Trigger Warning
Trigger warning: suicide, self-harm, eating disorders
The cubbyhole in which Andrine (17) has hidden herself is so small she must sit on her knees. From her mobile she posts several entries on her secret Instagram account. Hundreds of Norwegian girls on this hidden network can read her messages about her wish to die.
NRK has investigated the dark network on Instagram. Andrine is just one of the girls connected to it. At least fifteen Norwegian girls in this closed group have, within a few years, taken their own life. For a long period, Andrine has been one of the most active users on this site – even into her last hours.
Between her bouts of crying she is hardly aware of the two adults standing outside her cubbyhole. She’d rather concentrate on the network and on getting the courage to send what will be a directly transmitted suicide note she writes in one of her last messages on Instagram:
All is checked. Shit Andrine – it is only to do it. DO IT! Don’t give a shit about the disgusting feeling you have in your stomach that does not mean a thing. Stop hesitating. Hell, nobody cares anyway
Comment: ANDRINE NO!! DON’T DO IT!
Comment: Noooo!!!!
(All censorship of the Instagram-postings has, in this story, been made by NRK)
Warning: these images contain graphic content that some viewers may find disturbing
“At last everything is ready,” she writes. For nearly ten months she’s been living in a private child protection institution. On this day the last brick falls into place.
I hear how they look for me. I can’t say anything. (Censured, censured, censured, censured, censured). So when I am ready, I have a clear path. Nobody can stop me now.
Warning: these images contain graphic content that some viewers may find disturbing
She also sends several text messages to the staff on duty this late evening in March 2017. Just before 10.30 pm Andrine sends a message where she says goodbye to her mother.
“Tell her that I am sorry for ruining her life. Just tell her that she was the best mother I could ever have had.”
In her room there is also a handwritten note. “Bye and thanks for everything,” she writes, ending with a heart.
“Bye and thanks for everything”
Warning: these images contain graphic content that some viewers may find disturbing
The staff finds out where Andrine is hiding and tries to get her to talk. Finally she agrees to unlock the door.
Everything now looks as if it will sort itself out, but on the way down from the second floor, the staff suddenly hears a sharp thump from the room where Andrine is.
Then everything is quiet.
The staff runs upstairs again, but gets no response. The emergency centre is being contacted, while the staff tries to break in with a crowbar.
Just a few minutes later an ambulance is on site, and the girl is being brought out.
But for Andrine it is too late.
After four days in a respirator in hospital, she dies.
Photo: Patric da Silva Sæther
In the cardboard box
The cardboard box with Andrine’s things has been standing in the hallway for nearly two years. Her mother Heidi got it from the police just a few weeks after her daughter’s suicide.
Photo: Patric da Silva Sæther
After that, it has remained there, untouched but never forgotten. Almost every day she looks at it, but is too afraid to open it.
That’s because the mobile from that evening when Andrine died, is in the box.
Heidi is afraid there are things on it she actually does not have the strength to see.
Photo: Patric da Silva Sæther
After nearly two years she at last picks up the courage.
On the mobile there are two Instagram accounts: the normal one she followed herself, but also a completely unknown profile, “Sebrapiken.”
Photo: Patric da Silva Sæther
She logs in and feels how nausea is building up.
There she finds a dark and frightening world, full of girls like Andrine.
The hidden network
Trigger warning: suicide, self-harm, eating disorders
On a hidden network with private and often anonymous profiles, hundreds of girls suffering from mental illness are meeting. In this secret place they give each other comfort and support, but they also share their darkest thoughts.
But even worse: they are posting pictures and films of serious eating disorders, deep wounds after self-harm, suicide thoughts, attempts and methods.
They often mark the accounts with “TW” or “Trigger Warning” to warn followers of content that may affect them in a bad way.
From Andrine’s mobile, NRK gets access to this secret room. Before she took her own life, she was one of the most active users in this enclosed environment. From her hidden Instagram account we find over 1,000 users posting depressive content of self-harm and suicide. Nearly 500 of the profiles are Norwegians. A mapping of this environment reveals that in just a few years, at least fifteen young girls have taken their own life.
