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The Current Transcript for April 11, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

The group was making literally millions off of things like the sale of flour, the sale of barley and wheat, sheep's milk, the most boring things possible which are worse than the very things that you cannot bomb.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Theirs was a reign of terror financed by heavy taxes. For three long years until it was overrun in heavy fighting last year, ISIS controlled the Iraqi city of Mosul not only with brutality but with something far more banal: Bureaucracy. Government workers were forced to keep working under strict new rules laid out by the so called Islamic State. And like all good bureaucracy's they left a paper trail which is now a bit of a road map to understand just how vulnerable others can be to a militant takeover that includes elements of seemingly efficient government. In an hour, New York Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi explains. Also today, victimized as a minor, anonymous as an adults.

SOUNDCLIP

I have a right to tell my story. I have a right to be named. So people start to understand that this does happen. This is probably happening right now.

AMT: As a victim of child pornography a publication ban kept her name secret. As an adult who wants to share her story, her identity is not hers to use. Publication bans are used to protect victims of abuse but increasingly some of those victims say those same bans hurt their efforts to heal. That story, in half an hour but we're starting with pipeline politics.

SOUNDCLIP

Maybe the government of B.C. feels they can mess with Texas. But let me be absolutely clear. They cannot mess with Alberta.

AMT: I am an from Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

What's at stake if B.C. opposition derails the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline?

Guests: Chris Hall, Vaughan Palmer, Deborah Yedlin

SOUNDCLIP

When I spoke with the prime minister he reiterated that position that he has held for some time, that he believes that this project is in the national interest and I respectfully disagree as I have consistently. It is our view that provincial jurisdiction should prevail in many areas that are affected by this process. We said from the beginning that the energy process was flawed. We are in court. In fact, the court that has started well before we were for reform government. We felt that the NEB did not adequately take into consideration the risks to British Columbia, most importantly the risk to our coast.

AMT: Well that is B.C. Premier John Horgan speaking Sunday the same day kindred Morgan announced it was putting the brakes on non-essential spending on its controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project. The Houston based conglomerate gave Ottawa until May 31st to convince at that stiff opposition from B.C. government can be contained. Alberta premium Rachel Notley responded by accusing the B.C. Premier of undermining foreign investment in Western Canada and threatening economic retaliation against the province if it doesn't back off.

SOUNDCLIP

The government of Alberta is also prepared to come to the table on this because we are not going to let the governor of B.C. use a vague harassment techniques as a means of scaring away investors. Frankly, that as a tool is something that should worry the citizens of B.C. overall because if investors see that it can happen to one project they're going to think that it can happen to another one too. But regardless, the government of Alberta is not a nervous investor. We know for well the benefit of this project.

AMT: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also had a clear message for Premier Horgan when he spoke with him on the weekend.

SOUNDCLIP

I impressed upon him the importance of working together and respecting the federal responsibility for protecting things that are in the national interest. This is a pipeline in the national interest and it will get built.

AMT: It's a tense situation with high stakes not just for the economy but for national unity. Federal Cabinet ministers gathered yesterday for an emergency meeting to discuss the way forward. We've brought together a panel of three journalists who've been closely following the story. Chris Hall is national affairs editor for the CBC, host of CBC Radio's The House. Chris is in Ottawa. Deborah Yedlin is a Calgary Herald business columnist. She joins us from Calgary. And Vaughan Palmer is the Vancouver Sun's provincial affairs political columnist. He's in Victoria. Hi everyone.

CHRIS HALL: Good morning.

VAUGHAN PALMER: Good morning.

AMT: Chris. Let's start with you. So they had an emergency cabinet meeting. Did they emerge with answers or a plan?

CHRIS HALL: No they emerged with the same talking points they've been using now for the better part of several months, this pipeline will be built, it's in the national interest as we heard from that clip and Justin Trudeau it was really interesting. Jim Carr, Natural Resources Minister was designated to speak to reporters who were wading. He made a brief statement saying those things and then took one question and bolted. So all were really left with Anna Maria is the same thing we've known all along. There are three options being considered legal, financial and regulatory. But beyond that we don't know precisely what they going to choose. We have some ideas for example financially how the government could take a direct ownership stake in the expansion of the Kinder Morgan transport pipeline. We know there are thoughts about withholding transfer payments to British Columbia but all these things are not perfect and so clearly the government hasn't made up its mind about how best to proceed without alienating both Voters in British Columbia and threatening its own seat in the province of British Columbia. Deborah Yedlin what's the mood in Alberta towards B.B right now?

DEBORAH YEDLIN: Is would characterise it as what in one word they are being raged. There is absolute frustration not just because of the pipeline issues but also because of the real estate tax. So this is just- there's so much anger and frustration in Alberta. It really defies description right now.

AMT: The real estate tax because a lot of Albertans have property in B.C. right?

DEBORAH YEDLIN: Yes. It they help support the values of those properties.

AMT: Okay so what are the legislative options Rachel Notley has to exert pressure on B.C. to back off Deborah?

DEBORAH YEDLIN: Well Rachel Notley is looking at what she can do whether she can start to have a tax on all the goods that come in to Alberta form B.C., that's a possibility that would also cause some problems. She's looking at ways to potentially restrict the flow of oil from Alberta into B.C. but that's a complicated challenge because there is no valves in the basement of the legislature. This is a complex measure to enact. And so we're looking to see where those financial levers can be applied. Obviously we have goods that come into the port of Vancouver, come through Alberta. There are ways to make the transfer of those goods across this province a little bit more expensive. And obviously that's not something that people, that the companies in B.C. would be interested in. And so there's a number of things that she's looking at and we're going to wait and see what happens when she deals legislation.

AMT: Okay well Vaughan what are the chances that tactics from Alberta will get premier Horgan to stop up his opposition to the pipeline?

VAUGHAN PALMER: Well it's interesting to hear both of my colleagues there say that Ottawa has it set, what it is going to do and Alberta is still looking at its options because John Horgan's response out here in British Columbia is I've seen no specifics from either are no threats from Ottawa. I`ve see no legislation from Alberta and I'm not going to say anything until I see that his position in the B.C. legislature in the last two days, Anna Maria, has been that all he is doing is exercising British Columbia's legal option to go to court to get this jurisdictional question sorted out. He's invited Ottawa and Alberta join the British Columbia government in sorting that out in court under the rule of law. And in the meantime Horgan is trying to lower the temperature, not raise it.

AMT: Okay well Chris, there is a quote that I've got here from Premiere Notley saying Ottawa should, and here's the quote: "Act in defense of Alberta and working people in Western Canada. Are there legal steps Ottawa could take to get B.C. to change its tune? What about the court?

