Podcasts about mosul eye

After two decades of violent conflict in the city of Mosul, Iraq, Dr Omar Mohammed, founder of the Mosul Eye organisation, started a tree-planting initiative to help bring communities together. In the United States, Dr Marc Zimmerman examined how greening and improvement initiatives reduced crime in cities that had suffered economic decline. In this episode, Dr Omar Mohammed and Dr Marc Zimmerman, interviewed by Dr Nafees Hamid, discuss the role of greening initiatives in these two different contexts, exploring how they can promote peace, build trust between communities and authorities, and help to increase resilience against violent crime and extremism. This research is being undertaken as part of a project called XCEPT, which is funded by UK International Development from the UK government; however, the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK government's official policies. XCEPT aims to understand the drivers of violent and peaceful behaviour in conflict-affected populations – and to find solutions that support peace. Find out more about XCEPT at xcept-research.org.

Julie interviews Omar Mohammed, an amazingly courageous Iraqi citizen and founder of Mosul Eye where he documents what it was like to live under ISIS. Topics include: police crush Irvo Otieno last month at a Virginia hospital; the LAUSD union launches a three day strike.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Alice interviews historian Dr Omar Mohammed, founder of the acclaimed Mosul Eye blog. When ISIS captured Mosul in 2014, Omar began posting regular updates to keep people informed and to counter misinformation – and his blog became a vital source of information both for those within the city and the wider world. He posted regularly throughout the occupation and liberation of Mosul, and has since turned his attention to Mosul's recovery, using the blog to promote cross-cultural understanding as well as raising Mosul's profile internationally. Mosul Eye has a lot to teach us about representations of conflict, particularly those that are produced while a war is ongoing, and it is a real testament to what the public documentation of a war can achieve, in the aftermath as well as during a conflict.In the podcast, Omar explains that he began keeping a diary to document what life was like on the ground during conflict after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. However, it was only in 2014 when ISIS/Daesh captured Mosul, that he started blogging publicly, with no idea at the time how long his blog - or the occupation - would last. As a historian, he wanted to provide the people of Mosul and wider audiences with accurate accounts of events as they were unfolding in real time; but he also used the blog to preserve the names of victims and build up a reliable record for posterity, so that future generations could understand what went on.  Crucially, his blog posts narrated many small, everyday details, painting a holistic picture of the conflict rather than focusing on major events. His correction of fake news and exposure of atrocities meant that he and the blog were targeted by Daesh, but he persevered despite the risks, viewing his writing as a way to fight back. Over time, Mosul Eye became so well known that major news organisations turned to it to verify or flesh out their stories, and Omar was able to leverage the growing influence he had to help rescue people and families from the city and collect books for the University's stricken library. Since Mosul's liberation, Omar has used his position to put Mosul on the global map in positive ways, building bridges between different communities and kick-starting a major tree-planting programme, to help the people of Mosul visualise a greener, more peaceful future and to connect them to wider efforts to address climate change. His blog has helped him and others to grasp the profound and sometimes unseen destruction that war brings; but it also testifies to the power of history writing and digital media to promote peace, healing and renewal. Among other questions, Alice asked:what prompted Omar to begin blogging as 'Mosul Eye' in 2014 and what his initial goal waswhat aspects of the occupation and liberation he decided to focus on, and whyhow the people of Mosul, the media and the wider international community responded to Mosul Eyewhat role his blog played in the 'information war' which accompanies conflict in the digital agehow different live blogging is from writing the history of a conflict with the benefit of hindsightwhat role blogging can play in helping people visualise peace/renewal as well as warWe hope you enjoy the episode! To find out more about Mosul Eye, please visit the website. For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please have a look on the University of St Andrews Visualising War website.  Music composed by Jonathan YoungSound mixing by Zofia Guertin 

