Where ISIL once thrived, beer, bingo and raki now prevail
To some, Ayad Tarek's business could be seen as a personal form of revenge. A 27-year-old Yazidi, a religious minority persecuted by ISIL during its reign in northern Iraq, he moved to Mosul after the terror group was purged from the city, once their headquarters. Though his small shop is inconspicuous, among trades such as […]Florian Neuhof writes for The National:
To some, Ayad Tarek's business could be seen as a personal form of revenge. A 27-year-old Yazidi, a religious minority persecuted by ISIL during its reign in northern Iraq, he moved to Mosul after the terror group was purged from the city, once their headquarters.
Though his small shop is inconspicuous, among trades such as as car mechanics and spare parts dealers, bottles of whisky are stacked behind Mr Tarek and beer cans are visible in tall fridges with glass doors. Selling alcohol is his plan to make enough money to establish another business in Germany, the country to which he once fled, but he is mindful that what he does would have been unthinkable under ISIL, and even frowned upon years earlier.
Mr Tarek is not alone in seeing opportunity in activity that ISIL would have killed people for.