– Immediately after the Easter break this year, a 22-year-old in Førde takes her life. Konstanse is also part of this world with several suicide attempts behind her. Before she dies, she deletes all her profiles on social media.
– Just a few days before, another suicide takes place. Cecilie can fill a whole room with her heart, but only fills a small corner of the sofa, her friends say about her. She is morbidly emaciated and is self-harming. The 20-year-old tries to take her own life several times and goes in and out of psychiatric treatment. On the eve of Easter 2019, she kills herself in Larvik.
– Leila Mariell from Vadsø has, for a long time, struggled with psychiatric problems and self-harm. She has been admitted on a number of occasions and has tried to kill herself several times. On Instagram and Twitter she has a lot of contact with others who also have difficulties. She finds a lot of support in this environment, but can also see that they can make each other more ill. By her followers she is seen as one who helps and support others, but she could not help herself. The 24-year-old dies in February 2019.
– In Østfold, a 17-year-old girl is together with another girl from the Instagram-group when she takes her own life in May 2018.
– Tine has several hidden profiles and is open about the environment she’s part of. She thinks it is about supporting and helping each other and can perhaps not see how damaging it can be for her and others. The 34-year- old struggles heavily with mental disorder, has an eating disorder and is self-harming. Tine takes her own life in October 2017.
– Merete’s great hobby is to sew and knit. She is training to be a child carer, but suffers mentally and has been in and out of institutions for many years. Finally this Haugesund girl plans her own funeral. In a final letter to her family she writes what is to be inscribed on her grave stone: Faith, hope and love. Merete dies in September 2017 at the age of twenty-nine.
– “Dear Mum, I’m writing to say goodbye. Love you so much. We will meet again.” This farewell letter lies in a flat belonging to a 19-year-old girl in Bergen. She has just moved into her own flat, but suffers mentally and injures herself. Her wish to die has been there a long time. She takes her own life in November 2016.
– In Rogaland, a 16-year-old girl is admitted for psychiatric treatment. She suffers from eating disorders and serious self-harm. She takes her own life in August 2016.
– Anette is only fifteen. The girl from Brønnøysund has just gotten a summer job and wants to buy a motorbike with the money. In a few weeks she is about to start an electronics course at college. She kills herself in July 2016.
– In March 2016 Karoline from Bergen dies. The 20-year-old shared many difficult thoughts and wishes to take her life in the network on Instagram.
– In February 2016 another girl from Bergen takes her own life. Camilla was only eighteen years old. “Rest in peace, little friend,” the family writes in the obituary.
– In the same month Marthe, who was also a part of the network, dies. She was bullied, injured herself and tried to take her own life several times. Marthe was only sixteen.
– “Karianne got peace at last,” says an obituary from 2014. She was depressed and did self-harm, but did not share her darkest thoughts with her near ones or in treatment. Within the network she had close friends, but was only fifteen years old when she died. Karianne took her own life in Stavanger after having given the followers a warning on Instagram about her plans.
– Eline dies in Bærum summer 2012, twenty-two years old. Before her suicide she struggled for a long time with self-harm and depression. She was active on several blogs before she took her own life.
They’re from all over the country and did not usually know each other outside the network.
They suffered from eating disorders or self-harm.
Half of them were below the age of twenty when they died.
Within the network, NRK has seen concrete examples on how methods for self-harm or attempts of suicide have spread from one member of the group to another. The worse an entry from a girl is, the more attention and care they receive from others.
Andrine
At only five years old, Andrine is bouncing around in her sister’s gym-suit and two years later she turns up, proud and a bit nervous, to her first training session. Throughout her childhood and youth at school, gymnastics is something she really loves, also as an instructor to the younger children.
Andrine grows up just outside the centre of Tromsø together with her mother and nine year older sister. “She had a normal childhood with much care and love,” says the mother.
At school she fulfils her duties and does well in most subjects. She has a winning way and lots of friends. She is a ray of sunshine with so much humour and high spirits that she is missed whenever she is away for just one day.
– “Andrine was very easy to like. We joked a lot together, even after she became ill. We could say one word wrong, look at each other and then burst out laughing,” says Heidi.