CHRIS HALL: Yes clearly there is that option and one would have thought that the federal government wanted to do it. It would have use that by now because the deadline set by Kinder Morgan is basically they want clarity before May 31st and as everyone knows the court system grinds slowly. So I don't know if they're going to do a reference. Clearly in the past it has been used to define questions of constitutional jurisdiction and we've heard the federal government say repeatedly that this is a federal project because it crosses provincial lines, that it’s in the national interest of the country. There are two options one is to do just reference case to the Supreme Court. It could be heard relatively quickly, I mean a matter of months but still beyond the deadline that Kinder Morgan has set. The other is to an Act under Section 92-10 this declaration to declaratory power. This is a project in the national interest which would supersede any provincial jurisdiction. But they seem, as I said earlier, reluctant to use that kind of measure in large part because they don't know the answer. If they go to the courts. And secondly, the kind of political fallout it could have. So were stuck in this limbo, if I can put it that way, where two provinces are squabbling all of which threatens to undermine the national unity as you put it, because the federal government ultimately is responsible for ensuring these types of projects goes through.

AMT: So in other words they have to be careful what they wish for. They got a court and they don't know.

CHRIS HALL: That’s exactly right. Where they've used this in the past with things like same sex marriage, the Fire Arms Act, the long gun registry they had a pretty good idea they were going to win. The one gamble I suppose was in our national unity Quebec secession reference. But by and large you don’t use things unless they are pretty confident they know the answer already.

AMT: Vaughan how would B.C. respond to a Supreme Court referral?

VAUGHAN PALMER: I think British Colombia would be delighted. British Columbia, John Horgan has pointed out a couple of times that they offered this option to Ottawa a couple of months ago. The feds turned it down. He said 'Join us. Let's go to court to get it all sorted out in the court. You have the power to go to the Supreme Court directly and we'll have our answer'. So Horgan had the B.C.'s environment minister disclosed to the legislature on money that the day the New Democrats took office, they got legal advice which they accepted that their election promise to do everything in their power to stop the pipeline would leave the province essentially wide open to a lawsuit from Kinder Morgan that it would itself be unlawful. So that's when they switch to this much more attenuated strategy of simply exercising the provincial right to go to court and get the jurisdictional question clarified. So Horgan has already backed away from doing everything in his power to stop this pipeline. He's down to this last court option of asking the court 'Do we really have the jurisdiction to do anything here?' If I were to come to Victoria and say 'Hey you know what you're right we should go to court and get this sorted out', and if Alberta were to join it I think Horgan would declare a victory and say 'Great I am prepared to abide by whatever the courts say'. That's his exit strategy. The question is and I hear what Chris is saying, it doesn't really solve the problem with Kinder Morgan. I think that's where Alberta and Ottawa somehow or other indemnifying the company or taking a piece of the action in the project that would be necessary. British Columbia is not part of that.

AMT: Okay well those are a couple of things so I pick up on, one being that he had a strategy from day one and we're not sure that Ottawa did.

VAUGHAN PALMER: I think that's probably true. But it's funny. Horgan publicly old here says 'I'm just doing what I said during the election'. The fact is no he's not. During this election he said he would do everything in his power to stop this project. As soon as he got into office, he switched to saying he would do what he was allowed under the law to defend B.C.'s interests. British Columbia is not holding up premising on the project which would be doing everything in your power. But the government's warned you hold up permeates on this. It's been approved by the federal government. You're leaving yourself open to a a law suit from Kinder Morgan, essentially harassing the project not living up to what you have to do as a government. So I think you know Horgan has handed very very strongly what the exit strategy is here. It's really as far as the B.C. government is concerned up to Ottawa and Alberta to join it in the court election that is the exit strategy for B.C .

AMT: Okay so Deborah, Alberta is talking about buying a stake in the project. How popular would that be? Take us through that one.

DEBORAH YEDLIN: Well that actually makes a lot more sense than actually buying the project outright because the other government really shouldn't be in the business of owning a pipeline, because that causes all sorts of other fallout from an investment standpoint. But we have to remember that in 1973 when Atlantic Ridgefield left the Syncrude project the Alberta government, the Ontario government and the federal government all took at a stake in Syncrude so that the project would stay alive and be able to develop, which is what happened. And at a later date, those steaks were sold to the public in various ways. And so there is precedent for this to happen and this would make a lot sense not only for a couple of reasons. One is that it would allow Kinder Morgan, it would give Kinder Morgan the time to see how the court case plays out. It would also keep Kinder Morgan in the game by having Alberta and potentially the federal government which they could also do this. Let's say we are talking about 300 million dollars a month, as this project starts to roll forward, Kinder Morgan is saying 'We don't want to risk, continue to risk our capital. If we have no assurances that we're not going to continue get stymied by the B.C. government'. And so in this way you have Alberta and federal governments sharing the risk. You keep Kinder Morgan in the game and they don't have to spend that kind of money. And at the same time there is an equity stake is as it as negotiated in the project and it will likely be sold out at a later date. So that is actually one way that is getting a lot of traction. People are talking that this makes sense. To buy it outright I would argue is not getting the same kind of positive response.

CHRIS HALL: From the government perspective, Anna Maria, that also comes with the idea of investing [unintelligible] a Texas based company is a project in line. But look at the pressure that Justin Trudeau's under. He made a promise to Rachel Notley in return for putting a price on carbon in Alberta that there would be a pipeline that would take Alberta's oil sands to tidewater and the only option left now, after the end of Northern Gateway was energy east now out of the picture, is Kinder Morgan's expansion. The other thing that's interesting overseas is the provincial rights question. We've watched to hear from Ottawa as Alberta talked about needing the federal jurisdiction to interfere in what would be clearly a case of a province - in this case British Columbia - challenging the federal authority, it makes for an odd mixture given the constitutional history of this country.

AMT: And just so I can clarify. Deborah, Kinder Morgan in Canada was spun off from Kinder Morgan last year. What's that connection with Houston anymore?

DEBORAH YEDLIN: Oh no. So Houston owns 70 percent of Kinder Morgan Canada. There was an IPO was the second largest IPO in Canadian history 30 percent or more again Canada was fine. It was spun out but 70 percent of the shares are still held in Houston. So it's still an American controlled company. Chris is right I mean there's an optics issue that would actually have to come to bear if the federal government got involved. But Syncrude was not exactly 100 percent owned by Canadians either at the time. So you know that path has been walked before. So this is something that Justin Trudeau has to realise that there's a couple ways to look at this. One is he's going to have to spend some political capital. And that political capital means he's going to have to come to terms with the fact that he will lose seats, no matter what, in the Lower Mainland in B.C. If you're going to say this is in the national interest, be prepared to spend that political capital, that's a cost that's going to come with it. But at the same time it will come likely with other gains across the country because he has showed us to stand up for the economic future of the country. And the thing is this: We've seen foreign investment decline in Canada, if we lose Kinder Morgan this is an abject failure on the part of the federal government to see that through a project that they say they support it. And everybody here's very tired of hearing the national interest, we support pipelines [unintelligible]. They have to do something to make sure that builds. Because there will be an investment chill that Canada will not be able to recover from. That's the long term game we're playing right now. We cannot afford to have that happen.

