Middle East Notes – Unedited – Unverified (*Graphic Content)



Update: May 22, 2015

Iraq:

Total Population: 32,585,692
Available Manpower: 15,229,095
Fit for Service: 13,012,902
Reaching Military Age Annually: 654,204]
Active Frontline Personnel: 271,500
Active Reserve Personnel: 528,500

LAND SYSTEMS
Tank value includes Main Battle Tanks, light tanks and tank destroyers, either wheeled or tracked. AFV value includes Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) and Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs).

Tanks: 297
Armored Fighting Vehicles (AFVs): 5,173
Self-Propelled Guns (SPGs): 103
Towed-Artillery: 136
Multiple-Launch Rocket Systems (MLRSs): 59

AIR POWER
Includes both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft from all branches of service.

Total Aircraft: 231
Fighters/Interceptors: 0
Fixed-Wing Attack Aircraft: 12
Transport Aircraft: 141
Trainer Aircraft: 52
Helicopters: 147
Attack Helicopters: 10

NAVAL POWER
Aircraft Carrier value includes dedicated “helicopter carrier” vessels. Total naval strength includes all known auxiliaries as well.

Total Naval Strength: 88
Aircraft Carriers: 0
Frigates: 0
Destroyers: 0
Corvettes: 0
Submarines: 0
Coastal Defense Craft: 23
Mine Warfare: 0

RESOURCES (PETROLEUM)
Despite the advances made in battlefield technology, oil remains the lifeblood of any fighting force as well as local economy.

Oil Production: 3,400,000 bbl/day
Oil Consumption: 820,000 bbl/day]
Proven Oil Reserves: 141,400,000,000 bbl/day

LOGISTICAL
War is as much a battle of logistics – moving man and machine from points all over – as it is direct combat. Labor Force reflects possible wartime industry strength.

Labor Force: 8,900,000
Merchant Marine Strength: 2]
Major Ports and Terminals: 3
Roadway Coverage: 44,900
Railway Coverage: 2,272
Serviceable Airports: 102

FINANCIAL (in USD)
Regardless of military strength in numbers, war is still driven by financing as much as any one leader or weapon.

Defense Budget: $6,055,000,000
External Debt: $59,490,000,000
Reserves of Foreign Exchange and Gold: $71,240,000,000
Purchasing Power Parity: $249,400,000,000

GEOGRAPHY (in km)
Geographical values primarily figure into a defensive-minded war (i.e. invasion).

Square Land Area: 438,317 km
Coastline: 58 km
Shared Border: 3,809 km
Waterways: 5,279 km

from The RINJ Foundation in Mosul.

We have a number of clinics here and make-shift schools and community centers in the city of Mosul for Yazidis, Jews and Catholics. (Christians) and any women who need the help of an expanded Women’s clinic (RINJ Sexual Assault Clinic – RSAC).
Last week we had trouble with many families being arrested. It was about a sloppy failed escape attempt. Not ours. We always succeeded but this last thing caused a lock down of the city. We have important Christians ready to go and now they are hunted.

Suppliers are still able to go in and out of the city for medical supplies. We are in 5 locations and turn no patient away but mostly help Yazidi, Jew and Christian children and their families. We have 3 schools–we never thought we would be doing that. Any school not ultra-Islam is destroyed or stopped–so kids are having nothing to do–walking on the street safely for children is destroyed by random religion checks, random rapes, so the kids can’t go out so we use some of our spaces for moms and kids to have a class three times a day at each place.

Many of us who are uniquely skilled are also working in three hospitals under Daesh rules which are not good medically so some even doctors fed up with that and only work with us. We need another anesthesia machine or a replacement gas analyzer urgently.  We are doing so many things not in our first mandate. We were successful in the past at smuggling kids out and people have come to count on us but it sucks now. Now we reach out to get some help getting people out. Some would be willing to give interviews once they are far from here and not near Daesh. Some have money. Do you think you know who can help? We can get them to Hewler.

 

It is late and I have not slept for a couple days because power outages force us to bed-sit criticals as of Monitors not having batteries that work.

Feb 18, 2015
Everything worked out with the families. We had good offers of help but they looked sketchy so we ended up using our own resources. The thing is that we were trying to find new resources in the city and at the came time learn really jut how bad things are. We have been focussed on our work and living like cave dwellers.

We had a nurse who was schedule for here but that got switched to Aleppo because of the lock down so she went to Erbil, met the delivery and accompanied the three families to Europe. Everything went without a hitch. The two little girls are very sick (I think they drank some bad water) so it’s good Monique went with them. She has them into the hospital right away to get some ringers into them. (dehydration)

Quite frankly things here are very messed up and it is a huge embarrassment to us sometimes that we have to work with the Daesh by doing cases and shifts in the hospital with the local doctors, some of whom we work with regularly in the clinics we have here. The local girls are frustrated but we also see that some people draw boundary lines on the basis of religion.

I assure you all sides behave badly. Anyway, we at Mosul who started the first clinic provide care for anyone who does not present a safety issue to anyone. We are neutral. Our main goal is to deal with women and children GBV survivors.

The locals kind of hate each other in this city. I love the Yazidis, Catholics and jews. Maybe I only know their scared personas but I tell you the sunnis and the shiites are jackasses. Hateful people. Arguing about anything. Have to be right.

The Daesh have killed doctors and nurses and many have fled. They are stupid. The bombs cause a lot of crush injuries and many other traumas. They need top notch surgical teams but just piss everyone off with their religious interference which is inconsistent with good medical/sterlization protocols.

 

Feb 19, 2015

I heard that all foreign fighters with the Kurdish forces have been invited to all go home.
Everything is exaggerated about the capability of forces opposing ISIS. They do that to get more money and military equipment. They don’t know how to use it and are more dangerous to themselves than to ISIS. This place is so corrupt it’s unbelievable. I don’t trust anything.

Rumours fly about Baghdad planning to take Mosul very soon. I think when pigs and cows fly they will take Mosul. I heard and I believe that there were many American built tanks here but that there were not Iraqi soldiers to drive them because some of the soldiers who were in charge pretended they had a list of tank drivers who all got money but the money went to the officer who made the list up. No people, just pay checks and fat cats swilling liquor and getting fatter. They are fat! I have videos. The reason why ISIL took the city so easily is because there was no army here. Just a lot of equipment that was hardly broken in. A big payroll and no people. Probably lots of fake fuel bills and bills for bullets.

Many citizens don’t want to get blown to bits. There are many very pious Daesh who are calm and pleasant. They like to argue softly about religion and argue sideways so that you can’t get mad at them. So people who see that say they are silly but nice. Others get the crap beat out of them by a different and more common type of Daesh. Those people and their communities are afraid. Both types of people (perceptions of Daesh) don’t want an invasion. But the Daesh are raiding houses and confiscating the stuff people left behind. A lot of very nice things. But when they have ransacked a neighborhood street, the leave and are bored and get nasty.

When the fight starts for the city they will all get very nasty and just kill everyone. They have no feelings. They bully weaker people. Right now they bully people into helping them.

A lot of smarter people than me have pulled their folks out of this place. I can see in the distance what one bomb does. If one hits a building where there are a lot people of the community, we are all done at once. I don’t believe the robot planes can figure things out. Most people, I believe, don’t go out unless they absolutely must. They have no way of telling who is who. There are hundreds of thousands of people here.

Anyway, there’s a little of the general background that you could learn from anyone. I am going to make some decisions about what our plan should be. Do you have an opinion?

Feb 20, 2015
I have noticed that rape survivors can behave in a strange way especially if the abuse was while they were very young. Probably we have discussed the behaviour owned by such a person. Some of my sisters are eccentric some days like me and some are not. In every case, whatever they are and whatever they do that steps off the path of normalcy (whatever that is), I forgive them. If they have big stories to make up for their feeling of inadequacies I will pat them on the back and cheer the loudest. Enough said on that.

Feb 21, 2015

URGENT CARE BACKGROUND – MOSUL
What can be observed of many of the people practicing medicine in Mosul is that they are having good intentions. Some are not. Some are tattle tellers to the Daesh religious cops, or the Daesh commanders.

The Mosul Medical College of the University of Mosul is in operation and the people there are under a severe burden. They are watched like hawks watch mice. They are always in danger. Some of the mothers we give safe harbour to are from the school. I have seen some younger mothers leap to the aid of one of our nurses like they knew more than just a mom who never talks to us would. Also we had an incident where some cavacide  cleaning had to be done on some contaminated surfaces and some people had to be sterilized and we got high quality help from a bystander in the classroom where we keep the kids occupied (their schools are shut down so we have taken in volunteer teachers and they use some space that would be used for storage if we had anything to store).

