SHEKHAN, Iraq: For Salah Paulis, it came down to a choice between his faith and his crop. A wheat farmer from outside Mosul, Paulis and his family fled the militant group Islamic State early last month.
The group overran the family farm as part of its offensive that captured vast swathes of territory in northern Iraq. Two weeks later, Paulis, who is a Christian, received a phone call from a man who said he was an Islamic State fighter.
“We are in your warehouse. Why are you not here working and taking care of your business?” the man asked in formal Arabic. “Come back and we will guarantee your safety. But you must convert and pay $500.” When Paulis refused, the man spelled out the penalty. “We are taking your wheat,” he said. “Just to let you know we are not stealing it because we gave you a choice.”
Other fleeing farmers recount similar stories, and point to a little-discussed element of the threat Islamic State poses to Iraq and the region. The group now controls a large chunk of Iraq’s wheat supplies.
The United Nations estimates land under IS control accounts for as much as 40 percent of Iraq’s annual production of wheat, one of the country’s most important food staples alongside barley and rice. The militants seem intent not just on grabbing more land but also on managing resources and governing in their self-proclaimed caliphate.
Wheat is one tool at their disposal. The group has begun using the grain to fill its pockets, to deprive opponents — especially members of the Christian and Yazidi minorities — of vital food supplies, and to win over fellow Sunni Muslims as it tightens its grip on captured territory.
In Iraq’s northern breadbasket, much as it did in neighbouring Syria, IS has kept state employees and wheat silo operators in place to help run its empire.
Such tactics are one reason IS poses a more complex threat than Al Qaeda, the Islamist group from which it grew. For most of its existence, Al Qaeda has focused on hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombings. But Islamic State sees itself as both army and government.
“Wheat is a strategic good. They are doing as much as they can with it,” said Ali Bind Dian, head of a farmers’ union in Makhmur, a town near IS-held territory between Arbil and Mosul. “Definitely they want to show off and pretend they are a government.”
The Sunni militants and their allies now occupy more than a third of Iraq and a similar chunk of neighbouring Syria. The group generates income not just from wheat but also from “taxes” on business owners, looting, ransoming kidnapped Westerners and, most especially, the sale of oil to local traders.
IS is demonstrating that controlling wheat brings power. As its fighters swept through Iraq’s north in June, they seized control of silos and grain stockpiles. The offensive coincided with the wheat and barley harvests and, crucially, the delivery of crops to government silos and private traders.
IS now controls all nine silos in Nineveh Province, which spans the Tigris river, along with seven other silos in other provinces. In the three months since overrunning Nineveh’s provincial capital Mosul, IS fighters have seized hundreds of thousands of tonnes of wheat from abandoned fields.
One target was the wheat silo in Makhmur, a town between the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk. The silo has a capacity of 250,000 tonnes, or approximately 8 percent of Iraq’s domestic annual production in 2013. IS attacked Makhmur on August 7. IS held Makhmur for three days before the Kurdish fighters and US air strikes on IS positions — though not on the silo — drove them out.
In many ways, IS is replicating in Iraq strategies it developed in Syria. In the year it has controlled the town of Raqqa in northeastern Syria, for instance, IS militants say they have allowed former employees from Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s regime to continue to run its mills. The group has set up a wheat “diwan,” or bureau, in charge of the supply chain, from harvesting the crop to distributing flour.
The same push to keep things running smoothly can be seen in Iraq. IS fighters have regularly avoided destroying government installations they have captured. When IS took over Iraq’s largest dam it kept employees in place and even brought in engineers from Mosul to make repairs.
The big worry now is next season’s crop. In Nineveh province, home to the capital of the group’s self-declared caliphate, 750,000 hectares (1.8 million acres) should soon be sown with wheat and 835,000 hectares with barley, an Iraqi agriculture ministry official said. The official said that the province normally has 100,000 farmers. But thousands have fled.
Iraqi farmers normally get next season’s seeds from their current harvest, keeping back some of the wheat for that purpose. IS controls enough wheat so finding seeds should not be a problem. It also controls Ministry of Agriculture offices in Mosul and Tikrit which should have fertiliser supplies.
But getting the seeds and fertiliser into the right hands will be a problem. Mohamed Diab, director of the World Food Programme’s Regional Bureau for the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and Eastern Europe, said that it is “highly unlikely” that displaced farmers would return. “The picture is bleak regarding agriculture production next year,” he said. “The place where displacement has happened is the main granary of the country.”
Reuters