“There is actually still a lot of pro ISIS material on Instagram” – Anne Craanen, Tech against Terrorism. The power of the internet is open to everyone – terrorists included. This time our expert panel – including Anne Craanen and Omar Mohammed who, as the ‘Mosul Eye', risked his life using social media to tell the world about the brutal occupation of Mosul -  lift the lid on Daesh's skilful use of the web and social media. We also hear from journalist Marc Marginedas, held hostage by the infamous “Beatles” as yet another part of the group's deadly propaganda machine. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2014, ISIS, also known as Daesh, seized the city of Mosul, Iraq, and a battle involving ISIS, American-led coalition forces, and national Iraqi forces ensued. It was then that Iraqi historian Omar Mohammed began to document cases of civilian harm on his anonymous blog, Mosul Eye, risking his life to ensure history would remember their names.Guest: Omar Mohammed (Mosul Eye)This podcast is brought to you by CIVIC and PAX. This episode was written by Marc Garlasco and Annie Shiel with assistance from Monica Zuraw, Dan Mahanty, Erin Bell, and Selma van Oostwaard. You can access the full interview with Omar Mohammed (Mosul Eye) under bonus materials on www.protectionsofcivilians.org and www.civiliansinconflict.org.This episode included clips from Al Jazeera, BBC. 

When the Islamic State group seized control of Mosul in 2014, the local historian Omar Mohammed made a promise to himself and his city: document everything, trust no one. He created the anonymous blog Mosul Eye and risked his life to secretly report the daily atrocities committed by the militants. He lived next door to a senior IS commander and sometimes even went incognito as a baker, grocer or taxi driver just to get more information. It was work that could get him killed and no one knew he was Mosul Eye – not even his mother. But soon, the double life that Omar was leading began taking its toll. Would his cover get blown? Presenter: Emily Webb Producer: Maryam Maruf and Andrea Kennedy Picture: Omar Mohammed Credit: International Festival of Journalism Any comments please email us on outlook@bbc.com

When the Islamic State group seized control of Mosul in 2014, the local historian Omar Mohammed made a promise to himself and his city: document everything, trust no one. He created the anonymous blog Mosul Eye and risked his life to secretly report the daily atrocities committed by the militants. He lived next door to a senior IS commander and sometimes even went incognito as a baker, grocer or taxi driver just to get more information. It was work that could get him killed and no one knew he was Mosul Eye – not even his mother. But soon, the double life that Omar was leading began taking its toll. Would his cover get blown? Presenter: Emily Webb Producer: Maryam Maruf and Andrea Kennedy Picture: Omar Mohammed Credit: International Festival of Journalism Any comments please email us on outlook@bbc.com

The Long Road to Stability “How does a historian [ethnographer] write about violence [against  the history of his own city]? How can he make sense of violent acts, for  himself and for his readers, without compromising its sheer excess and  its meaning-defying core? How can he remain a scholarly observer when  the country of his birth is engulfed by terror?” These were the questions raised by Errol Valentine Daniel in his book  „Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence” on the work of Omar  Mohammed, the Iraqi historian and journalist behind Mosul Eye –  the anonymous news blog that reported on conditions in Mosul and the  atrocities carried out by ISIS during the group's occupation of the  city. As one of the main sources of information on daily life in the city  under ISIS control, the Mosul Eye blog was a crucial resource for the  outside world. Since Mosul was liberated, Omar Mohammed continues to  work to support the revival of the city. His focus has now shifted to developing civil society, having  transformed Mosul Eye into a collective of citizen activists and a  global platform for the world to interact with and support the city's  recovery. He will give an insight on the current situation and recent developments in Mosul and in Iraq. Omar Mohammed is a Mosuli historian and civil society practitioner. He  focuses his scholarly work on conceptual history and research dealing  with local historiographies and narratives, micro-histories and  Orientalism. Omar is a regular media commentator on Iraq, has an MA in  Middle East History from the University of Mosul, and was named 2013  Researcher of the Year by Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education and  Scientific Research. His doctoral research in Europe explores history  and historians in 19th and 20th century Mosul. He was also a 2018 Yale  Greenberg World Fellow. Moderation: Gudrun Harrer, Author, senior editor Der Standard

GCSP insights: This man ran a secret blog while hiding from ISIS and the question do nuclear weapons really keep us safe? Omar Mohammed might be the bravest historian alive today. For more than two years, Mohammed lived in his home city of Mosul, Iraq, secretly documenting the occupation by Islamic State militants. However, rather than just collecting intelligence, Mohammed risked his life to write an anonymous online blog, Mosul Eye, that became one of the main sources of information for the outside world about life inside the city, including for foreign journalists. Ray Acheson is the Director of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s (WILPF) Disarmament Programme. Speaking with the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, Acheson said the notion of nuclear deterrence is outdated and dangerous.