The functioning general care hospitals in the city are:  Al-Salam teaching hospital, Ibn Alatheer hospital, Mosul Military Hospital (now called Mosul General Hospital), Al Jamhuri hospital, Ibn seena hospital, Al Khansaa teaching hospital,  and Al Batool hospital.

We work extensively with graduates of Mosul Medical College of the University of Mosul.  Some of the people of there came to work with us since the end of 2013. Many are now in the UN Refugee Camps where we have improvised temp clinics and with MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières). Many MSF people also work with RINJ but RINJ supplies all the mental health care for where it has coexisting facilities. It is only in Mosul to our knowledge that RINJ Sexual Assault Clinics (RSAC) are performing general medicine procedures with MD’s and surgeons in a Ist-level out-of-hospital surgical status. Treatment of pts who do not qualify for the now Sectarian health care facilities in Mosul have been in dire need and hence the practising level of RSAC grew de facto and then changed internally with the upgrade to a Level 1 facility with the help of Drs who needed an alternative area to practice in safety. Some of our nurses are foreign trained with O/R experience alongside highly-renowned surgeons.

  • Mosul health care was substandard even in 2013 at the highest point of the city.
  • Since the ISIS took over in June 2014 the health care is a disgusting disaster with sterility, cleanliness, function, supplies, pt intake and out pt care, all below standard.
  • There are six emergency units in Mosul as distinct units within general hospitals that serve (collectively) Mosul population. Two have observation unit beds, laboratory services, imaging facilities, pharmacies with safe storage, and ambulatory entrance. Operation room was is in only one hospital’s urgent care wing.
  • Consultation/track area, cubicles for infection control, and discrete tutorial rooms were not available anywhere. Pt assessment is performed without adequate privacy.
  • The emergency specialist, family medicine specialist and interested general practitioners exist in one hospital only. Psychiatrist, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and social work links are not available anywhere.
  • The shortage in medication, urgent vaccines and vital facilities is an obvious problem.
  • All standards of care are underdeveloped.
  • Support from normal suppliers like linen, laundry, scrubs, solutions, Rx,, imaging supplies, radiology supplies, O2 and other gasses, are corrupt and the deliverables are substandard where that is possible. Expired meds and out of service date devices and prosthetic enhancements — it is often necessary to bend the rules to get a pt cared for.
  • Biological Waste disposal practices are not being followed and bio-waste freezers have lunches, odd packages and other items but for some reason are marked as off limits for nurses but normally it is only nurses who do Bio-Waste protocols. (https://rinj.org/documents/Medical_Forms//The-RINJ-Foundation-Biological-Waste-Disposal.pdf)
  • Any questions about bio-waste disposal have been met with angry dismissal.

DONOR ORGANS

We had an issue with an Organ transplant at the General Hospital which opened a Pandora’s box. One of our people is a preferred sx nurse to a surgeon at The Military Hospital.

(I made an escalated report on an event that one of our people participated in that is not normal except in a war zone. This happened in the Military Hospital which likely is the only place where successful advanced surgery for prolonged periods can be conducted.)
One of our nurses helped transfer a good liver from a cadaver that matched the O/R recipient who was open-sx and under GA.  The vessels supplying blood to a traumatized organ were good, pancreas and bile duct were good but a tearing wound was in a bad area, traversing at an angle, severing almost completely the liver.

A transplant was indicated or death was certain. There was no consent, they did what they had to do and saved the pt. A circ nurse had located a pt  in the hospital who should be a match.

The first story we got after much screaming by the surgical team was that the donor was reported to be in third cardiac arrest and the recovery attempt was at 20 minutes and failed–the first arrest had been over 45 minutes before recovery took effect which means a likely brain and other organ damage. (They didn’t know in critical care until they checked the metrics later) But we only found this out because the pt on the table was a Daesh fighter of some importance. He had been driving his military vehicle with some others and a robot plane saw them and made bombers drop explosives on him. Somebody in the hospital changed the status of the donor at some  point and then revealed the truth about the whereabouts. He had friends hanging aroun dthe O/R and they were VIPs, slightly injured fighters and very dirty from explosions.

( Pretty fishy.)

The pt was likely brain dead for some time already and deterioration was incipient. The donor pt was supposed to have been sent to imaging but at first couldn’t be found. The pt was on record which the team’s circ nurse found, as being deceased, but couldn’t find the pt. The surgeon went ballistic and said in many non-o/r, non-surgical words, ‘find the pt/organ’.

Everything matched. They found the pt via the nurse grapevine. The pt was on life support and somebody was breathing the pt on a third cardiopulmonary arrest. Heart had been 80 and BP had been maintained artificially with vasopressor drugs at 76/45. The surgeon was furious and sent scrubbed staff to go get the pt (very unorthodox). They wheeled the pt in, rescrubbed and did the procedure.
We were confused by what all this meant when we sat around and discussed in the dark later and at first began to fit things together because have seen no signs of an ability to transport organs out but heard complaints that somebody was running an organ-for-sale business. I only know from two hospitals that the procedures for transplants are ad hoc. We speculated later that the manner of preserving some organs was to life-support preserve the pt. That only lasts so long because there can be a lot of deterioration so we suspect that there is a process for removing organs that has a schedule of three days. That’s a good guess based on how long you can quash internal infections. Internal infections would make havoc on many organs in the peritoneum.

(This started a few rumours but out of the bullshit rumours we heard that there was a Daesh guy in the hospital, probably a rogue, was harvesting downstairs. We even think we know the driver who picks them up. We even think he goes to Baghdad. We don’t know where else. It takes about 5 hours six maybe one way. He leaves and comes back in 14 hours. We always try to figure out which suppliers might have some shared capacity for us. We always are careful and try to see who we can trust. Everyone secretly tries to talk to the nurses to see if they would like them or not. Pretty sketchy crowd.)

Medical supplies and equipment are not maintained. Sometimes you go do a tray for a procedure and you find something is missing. You Note on tray report to go into the O/R and nothing gets done about it. There are six levels of management (in no particular order-authority is on the hands of the one yelling the loudest at the time. Honestly, they are all corrupt.  I am told that is normal and that this is the new corruption. The doctors we see are mostly good but some may be corrupt but for sure are rich.

Medical Care Providers IN-HOSPITAL in Mosul

  • 1.      Real practitioners who use internationally acceptable standards;
  • 2.      same but go along with the ISIS religious police;
  • 3.      administrators who are friends with the Daesh;
  • 4.      those sad administrators who are not;
  • 5.      The Daesh; and
  • 6.      the Daesh rogues who are making their own businesses.Maybe the last one is where the Organ biz is run. For sure something is fishy and for sure we figured out how it gets done by exploiting the critical care and the Bio-Waste infrastructure.

 

We think the Surgeon of Pt X KNEW that shit was going on and that is why he was aggressive.

 

Feb 22, 2015

how long have you been in Mosul?

I am here on this leg since the end of January. Normally I am not the team leader but I replaced the team leader who went home for leave.  I was in  Syria through much of January except to make a trip from Erbil with ten boxes of supplies to our clinic near Aleppo. Before that I was on leave for Christmas. I was here from October 19 until Dec. 15 when I went to Sinjar and then Erbil and then on the above referenced leave for Christmas. In the end of summer 2014 and in the Fall of 2014 I was responsible for moving a lot of supplies to stock a place we have not far from al Raqqah. Mosul could no longer be our staging area. In 2013 I was in a couple parts of Syria and in Erbil.

Mosul is a picnic.

what is your role there?

I am in charge of the Mosul RSAC (RINJ Sexual Assault Clinics)  We say “R sack”. I explained to you before that the service delivery here has expanded. I was selected to write up a presentation for the Board of Directors. I used a democratic process polling among all staff and the community liaison women (three are appointed from each community) and then proposed their recommendations. It was a bit tricky because I had to audit our inventory and one of our more resourceful non-medical staff had been liberating medical supplies from the places Daesh have destroyed in Syria and we had stuff stockpiling at a growing rate and no way to account for it. Anyway, my proposal was accepted and got a lot of good feedback from the Board members directly. We are a pretty tight bunch of people. This was my first time to communicate at that level in my entire life.