AMT: Chris what are the conservatives saying about this in Ottawa?

CHRIS HALL: Well they would like to see this project through. They like the federal government to do start talking and to take some action. We've heard Jason Kenney for example who's now the PC leader in Alberta talking about withholding transfers to British Columbia and there are obviously there are risks to that. But other than that they're just basically criticising and are not offering their own options here which makes it much more difficult I suppose for the Liberals to figure out exactly what the right move is politically. And of course Democrats are- Well who knows where they are exactly. The B.C.'s MPs are pretty adamant that they are at their side with John Horgan here. Jagmeet Singh hasn't met, from what I can tell, with either John Horgan or Rachel Notley and they only have one seat in Alberta. So all those calculations are being made here as a government wrestles with what it ultimately needs to do to ensure that this project is built.

AMT: What about the issue of federal authority in this striking at the heart of something much bigger, Chris?

CHRIS HALL: Well that is a huge issue for them, right, because a signal here to investors - as Deborah has already said - is if you cannot enforce your own rules, this pipeline was approved by the National Energy Board under federal rules. If you can't get it done what signal that send to others? And there is obviously that other battle which is a bit more ephemeral but it's a question of what happens to the relationship between the federal government and the provinces, if it is seen to override what is a complaint out of British Columbia that there are issues around coastline around the transport of what is potentially a very dangerous material across a provincial boundary that they don't have any say over what's done with it.

DEBORAH YEDLIN: So let's look at what's at stake politically for each of these leaders. Deborah what does this mean for the survival of Rachel Notley's government. Well clearly Rachel Notley's government, they have become the unlikely advocates of a pipeline which a lot of people are finding very interesting. For them this is where they can really seal their fate in terms of a re-election next year in 2019. And for Rachel Notley to be as supported as she is, so much of their political future hangs on this project going ahead because there has been precious little investment in Alberta in the energy sector because of the because of the downturn in oil prices. And we're starting to see a recovery but there's so many questions about regulatory issues and certainty that things have really been sitting on the sidelines and this is critical. She sees this as critical to the future of Alberta's economic future, in addition to pursuing an economic diversification strategy. But she has to have something to underpin future growth and this is what she wants to see. So very critical for her this goes ahead.

AMT: Vaughan you've talked about this this exit that the Premier has in B.C. He's got a minority government. What's his future looking like?

VAUGHAN PALMER: The next B.C. election on the schedule is fall 2021. So there is no urgent political problem here for John Horgan. There are opinion polls out here in British Columbia showing there is certainly support for this pipeline going ahead. So you know I could see Horgan leaving with a solution that would lower the temperature here. To me it would look like first of all the federal government the Alberta government conceding that British Columbia has raised a legitimate jurisdictional issue. How much power does the province have to change a project that's already been approved by Ottawa. They referred at the Supreme Court of Canada, looked for some guidelines and get that sorted out. I think Horgan would be relieved and happy and I think British Columbia would be aware that they're not being punished for something where the province may have an issue that's legitimate. Now I agree and I'm listening to my colleagues, I think the other thing that the Alberta and our well would have to do is somehow or other persuade Kinder Morgan that it will be protected that it can go ahead and spend two or three hundred million dollars a month that it wants to spend on this project. It would be protected by a federal or an Alberta or both investment in the project. But really there is an exit strategy on this that would allow all three governments and the company to save face. As a British Columbian I am concerned to hear the rhetoric escalating that suggest we're headed to some kind of huge crash, when to me, there is a way out of this save face and that preserves a chance to the project going ahead.

AMT: Chris I'm really struck by the fact that Justin Trudeau comes into power still carrying the baggage of the Trudeau name in the West over energy and here we are.

CHRIS HALL: Yes. You know I was just going to say that the national energy program cost the liberal in Alberta - well still costs the liberals in Alberta - and one wonders if this was forced through, that just might cost them in British Columbia into the future as well. The calculation very quickly the reference case they would have I think done this already had they thought this was the best solution. I think the calculation here is it can't be seen to be caving to British Columbia's exercise of its jurisdiction when they have asserted their own federal authority.

AMT: We've got to leave it there. Thanks to all of you. Chris Hall in Ottawa CBC Radio's National affairs editor for CBC. Deborah Yedllin in Calgary with the Calgary Herald. Vaughan Palmer in Victoria for the Vancouver Sun. Stay with us. This is The Current. [Music: Theme]

'I have a right to be named': Child pornography survivor fails to lift publication ban

Guests: Sarah, Monique St. Germain

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme].

AMT: Still to come. They've largely been defeated on the battlefield. But to really understand how ISIS controlled so much territory for so long you have to follow the paper trail. New York Times foreign correspondent Rukmini Callimachi has done just that, unearthing thousands of documents that reveal in minute detail how ISIS ran its so-called state. Hear her in half an hour. But first, fighting for the right to say your name.

SOUNDCLIP

Even though you know so many years later you didn't do anything wrong, it's not your fault, you still feel that shame. You still feel like you're going to be in trouble. You still feel like that person has absolute control over you. And to disclose everything that happens is not very easy to do. It's not easy to relive.

AMT: That is Natasha Ring standing outside a New Brunswick courthouse last week. She's talking about the sexual abuse she suffered from a man she describes as a child stealing monster. We do not often name survivors of sexual abuse and there are legal reasons for that but we are allowed to call Natasha by her name because she waived her right to a publication ban in the case against her step brother. But over to St. John's Newfoundland and Labrador were two survivors of sexual abuse are reeling after they learned that despite their yearning to be known, and a yearlong court process to try to make that legal, the ban on publishing their names must remain. The abuse they suffered was child pornography. And in those cases publication bans are mandatory and cannot be lifted. Critics of this law say the women's story highlights how a rule designed to protect victims can actually end up forcing them to stay quiet. We're going to talk to one of those women about why she wants her story told. But first let's go back about a decade to the high profile story in which she is an unnamed character.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: Mehnad Shablak, also known as Mike, is a man who likes taking pictures of teenaged girls, pictures in various states of undress, explicit pictures. And he gave them money or drugs for it.

POLICE OFFICER: This is the sort of thing as a parent. Young people should never ever be exposed to or be involved in. It's highly inappropriate. It's repulsive.

REPORTER: All the pictures, about 260, were taken with a digital camera at the Big Bite pizza parlor on Water Street in St. John's where Shablak was the manager. The girls involved ranged from 13 to 16.

AMT: Well I'm joined by one of the teens in those stories. Ten years later she is an adult and again CBC is not legally allowed to identify her. We're calling her Sarah. Hello.

SARAH: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: What was going through your mind as you listen to that old news clip about your story?.