Andrine paints and draws and likes to potter around the house and her room. She has her own style, a bit playful and a bit boyish. When she puts on make-up, it is always soft and discreet. Andrine knows what she is doing.
Outward she appears tough and comfortable, but without anybody knowing it, she has serious psychological problems.
In February 2017, Andrine posts an old picture of herself. It is from a holiday with palm trees and flowers in the background. Andrine is smiling to the camera, dressed in a singlet and shorts.
TB to when I wasn’t sick, but just one who felt life had a few downs but I had been self-harming for nearly a year. The cuts were not particularly deep but I was also «clever» at cutting myself in places that wasn’t showing. Very few knew how I was struggling and that was fine. I was waiting fora n appointment at Bup (Child and Youth Psychiatric Clinic/transl.), but otherwise I was fairly OK.
Soon, she begins to cover herself up, as her arms, under her clothes, were covered with scars and wounds.
Trigger warning: Self-harm
The first cuts
Andrine’s first meeting with self-harm was at school. She’s together with a friend when some older girls show their scars. She had never seen anything like it before and in her diary Andrine writes that this is “extremely stupid!”
At the same time there is something from this happening that sticks.
At fourteen, Andrine starts to cut herself. It happens after what she herself describes as a “heavy summer holiday.” Hidden from everybody, this self-harming takes place more and more often, while the cuts get deeper and more serious.
She herself describes self-harm as an “adrenalin kick.” A form of mastering that lets her handle evil and destructive thoughts: “It feels like being locked into a room where self-harm is the only emergency exit,” Andrine explains to a psychologist.
Warning: these images contain graphic content that some viewers may find disturbing
Trigger warning: suicide
The first suicide attempt
In August 2015, Andrine is admitted to hospital after a suicide attempt. The risk of suicide is not overwhelming, according to the doctors, but at the same time they warn of the danger of a repeat and the fact that the girl can “take her own life as an accident.”
After the suicide attempt, Andrine explains that she’s suffered of anxiety for many years. She never feels good enough and is convinced that nobody likes her. She also has great problems with controlling her feelings, especially when life goes against her.
Things that most people see as trivial can release endless sadness and crises. Self-harm and suicidal thoughts “can be seen in this context,” the report from the hospital says.
There is also another reason why she hurts herself. Andrine reveals this several months later.
The dangerous voice
Andrine is hearing a voice in her head. It suddenly appears and orders her to take her own life.
Together with “The Voice” there is also a small girl. Andrine calls her “Dagny.” A drawing in her diary shows a character that looks like she’s been taken from a horror movie. The eyes are pierced out and the mouth sewn together with thick stiches. “The Voice” has done this, and if Andrine doesn’t do as “The Voice” commands, the same thing will happen to her.
In order to ignore “The Voice,” Andrine has to suffer pain, she explains, either by cutting herself or swallowing dangerous objects.
Andrine is now being treated at the hospital, first in conversation therapy and later by medication. After a while she is seen as being well enough to be discharged, but Andrine does not want to go home.
The relationship with the family is very difficult, she feels. Andrine is now so sick that she requires more frequent follow ups than her mother can give her. Contact with her father was broken when she was ten years old, and Andrine feels she’s only a burden that nobody cares about.
She’s kept in hospital. And while her contact with the real world is shrinking, her life on Instagram takes increasingly more time and space.
The hidden account
She calls herself “Sebrapiken.” Probably from a book with the same name about a girl who also injures herself.
Lying on the bathroom floor, thinking of cutting. The only way out now….I can’t do it
Comment: No don’t!
Comment: Don’t!!!! Hold on (heart)
Warning: these images contain graphic content that some viewers may find disturbing
Just like Andrine, many of the girls on the hidden network seem to be completely normal girls from all over the country. Often very young, some as young as fourteen years old. They often don’t know each other in real life, only online.
The girls use their own “tribe language” with codes for diagnoses, what type of self-harm they’re into, how many times they have been admitted to a hospital or tried to take their own life.
In this, Andrine at last finds a place where she doesn’t feel alone. Here she gets support and understanding from others who suffer the same and who understand her situation.
But most of all, she has found a fellowship where sick girls are exchanging negative thoughts and experiences. In a world without adults, they share tips and advice on self-harm and suicide.