 

In Mosul we have a person in charge of Security, a person in charge of Operations; a person in charge of Community Services. We have a head nurse. (I keep checking her for wings because she is an angel. They all are.)  Then we have other double-duty roles that are defined.  We have girls I can’t talk about who do logistics and integration for all operations in the Middle East and also we are getting inspected by the team that is doing Nigeria and other parts of Africa. Unfortunately we have been unable to bring the black girls here to show what we are doing.

Clearly we are paving new ground. The mental health care we do is my primary focus. RSAC cannot just be about gynecology and brains as it turns out we need to go back to the NGO basics and do what the host country failed to do– care for the children and their families. That means special education because rape survivors in most of the world cannot tell their family nor their community. We need to create an environment in which their basic needs are provided in isolation of people who would hurt them in any way.
are you able to get out and see much of Mosul and its inhabitants?

I am able to go anywhere especially downtown where there are crowds but I never go alone. When I go I just go for coffee and to get a change of pace. Some of the local women from the University or Grads are very open and wear white niqabs but I wear black which signifies “married”. I don’t like to hang out with the ‘single’ girls because they can be magnets for the Daesh. Also we are nurses which has special privilege because we can go to the University or to the hospital to work. We are different and can draw too much attention. That worries me.

what are general living conditions like;

If you are Sunni which is a huge part of the current t population here now, you are good. It is life as usual.
I am here doing what is in this city ,today, a crime.  I service the needs of woman suffering Gender-Based Violence. That’s illegal.

I am on a two-part mission which is to help survivors and catalogue the war crimes. I therefore operate outside the laws of these people (the Daesh).

That is in my head so I walk around in fear. Sometimes with others I do go and hangout. It was a very beautiful and RICH city. Mosques are destroyed; Catholic churches are demolished. I stood one day and stared at the crushed head of a statue of the Virgin  Mary . It must have been ancient and very beautiful. I wondered how many centuries of little adoring children had lit a candle in front of her; if she was watching me; and I cried. (You can’t get caught doing that.)  There are many sad things to see. People sort of walk by them–there are closed up places everywhere.

Here is a problem for me. My clients are forbidden to be alive here. Catholics, Christians,  Jews are not supposed to be here. Yazidis, especially girls and women, are highly valued by the Daesh and it is like an Easter Egg hunt to find them.

Every day in the early morning people start drifting into where I work. The women with their kids must come to me because the kids have no school. We converted some space at all five locations to handle kids because if they go out of their house kids will be arrested and taken to their homes where the Daesh will demand why are the kids not in religious Islam school. At that point the people can be busted for being caught as religions they don’t like. They will end up in a prison. Prisons are popping up all over. Families somehow find their loved ones and for whatever reason are able to locate a building. Horrible things happen to people there they say.

There are police everywhere. They are soldiers in taupe coloured uniforms without all the guns and bullets the fighters  normally have and some are ordinary people and Sunni teens, local RATS recruited to watch out for the public and the Daesh soldiers who get into trouble with stealing and shirking duty. An example is the “soldier” parties that spring up in random people’s houses–people who fled the city. We have spotted these near our clinics and it used to freak us out and all our clients.

Women stay hidden. Sunni women who are not nurses or doctors* must stay at home and may not work in the market with their families. They used to just work alongside their husbands or even have office jobs. Life has changed here completely. It is hell for the women. Many people who belonged to companies left.
Normally the day looks like this. I sleep where I work. We have 5 places in the city. That is more by accident than design because since June 10 last year we scrambled to move many times–each time some members of the Daesh military moved near us the people could not come and go. Too much risk seeing them coming and going. Daesh would take over people’s houses randomly and carry away people’s things. We never knew at first if they were on to us or if they were there randomly. We never took a chance. One mistake and many people die horrible deaths. We fled. We always have an eye for new facilities.  We go back to old ones and that’s how we grew to 5.  I am going to give you examples where we might locate a clinic but that does not mean that we did that. Abandoned skin care clinics; abandoned doctor’s office; abandoned textile company; abandoned American offices; shared space from a school that still operates illegally (like an old day care) etceteras.

enough water? electricity (how many hours a day?)
food? fresh produce? fuel?

Food is plentiful. Water is a disaster. Most infrastructure has failed. Garbage disposal we do ourselves. Electricity is random. About the water, it has killed people. The symptoms are like food poisoning. Diarrhea, dehydration, malaise, fever, stomach pains, vomiting:  I will send you some pictures of what the river looks like. OMG. All water is poisoned, literally. Water has always been a problem. Houses have tanks and some still have good water but they are getting fewer.
You must buy large bottles of water and that is extremely expensive and a big business. Also you can filter water after boiling it. We have one still for creating clean water and we use it at the main clinic. I don’t take care of water.
(I get a picture of medical care which you put as substandard) – any particular diseases people are getting hit with since Daesh takeover? Do local people have easy access to doctors?
The history of Mosul is one of bad medical care.  It has very good practitioners who are locally trained to a U. K. model of care. There are some issues we have but we are fussy and don’t know the culture in great detail. The administration of health care has been corrupt for a long time and practitioners share horror stories. The nurses usually know everything in a care facility. Here is no exception. We have amazing local nurses working in our units. We reciprocate and work with them. Their stories indicate dire issues at the administrative level. Incompetence and corruption are the problems that lead to poor care.

Again, RINJ Standards are Canadian. We are fussy but we get a good result. A single Kleenex get’s a flow-through tracking slot in the system. A Kleenex goes into the O/R it must be checked coming out that there are no corners missing (and left in a patient). The requirements for intake are also uber high. In the case of existing care in Mosul when I got here it was substandard. It is written up in global health care reports as being substandard. Today it is abominable.

Infections. I have seen so many breaches of sterilization levels.  What’s the matter with these people? They are sad and fed up. They are bullied and murdered. It’s not rocket science. You touch your nose or your ass with a gloved hand you are OUT of the room. Re scrub. Nope. Not here. It’s the whole attitude that’s wrong. I don’t give up my ethics. I will protect every patient completely.

I was fighting with an administrator (Daesh). I had sent out a sketchy girl who always has been trouble and a little rat and probably this admin was sexing her. I scolded her to  go from  the O/R to scrub properly and this admin guy was ripping me a new one at the doorway. I didn’t say a thing.  Started closing the door on him slowly listening. I stared at him in a rage thinking to myself–this is a bad day because you are willing to hurt my patient even though this  patient has likely raped one of my girls, I am fighting for this patient’s better care and you go against me.  In his eyes I saw evil like I have seen before. It’s professional staff versus administrative staff in an all out war. Daesh vs. normal.

is Daesh enforcing Sharia law? in what way?

Extreme. They arrest you and you disappear if you dress in  previous-normal  downtown Mosul wear.  Cover up. Most women know it is best to stay home.

 

I rock a black Niquap all the time. It gives me a comfortable feeling of anonymity. No complaints here.  There are check points and choke points randomly all over the city. It’s easier to leave the city than to go across it. They stop your car.  They check your garments.

You can’t get to work at a hospital without an inspection and inquisition. I am ducking cases. Some days I am scared and some days I secretly hope this is it. If they go near my thigh,  I am so fast ( late at night in the dark I practice) at pulling my Glock and blasting with dead accuracy.

This chick I once traveled Iraq/Syria with is a Peshmerga and she noted that I was getting sloppy and that I was letting the recoil mess up my second and third shot bringing it high. That’s because I was accustomed to using a compensator but now my firearm is cleaner and lighter. She got me to fix that problem. I once shot bulls eye competition, one handed for my centre fire rounds portion. No more one handed shooting. She was dead eye accurate even with my firearm which she wasn’t accustomed to. She gave me high marks for my sights. We had lots of practice. We got ourselves surrounded in the hills near the river on the other side of the Syrian border. That seems like years ago. I miss her.

would you say that Daesh ruling the city by fear?  are people scared of them?
Some Sunni people joke with them and are friendly. But remember, women cannot work here unless they are medical pros. Those would not be in the city core. Stay home or shop.

You can go for days without noticing anything unusual. Like going to market you see military people everywhere but they are driving places or whatever. The religious police are different and they are like pious teachers who are very friendly but deadly. They are the ones who we fear will discover us. With soldiers and cops I can turn my head and play the role of the married woman who does not talk to a man but with the religious police I can’t get away and the people I am with must cover for me. I don’t know all the answers but they ask religious questions that run deep like puzzles.
I once traveled with the security guys delivering boxes of goods, new staff, training people and getting people out of the country. The places we have in Syria are like summer fun camps and they see a lot of patients and help many more people (from the camps) compared to Mosul underground railroad hubs but the road I traveled in doing that work was extremely dangerous.

