From the Rise of the Caliphate to the Fall of Mosul, One Family’s Journey

MOSUL, Iraq — Ordinary imams dress in white and speak with a silver tongue. The man standing at the pulpit of Mosul’s Grand al-Nuri Mosque on a sweltering Friday in July 2014 was different, spitting fire and brimstone. “He was all in black, wearing a black robe, a black turban, and [had] a black beard,” Yasir Samir Ahmed remembered. “You could barely see his face behind all the black.”

The dark figure was Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Yasir is one of the few people willing to speak publicly of having seen him with his own eyes. Yasir was present at the Friday prayers in 2014 at which Baghdadi made his sole public appearance, declaring himself leader of a restored caliphate. That moment, which came weeks after the Islamic State took control of Mosul and a broad swath of the rest of Iraq, would become a turning point for the city — a sign of the Islamic State’s rise to power.

Nearly three years later, Yasir and his extended family would find themselves creeping past the rubble of the destroyed mosque as they fled the final brutal fighting for Mosul’s Old City, where Islamic State die-hards were making their last stand. By then he was starved, bereaved, and expecting a bullet at every turn, so traumatized that he didn’t much care whether it was death or an escape to freedom that would deliver him from the jihadis.

Yasir’s journey offers insight into how the Islamic State found — and then squandered — support in Mosul, ruthlessly manipulating and then exploiting an aggrieved population. As the Iraqi government now faces the monumental task of rebuilding the shattered city, his journey also serves as a warning on how the Iraqi security forces have a narrow window of opportunity to rebuild their relationship with Mosul’s citizenry.