While the Iraqi military talks up its huge offensive against western Mosul, security forces are also seeing through a planned purge of all “enemies” in the eastern half of the city, which they now control militarily after some two years under ISIS control.
They’re not having much problem finding people willing to work as paid informants for the new government forces in the city, with a lot of people claiming to have been carefully collecting lists of “enemies” during the two year ISIS rule.
That’s just the sort of thing the Iraqi government likes to here, saying they need to rely on “loyal” Iraqis to turn in all the potentially disloyal ones to prevent militants from ever again getting a foothold in the city. Whether the informants are telling the truth is another matter.
Some of the locals being brought in for questioning by the government because they were on the enemies lists of these informants say the effort closely mirrors what ISIS was doing to them for the last two years, as plenty of people were also willing to provide ISIS with lists, and the lists seem to have a lot of overlap.