I have been in  about 12 firefights. Don’t picture me as a woman who sits back and cowers while the security guys take care of business. I was a people-smuggler for a while because there were rape survivors we rescued who needed medical care inroute and they were so hot (wanted) that we couldn’t be near them in our facilities and guarantee their/our/other’s safety. We have done trips of 800 kilometers into Turkey.

That was the role that started my strapping a concealed firearm.  I carry that in a thigh strapped holster which is a necessary discomfort. I have a very deadly package I can get at very quickly and my plan is to kill as many of them as I can before offing myself. They will not take me alive.

I carry two 15-round clips. In my own life I am a rape survivor but I have encountered maybe 80 cases a week directly or indirectly and I have a mind full of mayhem sometimes when these people try and trip me up with their religion. I know if I make a mistake I will get beaten, raped, hung, beheaded, whatever.

I practice what I preach. I tell the women if you get caught scream as loud as you can, run and fight to run and fight in the run. Don’t look back. Don’t go slow and find safety. Use anything as a weapon. Don’t stand in line to be raped because in the end you die anyway.

My closest friend here among the local women is a nurse and she tells me that I come across as very pious and a little arrogant and they take that as meaning that I seem to know my stuff and am angry they should ask such a pious person; also my eyes give a Syrian Sunni (which is partly my family background) appearance. I am 80% fear in moving around the city because normally I am doing things and carrying things I don’t want to be caught with. In any case she says I answer much smarter than most people. I am paranoid. I don’t believe her.

We are all running on our autonomous fight and flight nervous system. We are unwanted people and they kill unwanted people here after doing horrible things to them.

But to go chill at a fave tea place on al-Najafi st. I am relaxed. I like it. This city is beautiful. It needs beautiful people. Maybe the dichotomy is that I am hiding the beautiful people and don’t belong here myself at a nice table shooting the shit with the girls .
are Daesh disciplined or no?

Yes.  They are afraid of their leadership if that is what you mean. But also it is an extremely well managed organization. I get challenged by saying this. They don’t march around doing goose-step stuff like the North Koreans or the Turks but they have a structured leadership that starts with a single titular head of the organization through a cabinet and then a subset of regional managers descending to a local commander.  The local commanders seem lax here. They don’t want to piss of their supporters. But they don’t want to annoy their fighters either so they have the run of the city and can rape anything they like.  A temporary marriage is granted to all fighters and girls 9 and up are fair game.

The city is a bee hive of activity. Many military things are happening. For sure the people outnumber the military but among the people, most are Sunni and they are sympathizers. Non-Sympathizers must hide all the time. There are many places to hide. The Daesh go try and find them sometimes. They make a big deal of capturing Christians and just kill them in the market.
do women need to be covered? can women go outside on their own?

100% must be covered.  Slits for the eyes. Black or white | married or single — No excuses.  Don’t even take a chance. It draws a lot of attention. The local Sunni’s will get a cop. They stare at the person. I have seen it.
You can’t go to work as a woman. You can go to the market or to be a customer anywhere. You can go for walks and just hang out like anywhere else. But no work. (Except nurses.) If you are not religious Islam you better not take your kids to play outside because if you get stopped your kids will give the wrong answers and you are done.
are shops open? how about schools?
Shops yes, no schools. Only a few very extreme Islam schools are open. The rest are closed, destroyed even.  Text books are burned publicly. I have asked RINJ to send more books but that’s been a problem. Probably there is a security aspect or a priority thing I missed. Our people are very smart.

law and order?

Military police and religious police. The religious police are the worst because they persist. The others are dickheads.
are there executions and crucifixions? Have you witnessed any?

Not much lately but last year it was common. I took many pictures. I have since deleted them one day when it looked like I was going to be caught. I deleted everything on my Curve because it also contained pics of colleagues.  Every now and again you encounter a bad scene and move on. I spend my life locked up inside working because we are once again inadequate to the tasks we have.

Yes, we have seen things that we didn’t want to see. Normally nurses see people’s innards  in a different way but if you ever worked in E/R the exposure to indiscriminate brutality of a bus crash or a plane crash prepares you a little to see the Daeshs’s work at brutal murder. They get their best psychopaths to do their phsy-ops brutality. It leaves ordinary people in shock. Many thousands of people here need mental health care. Many are just plain numb. It hurts me to know what I know and to think how a normal person feels.

Late at night I have done duty in the school wherein many kids overnight especially if outside there has been Daesh activity.  I have heard their stories. I have held little girls heads against my chest and rocked them to sleep because I know that is the only escape they have from their minds wherein are stored pictures nobody should have seen.

The Iraqis did not care for the children and their families, nor do the Daesh.

Too many people need help and we are understaffed. We are inadequate. As more time goes by more patients appear with symptoms of PTSD.  Many arrive with STD’s or worse from being raped. They don’t all tell us that but we do examinations and talk softly and soon  we know. we have rules about patient privacy. It is foremost.

We had a guy bring us a daughter and I overheard him telling an English nurse (who didn’t speak the language well) that he had done a two-finger test on the daughter to see if she was a virgin.  The nurse was angered and called one of the security guys. He didn’t get it and being a big girl she grabbed the dude and marched him to the door. He hit her and the daughter screamed; women who had been sitting along the wall ran to the classroom mats and  their children on the other side of the huge room and our girl lost it on the rapist. He was a Kurd and the horrible fact is that we all in one sudden moment realized there are no good people here.  They are all misogynistic barbaric  heathens. He used his fingers to rape his own daughter and had been yelling his entitlement.

No good men. Only the kids and their moms taking care of them. I grabbed the little girl and held her. She was indifferent as my beautiful and fierce colleague beat the living shit out of the rapist father who with every swing at the nurse took two on the chin from the angry woman.

One security guard was holding the other one back saying let it go.  The man gave up trying to overwhelm the nurse and he backed up and left. Security closed the door and turned to us all and told us to pack up and get ready to leave. They called in their shift replacements to come right away and soon there were four of our security people 50/50 m/f.

We all left and waited somewhere else to learn if the noise brought more trouble. It didn’t. The girl’s story I will tell another time.  We kept the child in our sight for a couple weeks before we found her loving grandma and cousins and they are all together now.

We treat things like Chlamydia with older method Erythromycin regimen instead of single dose Azithromycin because the patient follow up can be more challenging with the latter and because of availability. We get more mileage out of good supplies of  Erythromycin.

Also because of the bombing which is adding to the case load in the hospitals we get more work. There are three nurses here, me included who are trained to a high level. In USA I and the others can prescribe meds and so on. We are trained in the O/R and we are trained in Critical Care and Recovery. Some doctors we work with outside the hospitals want us when the going is tough like when they have a bad case. Sometimes we have to jump fast on demand. Ordinarily we don’t do hospital shifts or cases but lately we are doing more and it is getting dangerous. I can’t mention names but there are nice doctors who know that on certain patients if things go wrong they will be killed in a horrible way and so they want the best team possible. This one doctor, a beautiful guy who is a great surgeon he is so scared his hands are shaking. I calm him and have closed a couple times. The Daesh stand over us. I have turned and  brandished a pair of surgical scissors and told them if you don’t get out of here I am going to shove this in your throat…. then they make some stupid comment and I ask them nicely for their names so I can write who killed the pt. They catch on from the tension of the surgical team that their shit doesn’t mix with what we are doing and my ‘incidents’ get forgotten. The surgical teams like me because among the team I am usually OUR COP. Often they ask Jess to bring me if there are some difficult cases. I don’t like the long ones because I am uncomfortable.

I recently got into a fight with an asshole at the General Hospital when I was late getting there and I had to do prep. Because I was late there were more of those religious creeps available to harass me. You have to pass their inspection to get into your station. I was so perturbed I already planned in my head to shoot them and steal their truck and leave. Outside of the city I have been down this road before. A slight breach of protocol and the nurse is raped and killed. I have trained so many women to stop fucking standing in line waiting to be raped and killed. UNBELIEVABLE. Sheep. These women have literally lined up against walls without putting up a fight. That will not be me.

what has happened to Christians and non-Sunni’s? – have the majority escaped from Mosul?

