Who Owns The Story Of ISIS, Iraqis Or The West?

Those in power always get to write history. It's nothing new—it's been happening since the homo sapiens learned how to write. But people from Mosul know this fact particularly well. 

First it was ISIS, the terrorist gang equipped with the latest technology and a medieval ideology. After taking over large parts of Iraq and Syria, they started spreading their own truth. The Western public, mesmerised by the barbaric group – in many ways closer to their societies than to the Muslim world – couldn't get enough. 

For a long time, the words ISIS and IS were in pretty much every headline about the Middle East. But by putting them there, the media were giving these terrorists what they wanted the most: a platform. That's how ISIS fabricated its own story about Mosul and the rest of the places they ruled. As Saddam Hussein had done before, they didn't only install a reign of terror, they also stole the history of the land.

However, a year after ISIS was finally defeated in Mosul, many Iraqis still don't feel they are in controll of their own history. One of them is Omar Mohammed, the man behind Mosul Eye, a historian who risked his live to document the atrocities of ISIS. Avi Asher-Schapiro talked to him before writing this piece for the London Review of Books:

He [Omar Mohammed] is now concerned that the history of the city under IS could be compromised. After the 2016 operation to drive out the caliphate, the New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi took nearly 16,000 documents produced during IS rule – everything from birth certificates to judicial rulings – stuffed them into bin bags, and flew them back to New York.

Omar isn't the only one who thinks this way. Another example by a woman from Mosul:

‘There’s a very fine line between very high quality journalism and trespassing – and they trespassed.’

The New York Times says they needed the official papers to tell the story properly.  We also highlighted their job here, but one thing is documenting history and something very different is, literally, stealing it.