In mid-May, Iraqi security forces began to crack down on Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in a Sunni area of Mosul that the U.S. military had described as AQI's last major urban stronghold. As AQI melted away in response to these operations, we gained a glimpse of the brutal and bizarre governance that the terrorist group had imposed.
Most notably, AFP reports that the group banned the display of tomatoes and cucumbers side-by-side because they regarded this as "sexually provocative." AQI also banned a local Iraqi bread known as "sammoun" on the grounds that it did not exist during Prophet Muhammad's time. (As my colleague Steve Schippert of ThreatsWatch noted in an e-mail, neither AK-47s nor explosives--two AQI staples--existed in Muhammad's time either.) The use of ice was similarly banned because Muhammad did not have ice. Under AQI's rule, barbers were not allowed to use electric razors, as AFP notes:
Barber Atta Sadoun, 29, is back in business. "They threatened to kill me if I used an electric shaving machine," he said adding that Al-Qaeda had also decreed that men's facial hair should not be removed. He was forced to place a sign outside his salon saying he was using only scissors and no electric shaver. Several of his colleagues had been killed because they had failed to comply, he said.
Peter Bergen wrote in his 2001 book Holy War, Inc. that the Taliban in Afghanistan had "a long list of what might be called 'Tali-bans.' … Some of the decrees had a Monty Python-esque quality, like the rule banning the use of paper bags on the remote chance the paper might include recycled pages of the Koran." The evidence coming from Mosul suggests that the Taliban had nothing on AQI. And the barber Atta Sadoun's comment shows that however Monty Python-esque these restrictions may be, they are no laughing matter: People lose their lives for flouting these rules. There have been many such reports from Mosul, such as restaurant owner Hashim Abdullah Al-Hamdani's report that two of his employees were killed by AQI because his establishment served both men and women--violating the religious prohibition of mixing of the sexes.
But now that AQI has melted away, life is returning to normal. Public weddings, which AQI had banned, have returned to Mosul's "Forest Park." Cucumbers and tomatoes are now displayed "provocatively" beside each other in the markets that brim with new life since al Qaeda skipped town.
It is worth being reminded of the enemy's totalitarian brutality, and it is likewise worth keeping in mind that this brutality creates strategic opportunity for the U.S. The Taliban's ouster in Afghanistan revealed how average Afghani citizens despised the group's brutal rule--and we can now see similar contempt for what AQI did in Mosul.