Majority? Yes. They are gone mostly dead I guess. But there are many thousands here. They get by pretending. There are 4,000 girls in this city we think are Yazidis and they are prisoners  concubines or  comfort girls. I am not going to talk much about this but we have some of our cell-phone-for survivor people in the jails and we manage to get them batteries. We use Blackberries peer-to-peer. They are modified in Canada. Google “RINJ Foundation Cell Phones For Survivors” and you will see the programme that has been running for years.  Our range is line of site. We have routines for travel that take us on dangerous routes out of or around the city so that we are close enough to communicate. We used to have a repeater but that poor little robot got killed lol. We used to have better results getting people out. It is now a random occurrence to get an escapee.

We got 30 of them out on Jan 29. We got 12 ppl out a week ago. Every day we have knowledge of women somebody wants us to find. We get aerial pictures of last known whereabouts. Yesterday I got pics of 6 women and an aerial photograph of the place where their family thinks they are hidden. We always try go to the places that are shown to us by outsiders and insiders. We have pipelined hundreds and hundreds of people out. We used to use our big garbage truck That is gone sadly. That was an amazing story that truck. Man I miss that truck and I miss our “garbage man”.

are people in general trying to leave Mosul, if so, why? and who are they?

To get a pass to leave you must give them names of your family and location of your business. If you are not back in three days that will all be gone. dead family, dead friends and bye bye business and home. We have seen it happen.
are women being grabbed up for “marriage” to Daesh fighters?

Walk down an urban area in sight of a fast city road and if you are spotted you hear the brakes and you better start running. If you are 8 or above you will be fucked on the spot or in the car as you are hauled away. Marriage is bullshit. It is just a bullshit deception so that the Daesh can continue to pretend to be Islam wherein sex without marriage is a sin. They make available to fighters a temp. marriage. Read Dabiq. https://therinjfoundation.wordpress.com/resource-material-the-rinj-foundation-2015-documents/
have you been treating women who have been raped? (how many? is this a big problem?)

About 280 pts per week in Mosul estimated across 5 locations. The number grows as more people come forward because they bring others. Once here we see them regularly. Mostly we are doing mental health counseling and std treatment. We have good experience and good results.

We started in December doing local anaesthetic gynecological work including some minor vaginal tightening and repair of tears. We have arranged for hymen replacement but we need more financial supporters to ship them to North America. We could do cases tomorrow but we can’t afford right now.  We were doing major surgery until the gas analyzer on the anaesthesia machine croaked.

The Daesh beat up our tech who is also our O2 guy so when he gets back on his feet he knows where he can steal a replacement for us. When we have that we have cases to do.

I have girls on diapers because their anuses and colons are so badly traumatized they have no control. I have one pt who was impaled with a gun barrel and shot. She needed more surgery.  We got her out of the country completely. I took her myself with the help of our security guys. I cried in the dark from Mosul to Erbil. We have a priest in Erbil who I work with. He said I looked like the pt because I was so worn out. Anyway. That case had a good result. She lost much of her lower intestine and we have a surgeon looking into fixing her womb but I think child bearing is out for her. She is 15. [tears] The sadder thing is that if her family finds out  they will kill her too. We simply let the family think that she died.  The girl can decide later what she wants to do once she is whole. She is in Europe (maybe). The priest got her a family that really love her. I kind of made sure of that by forcing the people to come do a hook up with me. I got into a bit of trouble over that but it had a good result. She was very brave.  I really liked her. I am normally detached from pts. In her case I have kicked some ass to get her the best care.  I feel that I will have my chance to avenge her some day.  I will.
What contact do you have with Daesh?  Have you come across foreign fighters, and if so, from what country? ( any from Europe or north America?)
I have already explained the contact with the Daesh. Everything I do here is illegal. They know we are here and they don’t know what to do. I think they believe that there are Christians and Jews and Yazidis getting care. Out of sight, out of mind. In sight = dead. They also know some doctors are doing out-of-hospital procedures. Some Daesh have openly accused us of being “those Socialist students from the university”. We are all around 30ish. It’s dangerous. I don’t mix with the Daesh. I spent too much time in Syria or on the road. I spent too much time with patients.

America. There is this one guy who keeps checking out my friend. My friend can’t go out because of him. Enough  said.

Because of this we notice all the Americans because we look. There are many Chechnya’s and they are evil brutes. They are warriors.  The brits are bad too–they are bossy losers and big trouble. Some brits are the wannabe religious preachers. They have an accent and  the scraggly stupid beards.

We have encountered some foreign girls who have been brought in by the older ladies here from the community. I am going to write up a detailed report on what happens to those so-called foreign bride girls. RINJ has a campaign to discourage kids joining the Daesh. It is a dead end. Horrible things happen to them. Horrible.  That story must be told.

Some German media guy had a whole entourage of Daesh showing him around last summer. That was when we first saw the young American guy. One of our nurses thought he was cute, so we bound and gagged her and locked her in the basement and throw her scraps of  food every three weeks. Just kidding. Hashanah (OMG I had tears remembering the aforementioned case. She was so brave. I pray for her.)

what impact have airstrikes had on the city?
Those guys are good! The little airplanes fly around and you can hear the Daesh shoot at them  and then a big airplane comes and I swear they put bombs right up the nose of the gunner on their technicals. But still they are blowing up civilians. Every building has to be treated as if it has people hiding inside. There are likely about 500 to 600 thousand people in this city.  Most bombing is on the outskirts but so are we. Russian roulette. I really wonder if they know what the hell they are doing. I know that nobody cares about the half  million or more people in the city.

Can people come and go as they like, or is there a restriction ( in Raqqa – men and women under the age of 40 can’t leave,, i think thats the age..)
In al Raqqah it’s easy to get in and out. Easy. You have to know the city I guess.

Any way I covered that but if you leave the verified names of 5 people you can go for three days. You need a pass. That is all stopped now because of about 60 families organizing a mass escape. Not our people.

The thing about that is that you don’t always encounter a checkpoint. Many check points used to be covered by local conscripts and they were the worst. For us it is easier than for the  population. We all do cases in the hospitals. We all need medical supplies. The Daesh haven’t figured us out but for sure I have been questioned by people at a bridge or road way point by senior Daesh who have sparked recognition in their eyes when they see me in the hospitals. I have been asked repeatedly about a time when I went to get the portable O2 bottles. They are a problem because the people leave or die and we never get the bottles back. There are never enough.  The injured Daesh need and want the small bottles to go to their home and heal. They heal better outside the hospital. If you want to catch a disease, come to the hospital.
Anyway this one guy remembers me and sees me as a hero. I think his friend needed O2 because when I got dragged before him to explain that I was going for O2 bottles he was like “go go” and gave the wannabe Daesh guy a dirty look.

The biggest problem we have getting in and out of the city are with the regional militias. They are firkin screwballs. The peshmerga are cool but the Christian and Shia militias are untrained misogynistic buffoon dickheads with guns.

Our big boss from Canada comes and goes as he likes. Every time it is a different thing. One time he had stainless steel bowl, steaming dry ice and a blood soaked white towel covering the bowl. The driver screamed at the check point idiots and they were on their way with an escort to the hospital.  He pretended to be delivering an organ for the hospital. The vehicles we use are frequently verified as vehicles with a legit purpose. Our security guys are always doubling as orderlies and often are sent on the run in scrubs to get shit we need stat so people see them as going about an important service.  It’s five hours to Baghdad if you go fast. Five hours back same. That ten hours can save many lives.

I have treated soldiers. I would treat a cow or a duck if it needed help I am able to provide. Each case I work on is a challenge. I have worked on badly injured Daesh. They are flesh and blood and have family and friends like anyone. I don’t know what is wrong with their messed up brains but they are patients. I have never nor will I ever hurt a patient, only help. Period. Everyone of the RINJ people are the same. This is not our war.  There are no sides. They are all bad. What we do is take care of the children and their families. Nobody else local is doing that, I assure you. The NGOs are people from heaven walking around in simple clothes that barely hide big hearts.

is there mobile phone connection? internet?
There is internet but don’t trust it. We use a VPN tunnel. We can get some VoIP but we are ULTRA PARANOID about Geo location and ID.

Normal people are safe to use internet but many features are blocked and all things are Daesh-monitored.

Climb big buildings or get up high another way and you can get a cell phone connection and talk to the Daesh because that’s who is listening. Asiacell and all the others are down. You need to reach the Pesh-controled repeaters to the North, East and South.
As I have said we have modified phones for peer-to-peer communication that provides a full range. The docs love it. we send a picture of a patient and they text a new medical directive.

do local people have a way of finding out what goes on outside Mosul? access to news?
Yes. Some people have TV and everyone has radio. Everyone has internet but the Daesh are very tech savvy and watch everyone. Some sites are blocked. I have no idea really and what I tell you is what the people tell me. RINJ is very strict and I follow the rules. We had a fairly senior person break a comm rule and bang! RINJ found out and she was out of here like uber fast within hours. The security guys had furious, tense shitty looks at everything we all did for days until that tension loosened up.

