As many as 500,000 Iraqis escaped Mosul as the city fell and the Iraqi army melted away.
But now, tens of thousands have decided to return.
In the Sunni dominated city, the removal of the Iraqi army by ISIS has been interpreted as a local victory; as a means of empowering Mosul residents against Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Shia dominated national government who they feel has kept their people “oppressed”.
“For seven years we lived in a prison. The people who have come now [ISIS], are better than the Maliki army,” Maher, 36, told the Telegraph. He wouldn’t reveal his name for fear putting his family in danger. “All of Mosul feels this way.”
An English teacher, with a soft manner and kind eyes, Maher bore no similarity to the masked men in the ISIS adverts proffering holy slaughter.
But the sympathy he felt for his new occupiers sharply illustrates the threat that is now being posed to Baghdad, and the challenges that Mr Maliki will face to regain control of northern Iraq.
As jihadist insurgents have swept victoriously south, conquering village after village and pushing the front line to only 60 miles from the capital, they have met little resistance from Sunni residents.
On Friday William Hague, the foreign secretary, implied the British government may send special forces such as the SAS to advise Iraqi army units in how to fight the “terrorists”.
But the crises in northern Iraq is now less one of a single jihadist group to be rooted out and destroyed, than of a sectarian pushback by the Sunni population against the Iraqi government.
With the rest of his family crammed into his battered silver Sedan car, ready to drive to Mosul, Maher, the teacher, described the city, which he had been to the day before.
“The situation is quiet and normal now in Mosul. Schools and hospitals have opened,” he said. “There is no pressure from ISIS. Yesterday there was a parade by them in the streets to show off the weapons that they took from the Iraqi army. People came out to watch; they feel safe.”
Video footage from inside the city shows masked gunmen acting as traffic police, calmly waving cars through at a crossroads. Other images show the jihadists studiously repairing broken electricity lines.
One female resident, who asked not to be named, spoke to the Telegraph from her home inside the city.
“The armed men organise even the municipal services. Rubbish is being cleaned off the streets. Electricity is very fine: we now have it more than nine hours per day, which is even better than during Saddam [Hussein]’s rule,” she said.
“Now, in these days of being in the grip of the armed men, we only feel the wonderful peace, which we have missed for more than a decade now, since 2003.”
All the residents in Mosul who the Telegraph spoke with automatically referred to the Iraqi army as the “Maliki militia”.
After the 2003 invasion Maliki appointed mostly Shia commanders from southern Iraq to lead the troops in Mosul. Feeling no allegiance to the city, the soldiers’ behaviour toward the locals ranged from demeaning to violent, residents said.
Troops were known for running sweeping arrests of any Sunni men who happened, even by accident, to be in the vicinity of an incident. The city was fragmented by army checkpoints that were difficult for locals to cross. And then there were the smaller humiliations of troops swaggering with entitlement taking petrol and goods without paying.
Twenty-two year old Refat said he spent six months in prison after a suicide bomb exploded close to the sweet shop where he worked: “The soldiers rounded all the workers in the area up and put us in jail. They told us we are all terrorists,” he said. “Under Maliki it was a religious right to kill or mistreat Sunnis.”
“We will live under al-Qaeda if they give people their rights. We have no problem with living under Shariah law, even if woman have to cover their face,” he added.
But some residents of Mosul have already felt the brutal, crazed, streak in the jihadists who for now, are playing nice.
Ahmed, 24, is an Iraqi police men from Mosul who fled the city after witnessing ISIS beheading four soldiers at a checkpoint.
“I was hiding in my home. I could see the ISIS checkpoint outside. They took the ID cards of the men and checked their names against a database.”
“Then they pulled them out of the car. They put them in a line, and, grabbing their faces swiped their swords. They beheaded all four people.”
In the first few days after taking control, the jihadist went on a rampage of revenge. In storming the military headquarters they gained access to the database of military personnel, Ahmed said. Since then, they have been seeking out members of the special forces who had in the past put members of ISIS in jail, and exacted their vendetta.
In addition they have begun to impose their ideology on the people of Mosul.
At public gatherings, and using the tannoys of the minarets of mosques, the jihadists espoused the “ten commandments” of their rule.
“People, you tried secular rulings and they gave you pain. Now is time for the Islamic state,” they shouted at one night rally, the lights of the mobile phones of residents shining in the dark as they recorded the new rules.
The new dictates are typical of the ISIS movement, reflecting almost exactly the regulations it imposed in Raqqa, the northern Syrian city under it’s control: Smoking, drinking alcohol, tattoos, and grave sites are banned. Women should be covered in public, but preferably should remain at home.
Breaking these rules is punishable by public flogging. Thieving can result in limbs being chopped. Committing adultery merits being stoned to death.
It is unclear how long the honeymoon between the jihadists and the people of Mosul can last.
The occupation of the city may repeat patterns already established in Syria, where initially the population welcomed the jihadists as a force for moral good after years of suffering under a brutal and corrupt leadership. But then, the strict regulations imposed by ISIS debilitate the freedoms they used to have. They grate and inspire rejection.
“We know that radicalism won’t survive in our society and we will take care of that,” said the woman speaking from Mosul.
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