Reuters, 28/06 17:17 CET
By Maher Chmaytelli and Isabel Coles
ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – It was
barely more than a squiggle, but the mark of a single letter sprayed
overnight on a wall in the heart of Islamic State’s self-proclaimed
caliphate was a daring act of dissent.
The next day, ultra-hardline Islamic State fighters came
and scrubbed out the “M” — the first letter of the word for “resistance”
in Arabic — which appeared in an alley near the Grand Mosque in the
Iraqi city of Mosul about three weeks ago.
A video of the single letter, scrawled about a metre long
on the wall, was shared with Reuters by an activist from a group called
“Resistance”, whose members risk certain execution to conduct small
acts of defiance in areas under Islamic State rule.
Nearly two years since Islamic State leader Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi delivered a sermon from that same mosque summoning Muslims
worldwide to the “caliphate”, it is fraying at the edges.
As an array of forces make inroads into their territory
spanning Iraq and Syria, the jihadis are becoming even harsher to
maintain control of a population that is increasingly hostile to them,
according to Iraqi officials and people who managed to escape.
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Source: euronews.
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