Daesh radio is the strongest.

If you were not doing what we do and if you are a good little Sunni, life in here is good. Don’t drink the water and don’t get sick. Have lots of batteries charging when the power is on and don’t piss of the goons. Life in Mosul is like anywhere else.

When you speak to local people – what do they say about Daesh?
I don’t speak to anyone I do not know. In stores I let others talk. You can tell I am background from Syria if you listen to me speak. I don’t talk much at the best of times.
you describe an organ transplant situation : again forgive my ignorance for asking rudimentary questions..
when did this happen?

Your question has been noted. It was fairly recent.

i read it several times but not quite clear – you’re saying that the case was witnessed by y our nurses?
yes. In fact we played a role. A patient was saved and a dead patient gave up an organ. It is straight forward true-to-oath ethics and the administrators can take care of the paper work.

a Daesh commander who was badly injured after a drone (guided) airstrike was in need of a liver transplant,, this much I understood 🙂 – how was the donor organ actually found? are you saying that there are patients on life support whose only aim is to have organs harvested for transplants? And that this might be a rogue business?  do you have more examples?

Quite frankly, the circ nurse knows everyone and found the organ via the nurses grapevine. Everyone knows something that couldn’t pass scrutiny. They also know what life in the O/R is like and how that is a priority. “There but for the grace of God go I”  is what every one of us can truthfully say. You don’t ignore a request from the O/R.  If you know a secret stash of what they need you shout out. You don’t ever want to be caught in a hospital holding out.

The O/R team tends to be very focussed. I mean we play music and have our quirks about how we work together but we are stricter than the medical professionals used to be and we actually raised the standards. It’s the new give a fuck value on human life. They didn’t give a fuck before. We (RINJ) have one nurse who is so good, that  doctors ask her if they are doing something  right and if she says no they say show me and she does. After a while the teams fall into place and the new mindset is to save the patient come hell or high water.

I already told you that trays are going in deficient meaning that for every procedure there is a certain set of maybe 20 out of 300 possible instruments for the case. They need to be sterilized and packaged. Gauze strips, pt gowns and towels need to be on the tray in a recorded number and the number must match going in and out. Meds are all prepped in advance. Every procedure has a set of protocols and directives on what is required. In Mosul, trays go in deficient. And that is noted. When the admin does nothing about it we, the surgical team, freak, especially if it is a critical need item.  I have seen surgeons lose it under stress and fire instruments across the room. screaming this is no good get me a “….”. He’s right. When it comes to a mission critical item in the middle of a surgery or plasma or blood product. Get it for us NOW. Now. That’s the mindset.  How the hospital recovers and processes donor organs isn’t a question you can delve into while a patient is open and things need to happen. Once that circ nurse said there was a way… everyone in that room was then tuned to saving the patient. You can’t give a chance like that then take it away so the team was adamant to get the log jam broken. I am trying to explain the culture of that environment..

as you know – there have been reports that Daesh fighters’ and prisoners’ organs have been harvested for a black market – you’re saying this is possible? or no..? and why?

The way the normal processes happen is NOT normal in Mosul. Clearly the people at the University know how things should be but the 6 hospitals’ administrations, especially the Military Hospital’  are failures and they are Daesh-run.

How could they run an illegal organ biz with the incompetence that prevails?
We ran into that other tier of operation accidentally.  This begs huge questions about what is happening to the disappeared people. I have no direct knowledge. I just know people disappear. We have 4000 girls we want back. Maybe it’s 40,000. We have bumped into an off-limits process that exploits the bio-med waste;  the cryo storage; and the end-of-life care regime.

 

  1. More on culture.  This is what end of life care is about. We need to be sensitive to the local culture. This is a tricky area of medicine because in reality, you can medically argue the patient is dead but for the sake of the family, the patient is alive and many family members often say they feel a finger movement when they ask a question but we know the patient is dead; the organs are having their function sustained artificially and the patient could not self-sustain. (Brain dead.) So end-of-life care must strive to address the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual needs of patients, and where appropriate their families, with sensitivity to their personal, cultural and religious values, goals, beliefs and practices.
  2. Ongoing communication with the patient or substitute decision-maker, and family if there is consent, and with other care providers is crucial to good end-of-life decision-making and care.
  3. The patient or substitute decision-maker, and family if there is consent, should have the opportunity to participate in informed discussions about the care options that may optimize the quality of the patient’s life while he or she is living with a life-threatening illness, and when dying. These individuals should participate in choosing the best available options, based on those informed discussions and the patient’s goals, values and beliefs.

Nevertheless, things that would freak out the general public happen in hospitals. With a bus crash load of injuries coming into Urgent Care one would have Critical Care keep a brain dead known donor on life support rather than put the donor organs into the system.  Corners get cut like that.
In the case of patient X, what we noticed is that the donor patient in this case had given no consent; was unidentified;  and that somebody at a low level had hacked the records on that deceased patient and shoved them back into the end-of-life system after they were technically dead and end-of-life family care was contraindicated because there was no family.

The circ nurse says it is always happening. (I have since hustled her upstairs and we found a number of patients on multiple life support systems with no family in attendance. These patients had no records.)

They had critical care staff resuscitating a near impossible case for the sake of keeping some organs in function. The first 45 minute cardiac arrest was crucial. Look. Whatever the public thinks about hero medicine, 30 minutes in arrest is probably life ending–but 45 minutes? The second arrest was a deal breaker for future resuscitation and to direct the third attempt was off the charts craziness.  The direction was on the chart but non-attributed.

Add to that that the surgeon knew the second the circ nurse said she had a solution what was available. He knows about the second tier of operational function. I had occasion to now ask him about hat and he said that I will stay out if it and yes there are many cases.

We now know we opened Pandora’s box because there was another hell to pay. The nurse who served up the donor patient is gone. It’s a “don’t ask” question.

These people don’t care about breaking simple rules and this is not about fine line definitions for the sensitive world of end-of-life care.  They care about money. They care about their Daesh bosses. I figure that the Organs business is done both officially by Daesh and unofficially by rogues.

I told you once before about a delivery guy. I am going to try and get that info because frankly if these people are chopping up the missing girls we have been looking for… well, let’s see. If they are chopping up deceased people and have a lousy system for organ donor control, welcome to Iraq.  But if the rogues kill people for their organs…. then everybody in the medical practice here is implicated. Everybody has a responsibility.  Still, there is nothing I have seen to indicate that volume. I need to check out people capable of transporting organs.

 

– did the Daesh commander recover?

He is not going to be fighting any wars in the next few months but he is ok. He had an infection that was life threatening and as it happens the same team shy two people went in again  and cleaned him up. There had been some clotting and infection. They added a drain which has since been removed.  Liver function was modest at first but perfect  for his condition within a few days.  He has some pain management issues.  Seems like maybe he is a reformed human.  He talks with great remorse and even cries. He is fairly young. His remorse comes from knowing that some pretty amazing people who don’t like what he does saved his life.  Decisions were made about his life that he likely doesn’t know about. It is creepy that you and I are discussing though.  I feel bad about that. Once again there is no consent for me to share this patient’s case so no names and dates and I don’t have to say a Thousand Hail Mary’s. But If I did I could say them in three languages including Latin. / :0(

NB I am attaching the WHO assessment of hospitals in Iraq. Mosul is an Epic failure at the best of times.

 

 

Supplemental Questions:
I answer all your other questions here.

There are two people here with the RINJ Foundation who are of  Syrian background. I am one. I don’t speak the local dialect here but I get by. I think I mentioned that others say I can pretty much fake the local dialect and accent here in short conversation. Remember I have fantastic coaching from very helpful ‘clients’.  I think most of the local nurses are Kurdish but there are others from other countries besides Syria. They came to the University. When people guess my accent they guess Syrian (Aleppo).
“I have an ejection seat.”

Attribute: “A RINJ Foundation nurse in Mosul”.  You can say you are naming me “?????” Pick a name. lol.  I am not an important person.

No, we are not officially registered in Mosul. We are not on any list of accepted suppliers to the Daesh. These Daesh people don’t believe they are doing anything wrong and they do not accept the United Nations or ICC or any non-sectarian NGO.