SARAH: A lot of bad memories. It's been very difficult to come out and talk about you know the things that have happened to me when I was young, but today I realise that that was not my fault and that victims of these type this type of abuse are blamed so often for their abuse. I really feel it's important for people like me and my friend to come out and you know make people realise that this does happen. This does go on and the children always feel like it was their fault.

AMT: That caused a lot of attention in St. John's and beyond. Remember how that attention felt at the time?

SARAH: I found it actually more scary than anything. I was very scared in the beginning because I didn't want people to know. I was extremely embarrassed about it and ashamed but I feel totally different about that today.

AMT: You were known by your initials at the time.

SARAH: Yes.

AMT: Well before we talk about today, talk a little bit more about at that time what was going on in your life at the time you were abused by this man with pornography pictures in this pizza shop?.

SARAH: Well I was living on the streets at the time and I put in a resume to big bite and they hired me on there as a cashier. Overtime they groomed me I guess. And they started to ask me to take pictures for money and for food and sometimes drugs.

AMT: And you were addicted at the time, huh?

SARAH: Yes.

AMT: So you were pretty vulnerable.

SARAH: Yes, I was.

AMT: So you weren't a sex worker, though.

SARAH: No.

AMT: And the people that you were working alongside of were in similar positions to yours. Right? Were all pretty vulnerable young women.

SARAH: Yes.

AMT: And so all these years later you're fighting for the right to use your name publicly in the context of that story. Why is it important to have your name out there now?

SARAH: I feel like I need to tell my story and not hide behind another, a different name. You know especially for other victims out there that are going through the same thing. When I hide behind a different name it's showing them or telling them giving them the wrong idea that they need to be ashamed of this. And that's not right.

AMT: Mmm because you've moved on with your life.

SARAH: Yes.

AMT: Can you tell me what your life is like now?

SARAH: My life is very good today. I have my son back. I had lost my son due to drug use years ago after the big incident. I'm in Memorial University. I'm not currently enrolled this semester but I'm starting back in September. I'm doing my degree in psychology and I'm hoping at some point to have my doctorate. I would like to open up a psychology clinic.

AMT: Wow. You've come a long way.

SARAH: Yes.

AMT: How old is your son?

SARAH: He's 10.

AMT: And so that's part of it you want people to know that despite this terrible crime against you, you have moved on to a fulfilling life.

SARAH: Yes.

AMT: What would it have meant to you to be able to talk to somebody and know who they really were at the time to see how they managed to move forward?

SARAH: It would definitely would have helped greatly. I mean just the embarrassment and the shame and you know holding that inside for so long and just feeling like everything was your fault. It really leaves you on a downward spiral and that feeling of being alone in it. If I had someone tell me you know about their story and something similar like that it would have really helped me realise that I'm not alone that I have nothing to be ashamed of. I probably would have never went down the road that I went down.

AMT: So how did you react when you learned that you cannot be named in connection with this story?.

SARAH: I was actually quite angry. I was confused at first because I couldn't understand why, but I was I was mostly angry. I felt like I have a right to tell my story. Like I have a right to be named. This is my story. You know I'm doing it. I want to do this not only to help my own healing but to help other women that are going through this as well, other girls that are going through this. And so people start to understand that this does happen here. This is probably happening right now. And people look past it and a lot of the reason is because they don't have a real face to put to the stories.

AMT: Do you understand why courts are so strict in protecting young people who have been abused like this?.

SARAH: Yes and I totally understand that. I think that, yes, children should be protected for sure. But I also do believe that as an adult you should have a choice whether to release your name or not.

AMT: So what should happen that you should be able to go to a judge and have that and have your name lifted.

SARAH: Like if I want to have my name lifted, I should be able to do that.

AMT: Have you tried before to tell your story publicly so that others can learn from it?

SARAH: I did a essay in one of my gender studies classes but it was not you know it wasn't really something that was meant to be totally public.

AMT: You also had a plan, did you not, to speak to a university class?

SARAH: Yes I did.

AMT: What happened to that?

SARAH: Well because of the publication ban people were kind of afraid to let us do that because we weren't really sure exactly how the publication ban worked. We were actually really confused about what we were allowed to what we weren't allowed to do.

AMT: And do you know yet? Is it still confusing to you about what the rules are?

SARAH: Yes.

AMT: Okay so do you feel you're being silenced, in a way, then?

SARAH: I do. I do feel I'm being silenced. I feel like I'm not able to do interviews with people unless they use a fake name. Some people have been scared to even talk to me about it because for some reason they think that they can just get in trouble for knowing. So it's actually, oddly enough, it scared a lot of people, the whole publication ban.

AMT: And how does that affect your ability to heal?

SARAH: I feel like I've come so far that I'm strong enough to get through this as well.

AMT: But you're trying to help other people who've been through this.

SARAH: Yes and that's very difficult when you can't say your name. Like I would like to be able to talk to other victims of abuse but they can't even, they don't even know my name. So they can't even find me to message me to talk to me.

AMT: So what will you do now? Is there another way to challenge the law? What will you do?.

SARAH: I'm not really sure what to do at this point.

AMT: Because essentially this goes into perpetuity, right?

SARAH: Yes.

AMT: How old are you now?

SARAH: I'm 27.

AMT: So you can never put your name, like you can never actually give your identity and claim this as your own history and your own experience even as you get older?

SARAH: No.

AMT: No. That's what makes you angry?

SARAH: Yes.

AMT: It's important to hear your voice.

SARAH: It is.

AMT: Even if we can't know your name. So thank you for speaking with me.

SARAH: Thank you.

AMT: Well that is the woman we're calling Sarah in St. John's Newfoundland and Labrador. We cannot identify her because she was the victim in a child pornography case in St. John's about a decade ago. She's fighting a publication ban on her case. She was and she lost. Publication bans on child pornography cases are mandatory and irrevocable. To help us understand why that is the case. I'm joined by Monique St. Germain. She is the general counsel for the Canadian Center for Child Protection. She's in Winnipeg. Hello.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Hello.

AMT: So why are the bans mandatory?

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Well it's the way that it's written in the criminal code. The criminal code has a number of different publication bans that are in there for a number of different reasons. The one specifically that pertains to child pornography is written in a way that is different from a lot of the other ones. So whereas in the other bands it will say that the judge 'may' make the order and then set out some of the preconditions upon which the judge may make the order for the child pornography ban, it says the judge 'shall' make the order. Up to this point there have not been many victims who want to lift the publication ban when it comes to child pornography. So there hasn't been a whole lot of testing of that provision thus far in the courts.

