The Godfather<\/em>)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00abAl-Qaeda has increasingly turned to extortion and organised crime to fund its activities, with businesses bearing the brunt of intimidation, US and Iraqi commanders in northern Iraq told AFP.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbWhile the number of attacks in Mosul and the surrounding province of Nineveh has dropped and the smuggling of weapons across Iraq’s western border with Syria has declined, threats and coercion targeting locals remains commonplace.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbEveryone pays, and no one objects or delays because their vehicles will be seized and their shops closed, until they pay up, said Abdullah Ahmed Ali, who owns a market stall in the Prophet Younis neighbourhood of central Mosul. Trucks carrying food from Syria or Baghdad are levied a 200-dollar charge, while smaller vehicles incur a 100-dollar fee. Outright refusal is not an option, the 44-year-old Ali said.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbThose who refuse to pay, he added, end up like Abu Mohammed a fellow shopkeeper who, according to Ali, reputedly declined to hand over money to the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), Al-Qaeda’s front group. Abu Mohammed was shot dead, and his son was injured, six months ago.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbTales of similar intimidation abound in Mosul which translates loosely as the junction in Arabic, and for centuries has been a Middle East trading hub.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbThe city, however, is now better known as a centre for the smuggling of illicit goods from Syria mostly innocuous items such as cigarettes, but also occasionally weapons.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbCaptain Keith Benoit, commander of the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment’s Apache Troop, which jointly patrols much of western Nineveh with Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers, said there were weapons facilitation problems. You also see extortion they have resorted to that because flows of military-grade explosives and weapons have been closed off, he said.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbBenoit compared organised crime in Nineveh to a well-known scene in the 1972 film The Godfather. It’s like the horse’s head in the bed, Benoit said, while on a joint patrol of the village of Ayn-Zalah north of Mosul. They’ll threaten you cooperate with us, or we’ll kill you’.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n
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