I have been told that someone within Mosul Daesh sees us as ‘socialist’ students associated with the University.

I would appreciate you not refer to the 7 garbage bags leaving after the dad raped the teen and then ran to get the daesh to burn us. I was surprised no one came looking for those but the way that location is, the address and entrance is confusing. They might have searched the wrong street and we would never knew they looked.

As I said, “I am on a two-part mission which is to help survivors and catalogue the war crimes.”
That is a very comprehensive process. For background follow some of the links I sent you.
I am pretty sure I shared this before: please see https://rinj.org/war-crime “A mission statement addressing impunity and identification of perpetrators of rape in armed conflicts and war.”

The RINJ Foundation has adopted a mission while supporting and caring for survivors, to also gather and compile detailed information on parties to armed conflict that are credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for acts of rape or other forms of sexual violence.”

We are def. not registered with the Daesh. We have a lot of complaints against the Daesh. We have received complaints against others including Kurds and Americans from the past.

We have an expanded role in Mosul because our “clients” are in hiding here. We can’t summon police. In London we would do that on the patient’s instructions. We began helping people leave Mosul by bringing them with us on our travels out of the city once it was decided they wanted to leave and they were so seriously hunted that their presence jeopardized others and that their leaving left no one else in harm’s way. The whole family must leave if one leaves.

Christians, Yazidis, Jews and other non-Daesh are far safer in refugee camps, although they are not perfectly safe.

Our mandate is to deliver support for sexual assault survivors.

Anywhere in the world logistic support varies. The medical support is defined in the many documents I have shared with you. Mostly STD tests, rape kits, and mental health coaching . Please also read:
https://rinj.org/interactive/?page_id=1352

We are hunkered down here. There is talk of an imminent invasion. There are Peshmerga not far. We have been pressured and others here in Mosul have been pressured to raise a little hell.
Update January 26, 2015

Col. Deham Ibrahim Gergeri of Peshmerga forces reported that Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units together with Iraqi Kurdistan’s Peshmerga forces regained control over 90 percent of the city of Kobani in Syria.

Update January 24, 2015

EXODUS
The RINJ Foundation people in Mosul, including three foreign nurses, for many months, have been operating a makeshift women’s clinic and also hiding young females in three areas of Mosul and moving the food and medical supplies around in an old truck that one of the RINJ men drives pretending to be a local garbage pickup (he really does pick up a truck box full of garbage and he stinks like hell – the Daeish scream at him “hurry up old man”).
Some of the protected girls were raped and some had been beaten because they did not wear the correct clothing and were taken to a Mosque but later were lucky to escape with some help from the garbage guy (who has now abandoned his truck since the exodus began). [wink] But they have been sick enough to need regular medical treatment for Daeish diseases. It is also dangerous for the younger woman to be seen anywhere. They always must hide. But now some have left.


There are not too many people left in Mosul. You can’t trust anybody because even people who don’t show it, might be friends of the Daeish.
Some people have said there has been poison gas coming from the East or the North. We don’t have more than three or four masks.
Right now the bombs are falling and there are explosions. They say they don’t see Daesh using the bridges any longer and they fear maybe they are booby-trapped.

The communication to the YPG is gone and they use the peer-to-peer phones we set up there to talk to each other but are having a hard time keeping batteries charged.


During the explosions and fuss yesterday extra RINJ people have gone there and left again with some of the girls and workers and they are making their way to Erbil. We might need some extra housing in Erbil if all goes well starting on the 29th. If you have this available for a short period of time until these people find their families, it would be greatly appreciated. [email protected]

Update December 3, 2014

Here is a message from your friends.

We have decided DNA is the best way to get these bastards. We are very sneaky about many things. There is a way to defeat Islamic State. Women can do it. That will be good because women and female children must be avenged. Nobody knows the total of that.

Some of the girls in Mosul have serious mental and physical health problems. The Daesh have butchered people and repeatedly raped and abused with unspeakable torture any human with a vaginan from kids to elderly ladies. Some kids are so messed up like this one particular 11yr old girl it is hard to keep her from killing herself.

The rules in Mosul are super strict like never before. Women even in the hospital must wear scarves around their face when they don’t do surgical work. Sometimes we need to steal stuff from there that we don’t have. That rule is working for RINJ observers because some don’t fit in otherwise because of Asian or other foreign appearance and would get killed. The rules help foreign women of RINJ to hide.

Many professional peoples have some member of the family stay behind and not leave the city to prevent their house being confiscated by IS but the ISIS bosses have said that doctors and nurses who don’t come back will have the people of their families killed and their houses will be gone.

Getting in and out of the city of Mosul is easy if you have someone with you who knows what to say. There once was a million people here. It is almost a ghost of what it once was because the infrastructure has failed and many people are scared and fled.

The loyalists are the worst assholes. They are checkpoint guards and looters. They are told to find us. They know we are here. They have many weird stories about us collecting their semen as if we are devils and vampires ( sexual assault forensic evidence kits) so it would seem that they tortured and killed some women who talked to us about what happened to them. The loyalists talk about us and call us MINJ.

They know about the The RINJ Foundation Cell Phone for Survivors program. The bastards killed all the mobile phone repeaters. Our phones are modified to talk peer-to-peer so we can talk to each other but we can’t use a data connection for our TLS uploads of our pictures. We are working on fixing that and there may be a solution. We need more volunteers. Some will go home for Christmas.

To get out of the city if you get stopped, saying you go to a bank to get some money for an errand or saying you go to pick up medicine works. We have a nurse who is very good at doing the talking. The Iraqi government is willing to provide some things from other cities to help the ordinary people of Mosul but they are afraid that you might give it to the Daesh. We can get to a rufugee camp and get just about anything there. The people know us and they care about us. Care for the care giver. We have our own problems.

Outside of the city is some loyalists to the Islamic State but mostly as you go further it is only Kurds. They don’t trust though so it is hard.

We have a lot of good information. We have secret places now where we can do Physical Evidence Recovery Kits. We have a way of getting them to a lab in London afterwards. The women are very scared. They don’t really care about anything but some are very hateful about everything and they help us but they are so mad and crazy they get carried away.

Everything is by word of mouth. The most popular person to the Kurds is K.T. She is Israeli American but she looks like a kurd with a nose hahah. She is the most gutsy woman. Some of our nurses are so impressed with her calm firmness. One doctor didn’t want a nurse. He wanted K.T.

One of the peshmerga chicks we were dancing with had by legend if not truth killed a 100 Daesh. We heard she got caught and was beheaded.

September 23, 2014

Life in Mosul is difficult because all government functions have failed or are failing, Electricity is unreliable and rare; garbage collection, road repair, sewage disposal and all infrastructure components are collapsed. Money is scarce because there is no pay for the people who worked for government and most commerce has stooped. Many people have gone to work for the Islamic State or have joined them as soldiers, splitting families and creating tensions as the Islamic State presence in Mosul morphs into a collection of local sympathizers.

Alcohol and tobacco are forbidden under Sharia law.

Some people prefer the ISIS invaders to the Iraqi “occupiers”. The Iraqi security forces have a long track record of abusing women in Iraq. So to do the Americans to a lessor degree. The Islamic State occupiers are, however, the worst seen in a while and easily ( if not worse) compare to the brutal gender-based violence of Africa and India.

The streets of the city are quiet and there is little sign of the occupiers who are apparently planning for the strategic defence of the city. There are still signs of the urban warfare that took the city but as the stories go, so go the signs of battle: the American-trained Iraqi army surrendered in the first days of the ISIL invasion.

American bombing is making a show and spectacle but on the ground women and children as young as nine are still being raped, and they are sold among the ISIS sadists as wives and sex slaves.

In the very large Badush prison here in Mosul, women are kept in enslavement and raped daily or more often.  The prison also is used as a holding tank for the ISIS sex slave dealers who apparently operate black market slave trade without the consent of all of their commanders. They are targeting women and children based on their sectarian affiliation. In the first days they separated Shias and Sunnis and took the Shias out to a deserted valley area nearby in a truck and murdered them all with automatic weapons.

There are no Christians left in Mosul. They have either been driven out, converted or murdered.

The all-female population of the Mosul prison is growing and they are being tortured and raped.

Only the people on the ground will make a difference and an urban war in Mosul will likely kill more civilians than ISIS fighters because of the latter there are very few here.