AMT: And that's why it's irrevocable at this point.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Well I think that there have been some cases that have opined on the issue. So there was the case out of Nova Scotia that I think everybody is aware of, which is the case involving Rehtaeh Parsons and her family's wish to not have a publication ban on her name. So there's that decision but there isn't really a whole lot out there. So I think from a legal point of view, some of the opinions that have come forward have been that it's irrevocable. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that every court in every instance is going to find that way. These are you know this is some of the way the law develops is that people bring applications, they make arguments and eventually at some point laws change or somebody brings forth a constitutional challenge that then causes the law to be considered from a constitutional point of view.

AMT: You just mentioned the Rehtaeh Parsons case. In fact her name was not supposed to be made public. Even though everybody knew the name, but when the case then went to court there was a publication ban on her name which still exists but it was the attorney general of Nova Scotia, was it not, who said given that she is deceased we're not going to prosecute.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Yes. There was a very specific parameters put around that and it was actually something that had been suggested by the judge in his decision.

AMT: So what does that risk with a ban like this being lifted?

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Well I mean there's a really good public policy reasons why there are publication bans in cases like this. And I think everybody's used to the fact that there are publication bans in cases of sexual offences whether they're of adults or of children. Now those bands were put into the code a long time ago and there were you know people who didn't agree with them at the time but they are now generally accepted. When it comes to child pornography. There are some other things to consider in terms of the fact that there has been a permanent record created of the abuse that has taken place. So different from what might reside in the memories of people there's actually a record that others can go find, that they can trade with, and all of that other activity that we know happens with child pornography. So there's a reason to have additional concerns when it comes to child pornography. And I think that that would have been very much in the minds of legislators when they put this type of ban into place for that offence specifically.

AMT: Because the pictures they can surface two decades later.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Correct.

AMT: Okay, but we just heard from the woman we're calling Sarah in St. John's who wants her name out there. How well is a publication ban serving her?

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Well you know that's the thing is mandatory bans are a great idea in this in the course of putting them into place. So the fact that there is a mandatory ban and nobody can argue that no this victim's name needs to be in the public. That's a good thing for victims. But what the crafters of the legislation have failed to account for is victims who don't want the ban anymore. So there actually isn't even for victims of sexual assault or sexual abuse, there is no process that is set out in the code that shows how they lift the ban. The process of how to put the ban in place is there but not how to lift it. And that's a hole. That's a gap.

AMT: Especially in an era of MeToo when people do want to use their voices.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Absolutely. And from the perspective of our agency we've been monitoring this issue very closely because we have worked with victims who have wanted to have their names lifted, and we've got a firsthand understanding of how difficult it can be depending on the province that you're in, depending on the views of the judge before whom the application is going, depending on sort of the sophistication of the victim etc.

AMT: Tell me a little bit more about that. It really depends on your geographical location in Canada?

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Yes well the criminal code is a federal piece of legislation and so it applies across the country. However the administration of justice happens at a provincial level. So every court has got their own processes and procedures in order to enforce and administer the criminal code. And all of those processes and procedures are not necessarily identical in every province nor before every judge, particularly when you're dealing with a novel application or a relatively novel application until recently of lifting a publication ban.

AMT: But essentially everyone has to go to court individually.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Right.

AMT: Okay. That's time consuming and expensive.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Well of course it is. And they would have to also - I mean I don't know the circumstances of every single individual who's had their publication bans lifted, but I do know the process that has been followed by some of them. And I do know that they've been required to hire a lawyer to file formal application before the court, in some instances to serve the accused because the accused is perceived to have some input into the proceedings because the publication plan was an order that was made in the course of his legal - usually it's his, sorry - in the course of the legal proceedings against the accused.

AMT: And there actually is a case I think in Lethbridge were a now 21 year old man wants to use his name. He was victimised between the ages of 10 and 14. So there are young men who are also looking to speak out, huh?.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Absolutely. And I mean MeToo certainly would have something to do with this although from the perspective of our agency we saw this issue starting to come to the forefront before the MeToo movement began.

AMT: Okay, what were you seeing and why do you think it was?

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Well it's it's really I think that the stigma surrounding sexual abuse of children and sexual abuse or sexual assault in general is decreasing on a societal level. There's a much greater understanding among people that this does happen and that it does have a tremendous impact on victims. So we've got people who are coming forward who have reached a stage at which they are ready and want to use their voice to benefit victims. Our agency is working specifically with a victim of child pornography who has agreed and has recorded a victim impact statement that is now being used in child pornography cases. Now she's shielded. She's anonymous. However the words that she has to say are having a tremendous impact in the courtroom and on this issue specifically.

AMT: That's extraordinary. I mean because the stigma gets lifted, a whole bunch of victims can you can see they're not alone. Think they can kind of see a way forward to other people.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Absolutely. And the voices of victims are very important. In a criminal justice process, it's really about the crown and the accused. The victim is really sort of a side part of that whole process and that's because of the fact that you know an accused person once convicted will potentially lose their liberty etc. So there's all sorts of considerations given. However, victims also have rights and they have charter rights of their own, freedom of expression being one of the very important ones. And that's one of the reasons why I think this is so important and it's good that we're having a conversation as a society about this.

AMT: Do you see this becoming a charter challenge?

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Well I mean it's obviously charter challenges are a big deal. There would have to be some legal resources dedicated towards proceeding in that way. But I do see that eventually that's the way this is going to have to go unless the policymakers decide to take this issue on and actively do something about it before a charter challenge is made.

AMT: So in other words the legislation has to change or it has to go to the Supreme Court.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: I would say so yes.

AMT: So let's get back to the reasons why people do this. They are actually you make the point that they are able to tell their stories but they can't attach their names to that because of publication bans. Help us understand why one's name is so important in this?

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Well I don't want to speak on behalf of victims because obviously every victim is going to have a different perspective on why attaching their name is important. But objectively speaking it certainly feels like if you're not using your name and you want to be using your name that there's some sort of a shaming that's going on that isn't warranted. So from a victim's perspective using their name may be part of the empowerment that they need to heal, but that's not to say that there won't be victims out there who want to proceed in a way that doesn't involve using their name for very good reasons and that they don't feel that that shaming for different reasons. So the example of the victim that I had mentioned who's got a victim impact statement that's now being used in court. She's actually been stalked and harassed by various pedophiles online. And that's the reason why she won't attach her name to her story. And that makes good sense for her. Not every victim's going to have the same experience.

AMT: But you want victims to have a choice.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Absolutely.

AMT: As opposed to the law choosing for them. And I guess some for someone who has been victimised in such ways to take away their name is another form of victimisation.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Well it's almost a double silencing. So you know they've already sort of had to suffer through the abuse itself. And depending, because all victims of child pornography are not exactly the same. Sometimes the child pornography may have been created but it might not have gone anywhere. The damage is in the creation of the picture. Let's be very clear on that or that video whatever it is. However some distributions are real issue and therefore stalking and harassment are real concerns. But for some that may not be as much of a concern as for others. And really once somebody is an adult and they have the information available to them to understand what they may be risking by having their name attached to it, as a society we might want to consider whether or not it's fair to them to say 'No we think to protect you. Your name needs to be hidden'.

