Aegean Disclosure

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Lord of the Flies

"I saw that around Mosul, everybody is the resistance - not terrorists, but not civilians really either...They used the small kids to bring them water, and nobody treated them like children. They'd be with the men who were talking about cutting heads, and the kids would be standing guard, like little men, so you become afraid of the children too."

That was Zeynep Tugrul, a woman journalist from Turkey who was kidnapped at Tal Afar and taken to Mosul, talking to the New York Times. In a way, this supports the claim that there are terrorists lurking in that city, contrary to the denial of the town's representatives. In fact, the eyewitness account proves that the Iraqi security forces have been infiltrated or bribed:

"...When they stopped to ask a policeman in Tal Afar to direct them, he waved over a car with three masked men inside who ordered them to get in. They were taken to a nondescript house..."

However, to the town's credit they seem to be outsiders:

"They spoke Turkish... but also claimed to be Sunni Arabs, and not Turkmen of the Shia branch of Islam. Ms. Tugrul said they also spoke a very different Turkish dialect from the Turkmen."

Tugrul appeared on Turkish television, saying at one point that her captors would force her to pray five times a day.

"I apologized to God and told him that this was all for show; I told him that I didn't really pray five times a day and that I wasn't even sure I was praying right. Luckily, the captors would not look at me while I was praying because I was a woman. I would pray loudly, so they could hear the words."