruins.
Inside the house, father of four Fahmi Salih, 40, had just sat down to spend the evening with his cousin. He had earned a reputation as an agile and brave fighter during the three grueling years volunteering to help drive the militants away. However, his fame had travelled across the fertile plains and reached the ears of those militants roaming around the plains in the dead of night.
Before daybreak, Fahmi and his cousin Sarhan Mohammad had disappeared.
ISIS alive and well in Iraq
On January 31, ISIS published a 21-minute video in which Fahmi can be seen in a pickup truck while another man kneels on the floor looking bewildered. “You are a Peshmerga and assisting Daesh,” one of the man roared in Iraqi Arabic dialect. “Swear on great Quran I fought Daesh across this frontline.”
Fahmi, looking confused and hoping to talk sense into the men, pleaded with them. “I can bring witnesses to testify for me,” he says.
In the next scene, the Peshmerga volunteer sits surrounded on the dusty ground. “Do you know who we are? We are the Islamic State.” Fahmi’s face drops as he takes in the gravity of the situation, resigned to his fate. The thud of bullets striking his flesh echo in the camera microphone. “This is a present to the Islamic State,” the voiceover on the film says.
Fahmi’s fate has befallen dozens of men since former Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi announced the end of hostilities in Iraq in December 2017. Every day, ISIS channels on Telegram share stories of how their soldiers gun down their enemies.
‘A Hashd member and a spy for counter terrorism agency killed in Bahrouz sub district of Diyala’; ‘Assassinating a Shia in Aliyawa in Diyala’; ‘a Hashd bulldozer destroyed with an IED in Samra Island in Saladin’, ‘a member of Hashd was hit with a sniper rifle in Mikhas district of Khanaqin in Diyala are just some of the latest headlines on ISIS Nashir News.
Is the international community listening?
While ISIS activities resume in northern Iraq, the group has meanwhile suffered a major blow across the border as the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by the US-led international coalition, pounds their holdouts on the Iraq-Syria border.
As the group’s control over territory draws to a close, it has resumed its earlier insurgency tactics with self-funding cells that could potentially have devastating consequences for the stability and the reconstruction process in Iraq.
“ISIL cells are expected to be self-financing and to support themselves through a variety of activities, including extortion, kidnapping for ransom or other criminal activity,” the UN Secretary General said in his latest report published earlier this month on the threat posed by ISIS to international peace and security.
In fact, ISIS uses sophisticated methods to spread terror among those who help the security forces and at the same time use abduction to finance its low level operations.
Although ISIS militants killed the volunteer Peshmerga, they spared his cousin after exhausting negotiations and exchanged him for around $80,000, Rudaw understands.
The recent targeted attacks and assassinations in northern Iraq show the sophistication of ISIS operations and its expertise in gathering human intelligence on its enemies.
“There are reports that the group retains intelligence on local communities that could be used in future efforts to extort or otherwise extract financing from areas previously under its control,” the UN report said.
“Despite its dwindling control over territory that once provided it with resources and bases from which to launch attacks, ISIL continues to present us with many complex challenges,” said Michele Coninsx, the UN Executive Director of the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate on February 11.
“This change in circumstances has forced ISIL go to adapt and transform itself into a covert, more locally focused network in Iraq," she noted.
What’s the Kurdish and Iraqi response?
When the Kurdish forces withdrew from Kirkuk and other disputed areas in October 2017 as the Kurds clashed with Iraqi forces and militias, around a hundred veteran Kurdish intelligence officers of the Peshmerga forces who had developed important intelligence networks in the area retreated into Kurdistan, leaving behind a widening intelligence gap.
The ISIS militants, who are mainly local Arabs and some Kurds, have used this gap to their advantage, expanding its influence and strengthened its intelligence gathering networks.
One Kurdish intelligence officer who has operated in the disputed areas south of Kirkuk for the duration of the war with ISIS believes the essence of human intelligence gathering is respecting the locals.
“Whenever we went to a village, I would go to the mukhtar and introduce myself and would tell him that we were not against them, and we were there to protect them,” the Kurdish intelligence officer, who asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the media, told Rudaw.
“When we withdraw, there was a big intelligence gap and the Iraqi forces did not man some of the outposts we had set up leaving the villagers to the mercy of the terrorists,” the source added.
The officer, who vetted hundreds of people fleeing the ISIS controlled area such as Hawija in the closing months of the war in 2017, says the militants are committing “heinous crimes such as beheading of the head of villages and those who collaborate with the security forces.”
Another Kurdish intelligence officer who also asked to remain anonymous believes the Iraqis lack capabilities and competent intelligence officers to obtain vital intelligence on the movement of militants in the predominantly Sunni areas in Kirkuk, Saladin, and Diyala.
“The people do not trust the Army because they still see it as a Shiite army and have no incentive to provide intelligence,” the officer, who still visits the disputed areas in disguise, told Rudaw.
“There are still many Sunnis missing since the Iraqi security forces came back and no one knows what happened to these detained Sunni men. For example around 800 men in Tuz Khurmatu alone are still missing.”
The Pentagon Inspector General echoed this assessment in its latest report to the US Congress earlier this month. While security has improved, the report said, the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) faced challenges to their intelligence efforts including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) tasking system, “the lack of sufficient intelligence personnel, and the absence of procedures to either vet intelligence received from human sources or to exploit easily accessible public open sources.”
By killing Peshmerga volunteer Fahmi and filming the gruesome act, the militants have sought to strike fear into the hearts of these communities around Kirkuk.
Iraqi and Kurdish officials are reportedly close to reaching an agreement to work together in these disputed areas. According to Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi there is ‘unprecedented cooperation’ between the two forces.
Meanwhile, the militants disguised as Iraqi police remain at large.