AMT: Because sometimes the courts are not decided that the showing of pictures is a real victimisation.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Well it is a real victimisation. That's absolutely the case. And that's part of the reason why many victims of this particular crime would never want to have their name out there. So you know there's there's definitely not going to be consistency among every victim that you would speak to.

AMT: And you seemed to be pointing out that some that the law made to protect somebody may not protect them in a ways they need to be protected later on.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Right. There's an evolution. And I think that where we're all familiar with you know there's been more and more victims coming forward with their stories and those stories are incredibly important. If we don't understand how the offending happens, if we don't understand how the grooming happens from the perspective of the victims as opposed to from the perspective of the offenders - which is really what the conversations been aimed at to date - were never going to get in front of this.

AMT: Monique St. Germain thank you for your insights into this.

MONIQUE ST. GERMAIN: Thank you.

AMT: Monique St. Germain a lawyer for the Canadian Center for Child Protection. She joined us from Winnipeg. Let us know what you think of this issue and how they're fighting it. You can tweet us we are @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook. Go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Now we did contact our Federal Justice Department for information on whether any changes to publication bans are being considered, while we were provided with a statement about other types of publication bans our actual question was not answered. Coming up we're talking about the ISIS files. New York Times foreign correspondent Rukmini Callimachi has tracked down thousands of internal ISIS documents revealing the inner workings of a state that managed at one point to control territory the size of Great Britain. How did they do it? Rukmini Calimachi is with me in our next half hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Currents on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcasts and on your radio app.

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How ISIS held on to power in Iraq through paperwork

Guest: Rukmini Callimachi

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. The alleged chemical weapons attack this past weekend in Syria and reports that U.S. President Donald Trump is considering a military response are just the latest reminders that peace in the region remains frustratingly elusive. President Trump was tweeting earlier today and he wrote, I'm quoting here, "Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia because they will be coming nice and new and smart. You shouldn't be partners with a gas killing animal who kills his people and enjoys it". Well as as the war in Syria continues if there's any glimmer of hope it may be that the years long battle against ISIS has succeeded in beating that group back. Today ISIS controls only a small patchwork of territory. At one point after declaring its caliphate in 2014 it controlled territory the size of Great Britain and the largest city under its control was Mosul in Iraq.

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REPORTER: Nearly three months after ISIS raised its black banner over the city residents describe heavy handed oppression and brutality under the rule of these Islamic extremists. When they first came to Mosul they told us they would protect us and that this was a revolution, explained this man too afraid to reveal his identity. But after the people got to know ISIS they feel hatred towards them. The people of Mosul now live in fear of arbitrary arrests, punishment and death with eyewitness reports of a young men accused of adultery publicly stoned to death.

AMT: Well today Mosul is liberated but questions remain about just how ISIS managed to hold on to power for as long as it did. Rukmini Callimachi has been helping to answer that question with her work. The New York Times foreign correspondent has been tracking down the remnants records of ISIS rule across the region and what she and the Times team discovered is that the key to its grip on power wasn't merely barbarism and brutality. It was also painstaking bureaucracy. Rukmini Callimachi has covered ISIS since 2014. She collected 15,000 pages of documents that she discovered during her travels in and out of Iraq over more than a year. They offer a cautionary tale to how a militant group remained in power for so long. Hello Rukmini.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Good morning Anna Maria.

AMT: 15,000 pages. Where did you find these documents?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Well for one I did not find them in one place. This is the result of five different trips that I took to Iraq over the past year and a half almost. We found the documents in 11 different towns and cities all over northern Iraq.

AMT: And you really had to look for them?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: We really have to look for them yeah we were helped by the Iraqi security forces who we are embedded with and who we explained our mission to. And so what we were doing is we were behind them as they were liberating different neighbourhoods. And the thing that's surprising about this group is - it's actually not surprising to me anymore because I've covered them for a while but I know it's a surprise for people who hear about it for the first time - is that they had a very complex bureaucracy which requires a lot of paperwork and they never have enough time to burn everything. So they often leave a lot of things behind.

AMT: It's interesting. The pay patrol because of that you started this with Al Qaeda. You were you were following their paper trail before you got to ISIS. Were you not?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. This is how it started under feet. It was in 2013. At that point Al Qaeda had taken over the northern half of the country of Mali in Africa and I followed behind French forces as they liberated city after city. And it was in Timbuktu in the buildings that Al Qaeda had occupied that I found, back then it was only 5000 pages of documents. It became the backbone of how I covered this group. Those documents were the blueprint to how they ran their jihad. It was their innermost thoughts because I was able to get copies of the diaries and it proved to be a far more - I thought - interesting way to cover the groups than the way it's normally done.

AMT: And so as you went on the hunt for the ISIS documents how dangerous was that?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Look the biggest danger was actually for the Iraqi forces who were who were basically ahead of us. They were the ones who were in immediate harm's way. I followed behind. So they would go into buildings first. They would make sure they were not mind and we would come in from behind. But of course the fear of landmines was a very real one and it hung in a very big way over [unintelligible].

AMT: So what picture do these documents paint for you of how ISIS ruled?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: It's a number of things. Number one it's exactly as you pointed out that that they rule through two complementary tools, violence we all know about but the second to the paperwork. And the documents show the way, the extent to which they created legitimacy through this paperwork. They called themselves a state and were in the habit of calling them a so-called state, you know and sort of discarding that ambition of theirs. But what the what the people reveal is that they really were actually a functioning government. It was a government that was recognised by no one but it was one that provided services, that collected taxes, that picked up the garbage, that fixed power outages. That's the first take away. The second one is I think that there's a mis-perception about how ISIS is financed. People that don't know the group assume that they are being financed by some outside force, some outside power, Saudi Arabia I've even been asked if the U.S. is financing them and that doesn't hold up at all. In fact the group you can see in the paperwork made money in much the same way that the U.S. makes money; by taxing its citizens, by taxing the commerce under the rule.

AMT: It's so interesting that the banality of bureaucracy is what kept people in their place.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Hannah Arendt was very much at the top of my mind as I was researching this.

AMT: I want it I want you to take me through some of the things you discovered. Let's start with the fact that they actually documented arrests too. Give us an example of some of the arrest records you saw.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Sure. So these were arrest records that we picked up in an ISIS police station -they have police stations - and it was it was everything from what you would expect, major crimes to the most petty grievances that you could imagine. They were arresting people for plucking their eyebrows. That was apparently something that was considered un-Islamic in their view ,for wearing clothes that were too tight, not just not just women but also men, men who were wearing jeans that were too tight, for having a quote 'fashionable' haircut. A pair of boys, actually three boys, they were 13 and 14. They were arrested for the crime of making fun during prayer. Two of the arrest records were making fun during prayer and the third one said laughing during prayer. So I imagine it's just a bunch of kids who were goofing off during prayer time. So you see the zealous nature of this group in these records.