Andrine quickly becomes a person that most people know of in this secret environment.
Being transferred to child care
During the next months, Andrine is more or less continuously admitted to several different institutions.
In several places it seems like things are going well, at least in the beginning. The girl seems positive and happy, she follows her treatment and often shows signs of improvement.
Then come the downturns, abruptly and worse. Self-harming gets more frequent and takes new forms. Andrine starts to swallow harmful objects and the cuts find new spots on her body.
In February 2016, Andrine’s condition has deteriorated so seriously that she’s transferred to child protection, and in May she moves into a private institution called “Jentespranget.”
Here she remains during the last months of her young life.
A new beginning
Jentespranget is situated at Stord, between Haugesund and Bergen. It is a department for seriously-ill girls. Some of whom are often under around- the-clock supervision.
Andrine gets her own room with two staff members looking after just her.
She’s given a new treatment plan and sees a psychologist regularly. Gradually, she begins to think of her future and attends school when she is capable. To keep her thoughts away from evil, the days are filled with activities. Andrine is to be taught to take responsibility for her own life and has to wash her clothes and keep the house in order.
She starts working out, and as a part of her treatment Andrine begins horse therapy.
But during the summer she suddenly falls into extended, heavy depressive periods. Her thoughts on self-harm and suicide increase, especially in the evenings, according to staff.
Andrine has access to both her phone and the internet, also at night. In two months she posts over 1,500 entries. She posts private messages several times a day and much of those are images of self-harm and thoughts on taking her own life.
At Jentespranget they notice that she’s very active on the Internet. In a risk assessment the employees write:
“Andrine has on several occasions informed that she wishes to take her own life. She has also written suicidal thoughts on social media, on a closed Instagram profile.”
During her stay Andrine attends several meetings on how damaging this environment can be for her, but she takes no notice.
I and people in charge talk about “self-harming Instagram” (smiling face upside down)
Warning: these images contain graphic content that some viewers may find disturbing
The staff has no right to take the mobile away from her, but when they suggest banning it for a period, Andrine uses self-harm as blackmail to keep it.
As Andrine is voluntarily admitted to the institution, the staff has only limited authority to use force against her.
You snitch, you die
As Sebrapiken, Andrine is “safe.” Many users also mark their profiles like this. In this group “safe” means to follow an unwritten rule that nothing from within the network is to be shown or told to outsiders. There’s a rule of silence, and it’s simple: “You snitch, you die!” If you don’t keep quiet, you can be blocked or closed down by others. Some say this rule is valid even when there’s a question of life-or-death for the girls.
But Andrine does not want to follow this rule when somebody is trying to take their own life. Once she called an institution in northern Norway to tell their staff that one of the girls living there was about to commit suicide.
Contagious behaviour
In August 2016, Andrine experiences online that a close friend from within the Instagram network kills herself. She takes this very hard and is clearly affected by her death. The two following months she is admitted six times after overdoses and other suicide attempts. During this period she has to get nearly 200 stitches.
And so, she is sent to hospital in Bergen. She has suffered severe internal injuries after swallowing dangerous objects and must be operated upon. After surgery, a new suicide attempt happens at the hospital, and Andrine is only a whisker from death.
It frightens me how bad my psyche takes anaesthetics and how peaceful I became today (ended with me sleeping very heavily or being anaesthetised). Every time I become conscious there is always someone holding me down, keeps me tied or holds me back. Always. I cry and shout I want to die. Try to run away etc. It does not happen once, but repeatedly. Perhaps a sure sign I should end this shit.
Comment: I am here for you (hearts)
Comment: So stop it, and never do it again! Hang on to the thought that you really DO NOT want to do this to yourself again (small heart).
Warning: these images contain graphic content that some viewers may find disturbing
Now Jentespranget asks for help. To the child protection agency in Tromsø they write: “We must, to the best of our ability, keep this girl alive,” but this is difficult with the framework they now have. For a period they employ extra staff to cover Andrine.
The fear of turning eighteen
Andrine is now only weeks from turning eighteen. After years as a hot potato in the system, in and out of psychiatric institutions, in and out of meetings on who shall take care of her, this is something she fears more than anything: having to take care of herself.
