Islamic State militants usually speak to the media through their propaganda machine against a backdrop of bombs, mortars and sniper fire. To better understand what is happening in IS-controlled territories, VOA visits a detention center in Kirkuk, Iraq, to meet a self-described former IS fighter. Here is what happened:
The door abruptly swings open, and we are surprised to see two soldiers burst in, the prisoner Mithaq in tow.
Mithaq’s wrists are handcuffed in front of him and a black knit cap is pulled over his eyes and nose. I had imagined we would see him in a cell, and not dressed as he is - in a black and red Adidas track suit.
He slumps on a couch, bowing his head and the soldiers slip out of the door, leaving only Colonel Fattah at his desk to guard the prisoner.
Mithaq’s fate has not yet been decided and Fattah later explains the sentencing process for captured IS members.
If he is found guilty of being a member, he will be imprisoned for 15 years. If he is found guilty of a specific crime, like one of the countless amputations, beheadings and stonings IS members have committed against civilians, he could be executed.
Mithaq shakes visibly.
Our interview with Mithaq will not affect his case if he confesses nothing more to us than what he has already told security forces, but his position greatly affects the way he tells his story to us. He confesses to being an IS fighter and taking part in military operations, as he has already told authorities. But he maintains he has committed no crimes against civilians and calls IS violence “criminal.”
We have no reason to believe what he says is false, but we know it is the only thing he can say without further incriminating himself, so we don’t focus on these issues.
When IS swept into Hawija in 2014, the group promised to provide services for civilians in the name of Islam. After years of deadly protests in Hawija against the Shi'ite led government in Baghdad, the group's arrival in the Sunni-dominated region was, to some, a relief.
“I liked them so I asked to join,” he says quietly when our translator asks why he took up with them. “I thought they were really an Islamic Caliphate.”
“What about it did you like?” I ask.
“They said they love Islam,” he explains, and the colonel interrupts.
“The militants tell these guys they can win their rights and serve God if they join,” Col. Fattah says. “That’s how they get them.”
“But then I found they are using religion in a wrong way,” Mithaq adds later. “They've killed so many people. When I was with them fighting I saw so many things that are not in Islam: killing men, women and children; chopping off people’s hands.”
Before joining IS, he goes on to say, he was a farmer, living relatively comfortably with his wife and two small children, one a newborn at the time. As an IS soldier, participating in military assaults - some failed and some successful - as well as manning checkpoints, he was paid 250,000 Iraqi dinars a month, a little over $200.
Later I ask our Iraqi translator if he believes Mithaq would abandon a successful farm for that small a salary. In many areas formerly controlled by IS, locals say IS finds poor, uneducated youth, and seduces them with money and promises of virgins in paradise. Mithaq was about 30 years old when he joined.
“He really believed he was serving God above himself at the time,” says the translator, apparently convinced this part of his story is true.
“My family was not upset when I joined,” Mithaq says when asked if his family was concerned. “The situation was good when they first came. But after a few months when our militants started to kill people, to punish them, to whip them and cut off their heads, people didn’t like us.”
Mithaq’s story is consistent with the accounts of scores of civilians we have talked to who say for the most part, IS militants were either kind or neutral to the people in the first months of their rule, and then suddenly began imposing draconian rules and gruesome punishments.
“Why did suddenly it change?” asks another reporter in the room.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t an emir (leader),” Mithaq says, appearing to consider the question. “Really I don’t know. The emir gave the orders and told us what were the new rules.”
In Mithaq’s town, Hawija, still an IS-stronghold some 120 kilometers from Mosul, the rules were similar to rules in other IS territories. If you stole, your hand would be chopped off. If you tried to run away you would be arrested. If you communicated with anyone on “the other side” like the Iraqi Army or Kurdish Peshmerga forces, death was certain, and often public.