When the Islamic State group took over Mosul in Iraq in 2014 they flooded the internet with propaganda, claiming life under IS was fantastic. One historian living in the city decided to post a counter-narrative online, setting up a website called "Mosul Eye". Also in this edition, one black man's experience of growing up in Hitler's Germany; the gruesome death of the famous bullfighter Paquirri, switching on the Large Hadron Collider and the birth of the Sound of Music on Broadway in 1959. (Photo: Mosul Eye website. BBC)

When the Islamic State group took over Mosul in Iraq in 2014 they flooded the internet with propaganda, claiming life under IS was fantastic. One historian living in the city decided to post a counter-narrative online. Omar Mohammed set up "Mosul Eye" to expose the atrocities and failings of IS fighters, but it was at great risk to his own safety. Omar tells Rebecca Kesby how he posted news from Mosul to the outside world from right under the noses of the Islamic State group. He says he felt it was his duty to tell the real story. (Photo: Mosul Eye website. BBC)

This episode, we travel to Paris to meet a historian from Mosul named Omar Mohammed. He's the man behind the secretive blog and Twitter account "Mosul Eye" (@mosuleye). He’ll tell us all about his life, his family, his love of Mosul’s history, and his concerns for the future of Mosul, Iraq and the greater Middle East. Read more about the 2016-17 Mosul offensive in our special report here https://www.defenseone.com/feature/mosul-largest-battle-decade-future-of-war/ Next week we’ll be back with more on the 2017 Mosul offensive from Mike Giglio of The Atlantic. He was there for the offensive, and he’s got a book coming out on it all this autumn. And we’ll hear from former CIA man Dan Gabriel, who just produced a documentary on the Mosul offensive called simply enough: “Mosul.”

Yale World Fellow Omar Mohammed discusses life under ISIS rule in Iraq and how he anonymously documented the actions of ISIS through his blog Mosul Eye.

When his beloved city was occupied by Islamic State, Iraqi Omar Mohammed was determined to document every atrocity – as anonymous blogger Mosul Eye

Episode 368with Omar Mohammednarrated by Sam Dolbee Download the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudWhat does it mean to study the past in the midst of momentous change in the present? In this special episode, we discuss history and history-in-the-making with Omar Mohammed, a scholar and activist from Mosul. For several years, Omar was an undercover chronicler of ISIS through the blog and Facebook group Mosul Eye. Currently, he is working on a Ph.D. project about the history and historiography of Mosul in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We examine the connections between the two endeavors, all the while exploring modern Iraqi history and, with it, colonialism, nationalism, regional connections, and everyday life.« Click for More »