AMT: Pretty chilling.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Yes. For sure.

AMT: And of course behind the paper trails were the bureaucrats and you talked to people who actually continued to work under ISIS rule. Tell us about Muhammad Nasser Hamoud in Mosul.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Yes. So I found I found Mr. Hamoud through the documents themselves. He and his colleagues appear as the signature on the bottom of the leases for agricultural land that ISIS rented out to farmers in the area. And the thing that was quite sick about it is this wasn't land that belonged to the Iraqi government or let's say ISIS. This is land that was being stolen from Shias and Christians and Yazidis, the religious minorities that have been chased out. So I have seen their signature at the bottom of these documents. I have seen their names and the translations we've done. And I assume that this was some sort of ISIS bogeyman you know some real ideologue and it was on my second and third trip back to Iraq that would actually lead to these people by police officers that have taken back these areas. And and the chilling thing is they were not actually members of ISIS. They were normal civilians who had worked in what was the Iraqi Directorate of Agriculture before and they had been forcibly drafted into the service of the terrorist group, if we are to believe there their account. And little by little their job changed from doing normal things that the Department of Agriculture does to essentially becoming part of the criminal arm of ISIS where they became involved in the seizure of their neighbour's land. They both said that they did it unwillingly but that they had no choice.

AMT: And they essentially tell you that they know that they're working against people who were neighbours, people who their kids grew up together.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Yes yes. That was that was a person called Mr. Salim and he had talked to me about how conflicted he felt. He would see his Sunni neighbour, himself Sunni - Keep in mind ISIS is a group that is 100 percent Sunni. He would see his Sunni neighbours coming to steal the land of their Christians or Shia neighbors or people whose kids you know had had gone to the same school as his own children. He claimed that at one point he tried to take some people aside and say if he knew them well and say listen you understand what you're doing. But that he was powerless to stop them. Now I have to add one little dose of skepticism here which is that I'm just reporting what they have said to me. I don't know if they were not more involved in the bureaucracy of ISIS.

AMT: Okay. But they tell you essentially they were told to show up for work and follow the new rules or they would pay a heavy price.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Yes and Iraqi security forces have explicitly told me that they're not arresting them because they don't consider them to have been a truly part of ISIS, that they were forced to work for ISIS.

AMT: You know it's interesting because they would have been public servants living under a tyrannical leader for most of their careers under Saddam Hussein. I'm wondering how much that played into their obedience.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: That's a really smart question, Anna-Maria. And in fact Salim, who's one of the two people that I that I profiled the most in the piece, he had been actually the head of security for one of Saddam Hussein's palaces in the area that I was in. So [unintelligible] that's what he did. He was the head of security for them. He was then basically kicked out of government by the arrival of American forces. The Americans purged members of the of the Baath Party. And then sometime later when the Americans left he was taken back into the Iraqi government. And then he was drafted into this government. So he's sort of seen the full arc.

AMT: And the Mr. Hamoud you talked about earlier, there was a toll on him. Tell us the story of his daughter.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: There was a pretty big toll on him. I mean for one four of his cousins were executed by ISIS. His daughter Sarah, she was a University medical student. He very grudgingly bought her the niqab - the full face covering veil that ISIS was imposing. And ISIS kept on changing the rules about women. So first that was that they have to cover their hair, their arms etc. Then they added gloves. Then they added a piece of cloth that had to physically covered the eyes. And so she had gone out of the house wearing everything except the last piece of cloth. So her eyes were uncovered and a member of the morality police called the [unintelligible] she said that he didn't even address her. He just punched her directly in the eye and he punched her so hard that she pretty much lost consciousness when that happened but it caused damage to her eye. Her eye began swelling and the swelling never went away and it has basically damaged her sight. She brought out the various doctors notices that she had. She now wears six corrective glasses as a result of this accident.

AMT: And the Hamoud family actually tried to leave at one point, what happened?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: The Hamoud family tried to leave. They made the mistake of going to the bank first and withdrawing basically all of the money in their account. It was Hamoud's son who the transaction. He thought he was being crafty by leaving around a thousand dollars in the account and withdrawing around 20-30,000 of the remainder of the cash. But ISIS was aware that that's what people were doing. They had spotters inside the bank. And he said that not even two hours later there was a loud knock at the door and these masked gunmen walked in and they went straight to him and they said where's the money. And they were holding up his bank slip. They confiscated that money. And they told him and the rest of the family if you'd ever try this again the next time we come we're going to kill all of you. So they were stuck. They basically became hostages of the Islamic State.

AMT: It's interesting because the other people working in the bank obviously would have been co-opted to work if we follow their story and so you don't know who's telling on whom at some point.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: This is one of this is one of the things that ISIS did very effectively and you hear the same civilians all over their former caliphate. They created a system of spies, of neighbours informing neighbours that was so complete that people had the impression that they were being watched everywhere. And it's funny if I can just relate one thing. That scenario familiar to me as somebody who was born in communist Romania and who saw the way my parents used to behave. My parents, even years and years later they've come to America, there's still there's still the sense that they're being watched. My mom has this tick where if she wants to tell me something really important she still wants to do it in the kitchen when the water is running, when she's doing her dishes. Because people in Romania realised that if you have listening devices in your home the fact that you're washing your dishes and the cacophony of that sound masked whatever you're saying. And this is decades later. But this is the kind of fear that these regimes instill in people and it gives people the impression that they're really being watched everywhere. And ISIS did that very effectively.

AMT: It's so interesting because when I was reading your piece in The New York Times I was actually thinking about the former Soviet countries and Eastern bloc countries because I remember covering that area and talking to people who would tell me those stories, just like what your mom would do. So it struck me that they were very communist in the way that they control their bureaucracy.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: It's like it's like a communist theocracy. I mean it was like this a strange combination of elements.

AMT: And you also discovered new ministries created by ISIS. What was the ministry of war spoils?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Yes this is called 'Diwan Al Ghanayem'. The ministry of war spoils is just that. This is the ministry that was set up to basically loot the property of the people they had chased out and they had detailed rules about how to do it. So the thing that has always amazed me about ISIS is they document their work. You know this is not a group that is in any way trying to hide what they're doing. The war spoils include things like the furniture they took from a Christian person's home. The pews that they ripped out of a church. The farmland that they took from a Shia family. And it would all catalogues in registries that they created and it was then used as the seed capital of their caliphate. A portion of it was given to their own fighters as a kind of carrot as a way to encourage them; free housing ,free furniture. And then the rest of it was sold or rented out and used as a way to make money.