Already two years before Andrine dies, a previous entry in a hospital report says that she is especially vulnerable to major changes.
She needs security and stability, and we see that her self-harm increases as soon as discharge is being approached. She says she does not see many possibilities in the future, her thoughts regularly return to taking her own life.
At the beginning of 2017, Andrine is, despite her situation, given the decision that she is not guaranteed a place at the institution Jentespranget when she turns eighteen. This really frightens Andrine, now that she finally has arrived at a place that she really likes.
It frightens me that I actually will kill myself if I miss the offer of a place here. This is not meant as a threat, although I know it can sound like that. But for the first time in ages I begin to show some progress. For the first time I have small rays of light in my life that I love. For the first time I see a bit of hope for myself as well…..if I lose everything now I really have nothing more to hold on to. If I miss it now I am finished…
Warning: these images contain graphic content that some viewers may find disturbing
Andrine desperately wants a quick decision. She and her mother are attending several meetings with the child protection agency without reaching a final decision. During so-called cooperative meetings about Andrine, nobody can give the girl a clear answer.
The last day
In the morning on the day Andrine dies, the staff perceives her as being very “heavy.” Already before breakfast there’s a text from Andrine saying she’s not feeling good. She feels completely “rock bottom.”
The staff is united in keeping a certain distance. Experience shows that the closer they are to her in these situations, the greater the risk of her hurting herself.
Andrine starts the day in the stables, and after having fed the horses she seems better. At dinner she jokes and plays around with the employees, and in the evening they all go to the cinema.
In the middle of the film the staff gets a call from one of the other girls in the house. She says that Andrine has plans to take her own life later that evening and that she has posted this on Instagram.
Since Andrine seems stable and at ease, their joint decision is to bring it up when they get back home.
On the way from the cinema Andrine posts this image.
Sitting in the car smiling because the film has ended and so has my life.
Comment: No, Andrine!!! (sad face)
Warning: these images contain graphic content that some viewers may find disturbing
Back at the house Andrine runs upstairs to her room before anybody gets to talk to her. They can hear her cries and suggests a trip to the doctor, but Andrine refuses. She doesn’t want anybody to stop what she has planned.
A while later a text message arrives in which Andrine says thank you for everything. The search for her starts, but on the same evening Andrine’s life is over.
Photo: Patric da Silva Sæther
“Poor child of mine! Just to think how hurt she must have been and I did not manage to help!” says Andrine’s mother Heidi and puts her daughter’s mobile phone away.
Photo: Patric da Silva Sæther
She wants Andrine’s story to be included and help to reveal this hidden network because it is a dangerous arena, she says.
– “This is completely without any filtration. Had Andrine not had this relationship with the Internet, I don’t believe it would have ended as catastrophically as it did.”
Just a few weeks after Andrine’s death, the child care agency formally cancels her place at Jentespranget. Ending date for her stay: the day Andrine would have turned eighteen.
An official report following Andrine’s suicide, states that the employees at Jentespranget did everything they could in the situation and that the follow-up of this girl was defendable.
Epilogue
The day after Andrine’s eighteenth birthday, Heidi finds an envelope in the letter box at home. It is a thank you letter from the director at Oslo University Hospital.
In the letter it says that Andrine’s organs, after she’d been disconnected from the respirator, have given new life.
– “When I came to the part about the children, I just burst into floods of tears. I had really hoped that she would save some children, so it was good to hear,” says Heidi and reads the last lines in the letter aloud:
Four adults and two children have been given a new life. I hope this can be a comfort for you and Andrine’s sister to think about. I wish you as good a future as possible and feel with you in your sorrow.
This story is based on Andrine’s profile and own notes, journals from the child and youth psychiatrists involved, the child care agency and other public documents connected to her treatment, plus interviews with Andrine’s mother and conversations with those closely involved with the fourteen other girls who have died. Their families have accepted the use of pictures and names of these girls.
Neither Jentespranget nor the child and youth psychiatrist treating Andrine are willing to be interviewed in regards to this matter.