Among the people on the ground:
* the Peshmerga to the south are ferocious and well-organized fighters but limited in numbers;
* the Iraqi fighters are barely up to the task and so fasr have shown cowardice al though rumours from the south say it is a different story and in large numbers the Iraqi soldiers are hacing good success;
* a bevy of independent actors behave like armed hooligans in small villages; and
* travel by road is dangerous.

Iraq and Syria are now Islamic State Real Estate. Many of the Sunni people of Iraq are joining them. The others are being killed off or fleeing into an unknown life as a refugee.

Real Estate of The Islamic State

09/23/14: Since Saturday, 20 Sept., as many as 200,000 people have left the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani and surrounding areas, in just four days as ISIS advances into the area. An estimated 130,000 have fled into Turkey and the remainder are now in Iraq or scattered around Syria.

The RINJ Foundation Volunteers Depend On Home-based RINJ Researchers

Telecommuting RINJ Members are Fighting ISIL

RINJ Members are doing research online from home.

RINJ has investigators in the field who are identifying persons who have been accused of committing a war-crime of sexual violence. This is an arduous task and many elements of the work come in the form of individual researchers’ contributions to the database.

RINJ Telecommuting volunteers working from their home all around the world:

  • Find photographs of ISIL Jihadists in selected areas and upload here.
  • Try to identify these people and Report Here

Researchers are needed to scour the internet for news pictures taken in the field. They are then uploaded to the RINJ Foundation and other researches make the data available to people in the field. By searching social media and other resources, identifying the offenders is a tedious but rewarding task.

The Concept of A Photo Lineup

The-RINJ-Foundation-concept-of-a-photo-lineup

The RINJ Foundation has volunteers in the field who are collecting evidence and doing survivor support and case work reporting.

Women and children survivors of war-crime rape in the field use The RINJ Foundation’s mobile web reporting functions to tell their story and make a complaint which RINJ then investigates.

Any RINJ Foundation Member  can file a report of war-crime rape of their own experience or their knowledge of crime against another person by submitting photographs (especially identification photos of perpetrators before, at, or after the material time) and documents here on this page. You can file a detailed report here.

— Micheal O’Brien, Executive Director

Published November 8, 2014.
Updated November 27, 2014.

Responding to queries from some of our Muslim friends and updating fellow members of  The RINJ Foundation, I want to share a few thoughts and ideas.

The RINJ Foundation can’t deal with all the problems of the Middle East. We are focused on the problem of gender violence, rape included, anywhere.

The Foundation (https://rinj.org/)  has no contention about religion and quite frankly we embrace proudly the fact that among RINJ members, every religion is represented.

Yes there is a complex range of problems in the Mid-East and probably territory will change hands often before borders are finally decided. Likely the Levant will never stabilize until its people reform and evolve from their medieval mindset and join the 21st century.

That applies particularly to the problem of misogyny. As society knows from the latest mental health diagnostic studies and practices, a misogynistic community breeds criminality, or explained in better detail,  a preponderance of anti-social personality disordered persons (psychopaths at worst). This is true because if a child can’t bond to the human race at the umbilical chord (because the community despises the female) it probably never will bond to the rest of the race, thus becoming a non-empathetic two dimensional person, a sociopath.

I believe Aliaa Magda Elmahdy is right. How could anyone possibly respect ISIL’s morals?

Egyptian feminist Aliaa Magda Elmahdy responding to ISIL psycho-videos of beheadings

The two-dimensional blood-lusting jihadists who are raping and  killing kids and moms in Syria and Iraq as well as sodomizing and murdering their own kind are evidence of the prolific, immoral, conscience-less, medieval violence the Mid-East faces.

Men videotaping their own narcissistic psychotic urges for blood and disgust holding up chopped heads, decapitated bodies, and disemboweled entrails isn’t the act of a healthy mind.

One can hardly hold in contempt the response by Egyption feminist  Aliaa Magda Elmahdy who responded to ISIL’s psycho-videos with a message of her own wherein she menstruated and defecated on the IS’s ridiculous non-state flag. (http://wp.me/P4J9Q3-aL). She is one of our members. Many members appreciate Aliaa’s protest-art. Many don’t.

No matter how many chopped heads are video-taped we continue to do our tedious work and seek out these people at times when their faces are uncovered so we can surreptitiously  photograph them for doing photo-lineups with rape survivors .

For over a year we have collected cell phones with cameras and given them away to women and kids in Syria (https://rinj.org/interactive/?page_id=845) and all over the world, in fact.  Even in the jails where ISIL corals females of all ages some cell phones are still working. We have been canvassing for spare Blackberry batteries wherever we can get them and smuggle them in.

ISIL rapists are not safe from prosecution.

If there is any irony at all it is in the fact that ISIL has created a war zone even though it is a non-state. Because its members are terrorists whose typical individual criminal activities if done in a war zone become war crimes, ISIL is on the verge of becoming an organized crime syndicate conducting acts of genocide and aggression. These are realms that have grave consequences since the post-WWII Nuremburg Trials. Moreover Bosnia/Herzegovinian and Rwandan trials have paved the way for extremely harsh action against future perpetrators of gender violence, genocide and aggression.

The RINJ Foundation seeks to prove 21 cases of gender violence (rape etc.) for which it currently undertakes in the Iraq and Syria regions of conflict and do so within the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) authority. RINBJ will demonstrate that these acts are a progression of a mission ordered by Islamic State leaders comprising the war crime of organized genocide.

The RINJ FoundationThereafter The RINJ Foundation would suggest the U.N. Secretary General adduce to the ICC by 2017 that the crime of aggression has transpired in several nations (Syria, Iraq, Turkey etc.) and that any person acting under the command of ISIL commanders or the commanders responsible in the proven cases of gender-violence in a war zone or genocide; any person who acts as part of the entity ISIL by wearing uniforms or carrying out any form of aggression in the name of the accused entity is liable to prosecutions as a war criminal or conspirator.

There is another way to approach the problem besides outright warfare which only kills more civilians and results in a bigger genocide as history has shown. These ISIL people are criminals running amok in costumes and banners. People like the Hell’s Angels have already claimed that alter ego and many of their outlaw types are so angered by the mimicry of their conduct (and image turf?) they have joined the fight in Kobani killing ISIL jihadist outlaws and collecting black and white ‘patches’ like trophies as if they are trying to reclaim their role as society’s pariah.  (I have literally seen men wearing ‘colors’ , supporting the Kurds in Kobani. [Their help is welcomed by all.])

If people in the Mid-East want to kill each other over Shiite vs Sunni vs Persian vs Kurd vs Yazidi vs Christian, that’s not the Foundation’s business. Right or wrong it’s not our work. But commit one act of gender violence in a war zone and you are going to jail if not the gallows and the RINJ Foundation will do its utmost best to be a part of that process.

Women and many men are fed up with the conduct of certain people that leaves communities of women and children dead or scarred for life. What part of this objection could anyone have trouble understanding?

There are 7.1 billion people living on this planet and the loss of a few murderous thugs will be quickly forgotten. But not one more rape will have impunity!

Those of us left alive on the planet should not tolerate one more rape of a man, woman or child; nor ANY gender violence of any kind,  and consequently will invoke the rule of law like ordinary citizens should and jail the deviants. In a subsequent lawful society there won’t be these problems.

The RINJ Foundation

If you want a healthy society and a nice community going forward you need to start respecting and treating the two genders equally.

Many people Supporting The RINJ Foundation @RapeIsnoJoke, including muslims, agree that Sharia rule and medieval blood-thirsty warring Islam is a part of a past best forgotten. Be a voice for change and move past the violence.

The RINJ.org invitation to upload any pictures of ISIL jihadists (https://rinj.org/uploads/) active in the past 9 months in Syria and Iraq is meant for everyone, everywhere.

We are collecting hundreds of bare-faced photographs and showing them to rape survivors in several refugee camps, several cities and villages in Syria and Iraq. This is called a photo-lineup. The witnesses, if they can, then identify the perpetrator by visual image and  we proceed to research, investigate and arrive at date of birth, name and location of the alleged criminal who we then have charged under the International War Crimes definitions set out in UN Res. 1820 and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Prosecuting Rapists In A War Zone
I know this is all new to you because it is new to the world.

Only since Rwanda has there been such a methodology wherein NGOs collect the data and adduce it to a court.

We have our own lawyers and investigators and many hundreds of talented workers who I want to thank every minute of every day.

This work is getting done.

Thank you one and all.

https://rinj.org/war-crime/
https://rinj.org/war-crime/reports/
https://rinj.org/war-crime/investigators/