AMT: You get a hold of an e-mail written by a young woman from France who had joined ISIS. Her husband was believed to have blown himself up at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris. What did she say in that e-mail?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: As you mentioned she was the pregnant wife of one of the Bataclan suicide bombers. And right after the November attacks in 2015 in Paris, I guess you wanted to show off and she reached out by e-mail to her former high school teacher and in her e-mails she's gushing about how amazing life in the caliphate is. And one of the things she says to him is 'You won't believe what it's like here. I have my own apartment. It's completely furnished. I don't even have to pay water or electricity. I haven't paid for a single fork'. She's said to him, with lots of the Moji and lots of exclamation points. And her wise teacher writes back to her and says - her name Cohina - and he's 'Cohina, I mean it breaks my heart to tell you this but don't you think that this free house that you're living in, don't you think that it possibly belongs to a family that has been displaced?' And she wrote back the following phrase 'Dirty Shia!!! Serves them right'.

AMT: Did she have all that stuff as a reward for what he did?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: She, by her own telling, she was staying in a family home. And what we do know is that ISIS prioritised and gave free housing to their fighters. It was one of the draws to the caliphate. It was kind of the welfare state that they created for their own people.

AMT: I'm asking because Hamas and Hezbollah had a long history of any sue anybody who blew themselves up in their name, their families would get a nice house; marble floors... Like they'd get the best house.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: I think that the dating of the correspondence the head teacher suggests that it's right around the time of the Bataclan. So it's before you even know that that her husband is one of the people who has blown himself up. I think she got this material before he did what he did.

AMT: And so as you go through all of this you discover that ISIS runs, the city the day to day running of the city of Mosul, becomes pretty efficient.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: This is one of the really scary things and it was actually hard to write because we don't want to legitimise this group. We don't want to you know help their PR. But after dozens of interviews with people who survived the war, the image that that that I came away with is that this is a group of killers. Nobody wants them back but they were uncannily good at certain aspects of governance. For example people overwhelmingly told me that the trash collection, garbage pickup was better under ISIS than under the Iraqi government that the group had usurped.

AMT: And why was that?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Well here's the interesting thing. The street sweepers haven't changed. So the civil servants were the same as before. What I did is I went to the Department of Sanitation in several different towns in northern Iraq. And I went to speak to the supervisors who had worked both under ISIS and under the Iraqi regime. And what they said to me is that the difference is that ISIS brought a level of discipline that they were not able to bring under the Iraqi government and they did that because of the implicit threat of violence. One supervisor told me that when the Iraqi government was in power, the most he could do when he was faced with a lazy employee who was who was slacking off, is he could give them a one day suspension without pay. That was the most he said. Under ISIS all you have to do is send them to go see his ISIS supervisor and the threat of that was enough to make people work really really hard.

AMT: It's so interesting. So there were many things that were functioning day to day for the people who lived there. And so when troops came in to try to take Mosul back you make the point that they weren't getting the revenue from anything that was like easy to spot. It became harder and I think you said at one point you can't really bomb a barley field.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: It is not [unintelligible] it's so pervasive. So the one trope that had been advanced about how ISIS made money is that they were dependent on their on the black market oil that they were smuggling out of Iraq and Syria. And that I mean we've known that that was overblown since probably 2015. And yet that idea has persisted and you can see it very much inculcated in the way that the U.S. tried to strangle this group financially. Initially a lot of the effort was to try to take out the oil wells but in fact ISIS was making money through things that were much more mundane. They were making money from the dirt under their feet. So the agriculture that they were taxing and from the people that they control. People were taxed just as their commerce was. And those are two things that you really you cannot bomb under international norms. You can't randomly bomb civilians. You can't randomly bomb agriculture.

AMT: And so at one point you say that in a single 24 hour period in 2015 they collected one point nine million dollars from the sale of barley and wheat.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: This is coming from the briefcase of an ISIS emir that I found. He happened to be an Emir in the Ministry of Agriculture and he was basically one of their money men, one of their accountants. And just in that briefcase and just from agricultural goods, the total receipts that I tallied were 19 million dollars in one man's briefcase. 19 million only from things like wheat, wheat sales, barley sales, flour sales etc.

AMT: So it's interesting you make the point you don't want to give it legitimacy but it was ingenious.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: It was. And this is where I think that we can learn from them. This is something that I don't think that the Coalition has yet fully appreciated. Very simple things like garbage collection, just making sure the streets are clean is actually quite important to people. And it does a lot for people's well-being. If you think back to the coalition efforts in countries like Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. and its partners came in with these big ideas. For example in Afghanistan we have poured millions and millions of dollars into trying to bolster girls education and women's rights. And as a feminist of course I support that 100 percent. That sounds, you know that's great. But those are really complicated things. You're dealing with changing people's values and changing culture. But garbage collection which is something that we can all agree on is not really like a priority I don't think. When this coalition and the ones before it have come in and taken the territory, I can tell you right now that in Mosul it is incredibly dirty. People are dumping trash everywhere and there is no plan as far as I can tell to try to address that and it becomes a grievance of people that groups like ISIS are able to [unintelligible].

AMT: Well you know you're not the only one who got files from there. This is very comprehensive but we know that human rights organisations have been trying to get files as well, and you make the point that ISIS was also documenting war crimes. What happens with all this stuff now? Is there a way to hold some of those in ISIS to account at another level?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: My own dream right now at The New York Times has to find a way to create a database of all these documents. Specifically so that the victims that are named in them can try to use the paperwork to get some form of justice. For example we have hundreds and hundreds of files pertaining to the farmland that was stolen from Christians and Shias. And even as I was on my final trip to Iraq a couple of months ago, we were in a police station in northern Iraq and a Sunni man who had been one of the people who had stolen his Shia neighbour's land was there signing a notarised document agreeing to pay back the money that he had made from the harvest. That arrangement was only possible because the Shia neighbor had managed to identify the person who had stolen his land and that guy had admitted to stealing the land. We actually have I think the comprehensive record of what was stolen. It's in black and white, leases that were that were signed. And so the challenge for us now is to figure out at the New York Times how can we make a database of this. We're actually looking for partners and for grants to try to do it because we think it's going to be an expensive undertaking. But I hope that that can be used to help the victims in the future.

AMT: It's an extraordinary story, an incredible amount of work that you did on this. Rukmini Callimachi thank you for your great journalism and for your insights into this.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Thank you so much Anna Maria. Take care.

AMT: Rukmini Callimachi New York Times foreign correspondent who has covered ISIS full time since 2014. You can read her piece about the ISIS files. We have a link to her article on our site cbc.ca/thecurrent. That's our program for today. Stay with radio 1 for Q. Pat Ament's is on the show. He's one of America's most renowned rock climbers. He's got a secret past as a Leonard Cohen-esque singer songwriter. And there's now a reissue of his long lost 1971 debut album. He'll talk to Tom Power. Gillian Findlay is here Morrow. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. No she's not. Actually I'm here. [Laughs] I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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Wednesday April 11, 2018 Full Episode Transcript

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