"What happened after 2014 is another chapter of what happened to this city" say Omar Mohammed, when speaking about his home city of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. Mohammed was born in Mosul during some of the worst moments of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. “I was born on 8 April, the Baath party was born on 7 April, and the fall of the regime was on 9 April. I turned 17 when I saw the [US] invasion ... 2014 changed everything in my country," he explains. Mohammed was in Mosul under the corrupt Iraqi army, after the US invasion and while the Islamic State (referred to as ISIS: Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, pre-2014) was beginning to strengthen and grow. At the time they already had a foothold in Mosul: “We were used to seeing [car] bombs, weekly there were dead bodies in the street, people gett[ing] kidnapped, people paying taxes to the jihadists. The corruption among the security forces [was] something that was being normalised in the city for about 10 years. The city was terrorised I would say,” explains Mohammed. Even then, heading out to work was not an easy situation. “When I wake up and go out, the first thing I think about: am I going to die?” One story in particular - which is well known among Mosul residents - is about a businessman who refused to pay IS before they seized control of the city in 2014. So to send the man a message "they put a bomb in the car of his son on his wedding day", some time in 2011 or 2012. "After that they told him that if he was not going to pay he should prepare another grave for his other son." Although the Iraqi security forces were in Mosul until 2014, Mohammed points out that such threats were common. “If I get threatened by ISIS, I can’t go to the Iraqi security forces or to the police because they are corrupted and my name will go directly to ISIS and they will come to kill me. So we were blocked in the middle of this corruption and ISIS.” IS enters Mosul Although news of the newly-formed Islamic State armed group in nearby cities was known across Mosul, many chose to stay. In fact, when they arrived, even the Turkish consulate stayed while the former governor appeared in public telling people not to worry  and that everything was ok, explains Mohammed. He adds that as the diplomatic staff didn’t leave, most people didn’t see the need to run away. Even after IS arrived in June of 2014, it didn't show its true colours. "At the very beginning, ISIS (Islamic State of Syria post-2014) wanted to give the people [the impression] that they were there to protect the city, to take the city from the control of the corrupted government. It was very misleading.The people didn’t understand,” adds Mohammed. But then in three weeks things had changed.  “It’s like they pressed [a] button. Everything changed in two days." Mohammed remembers receiving a list of what was permitted and the consequences if people refused to obey. Public executions started, beheadings in the streets, arrests, lashes for not attending mosque, throwing LGBT people off buildings and stoning women on allegations of adultery - actions which took Mosul back to the Middle Ages, he says. Everyone was expected to attend public executions if they were being filmed. A crew of camera men would often repeat the scenes, explaining that a given camera angle or position was not good enough to take a decent shot. Mosul Eye launched The day IS arrived to take over the city, Mohammed says he was using his personal account to post everything. The attack came at 3:00 am on 6 June, an account of which he posted on his personal account as Omar. However, a friend who saw his post told him to be careful. Mohammed erased his personal profile and created an anonymous one called Mosul Eye. “It wasn’t just to share info with others, it was more telling the truth about what’s happening in the city” he explains, adding that the people of Mosul were in a black box. "They couldn’t get out and people couldn’t get in. If no one knew the truth about what was really happening to them, then how would future generations know" he asks. “If there wasn’t another narrative, people would only suspect what happened, they would start investigating and they would find only the narrative of ISIS. So we [would have] lost the truth.” As a trained historian, Mohammed risked his life and that of his family’s to chronicle the day-to-day life in the city. Every day, he would post on his blog stories about how the people lived, the crimes of IS, what IS have done to the people, along with the names of the victims, the impact of the airstrikes. He also listed the names of IS fighters who were killed - in fact, everything that happened. At times he would push his own security boundaries of risk to take photos or videos. But all of this was done to ensure the history of the city was accurately being recorded. Writing about Mosul No one knew of his blog. Not even his family. While Mosul Eye was intended for English-speakers, he had other blogs under various names to target Iraqis. He wanted to clarify a misunderstanding amongst Iraqis outside Mosul that the people of Mosul supported IS, something which was clearly not true. So his blogs became a trusted platform, especially his Mosul Eye among the international community. Even those in his own city were reading his blog through the help of family and friends who could access them outside of the city and report the news. But shouldering the responsibility of such a chronicle became a burden and one that he couldn’t share. “I was so tired, that I couldn’t express my feelings to my mother, to my brother, to my sister. It was heavy on my shoulders, so I thought the only option is to die” he explains. "So I went to the Tigris River, drinking tea, wearing red, smoking publicly,” says Mohammed. He waited for IS to kill him. But to his surprise, no one noticed him. A few months later he decided it was time for him to leave. He had been receiving numerous threats on his blog from IS, and they were getting more active within the neighbourhoods, by searching houses. There was an IS leader living in the house next to his. His neighbourhood in particular had become surrounded by IS. “If they find me, I’m ready to die, but this is my family. I’ve been protecting them for more than a year, so why should I give them up?" he asked himself. The result is that he made arrangements to be smuggled out of the city. Mohammed explains that he left with his notebook and his hard drive that contained every observation about his Mosul under IS. While the car waited for him at six in the morning to sneak him out of the city, he quickly woke his mother up to say a quick good bye without offering any details so as ensure her safety. Even in the safety of Turkey and elsewhere, Mohammed continued to update Mosul Eye until the city was liberated. In November of 2017, he finally decided to reveal his identity and in doing so relieve himself of the burden he had been carrying for nearly two years. He explains that while he had initially vowed to never reveal himself, the liberation of Mosul meant there was no longer a threat to his family. He also wanted the people of his city to learn to trust again. How could they could learn to do so if he didn’t make that first step to reveal his identity,  he asks. On top of all those reasons is the most basic one: “I was also tired of hiding.” Since he revealed his identity, Mohammed has been telling his story to different media outlets and working on his doctoral thesis. He also writes in an effort to move on and find security amongst people. “I’m writing now, writing from the beginning of my life and will continue until the end," he explains. "Writing is helping me to get all of these ideas and images out of my mind." He’s also trying to be as involved as possible from a distance with the cultural revival in his city; a city he hopes to go back to very soon. You can follow Omar Mohammed on Twitter on @omardemosul and @MosulEye