The Children, Youth and Family Agency in Region North and its Area Director Mr Pål Christian Bergstrøm, writes to NRK:
“This is an extremely serious case. For us it is the worst thing that can happen – a child dies when under care of child protection. We feel empathy for the mother and other survivors. The employees working with Andrine are also experiencing great sorrow. It is very difficult to be informed that Andrine felt we did not do enough to help her. This case was, however, extremely involved and complex.
Legislation set for the purpose of securing children’s rights can in situations where the children are as ill as Andrine, limit the child care agencies’ ability to provide the assistance that children need. This case also highlights the demand aid organisations face when this form of social media is used.”
Trigger Warning
- Trigger Warning – TW – is a term used within some closed groups on Instagram. It is used to warn against strong pictures, or content, that can release evil thoughts and dangerous actions. Users insert this ex- pression in their biographies to warn others from entering their profiles
- For over a year, NRK has followed a network on Instagram where this expression is frequently used. Young girls, mostly teenagers, discuss suicide and self-harm and share images showing how they have injured themselves.
- In this period NRK had identified fifteen girls from the network who have taken their own lives. In one case this took place almost as a live stream on Instagram.
- This network is not well-known among professional health carers in Norway. There is also very little research performed in this area.
- In a series of articles NRK highlights this dark and hidden network.
‘I’ve seen death in this city, but nothing as sad as this’: how a ferry disaster exposed the corruption devastating Iraq
As protests against a rotten system continue, the families of 128 drowned civilians await justice.
Early in the morning on 21 March, in Mosul’s flat and dusty al-Baker neighbourhood, a school principal named Ustad Ahmad went to see his mother. It was the start of the new year holiday of Nowruz, and she asked if they could go to the cemetery to visit his father’s grave. Ahmad had other ideas. He was planning to take his wife and children to an amusement park, as a reward for the boys’ full marks in their recent exams. Besides, he told his mother, he didn’t want to be reminded of death on such a beautiful spring day.
Back home, after breakfast with the boys, Ahmad sat on a wooden chair in the bathroom for his weekly shave. Then, preparing to go out, he put on his new summer blazer, a pair of jeans and the wraparound sunglasses his wife had recently bought for him. Tall and burly, Ahmad was a very proud man – proud of his status among his colleagues, the comfort and neatness of his house, his smart and witty boys, his beautiful baby daughter and above all, his clever, outgoing wife, who loved to travel. At around 1pm, the family caught a taxi to the amusement park, and Ahmad gave the boys enough money to go on every ride. He even joined them for a round on the bumper cars.
Things hadn’t always been as comfortable for Ahmad as they were now. When Islamic State took over Mosul in 2014, he had been deemed “unreliable” and expelled from his teaching job. For three years he was unemployed and unable to provide for his family. He sold his wife’s gold and some of their furniture, borrowed money from his mother and brother, and became dependent on whatever his wife’s family could spare them. Friends and neighbours nagged him to go out and find work as a day labourer, or get himself a pushcart and work in the vegetable market. But how could he? A school principal can’t work in the market, he felt. He rarely left the house and sank into depression, arguing with his wife and children, who stopped going to school. Now, two years after the liberation of Mosul, he was proud to be a respectable principal once more, even if the city was still in ruins and his school barely functioning.
Mosul is a city broken by war and corruption. Today, the early euphoria of liberation from Islamic State is dissolving as the failure of reconstruction efforts becomes increasingly apparent. Pledges to rebuild the city remain unfulfilled, while the five bridges spanning the river Tigris have either collapsed or are strung together by military pontoons. Hundreds of thousands of people who were driven out of their homes during the fighting are still living in camps. The security situation is deteriorating and Islamic State cells are re-emerging. Across Iraq, anger against political elites is rising. In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets of Baghdad to demand a complete overhaul of the political system. After two months of demonstrations, in which 400 were killed and thousands injured, the prime minister resigned, but the crowds are still camping out in main squares across the country, waiting for the rest of their demands to be met.
At the same time, what endures is the tenacity and resilience of the people of Mosul, their love of life and entrepreneurial spirit. During the later stages of the war, as the city was being retaken block-by-block by the Iraqi army, liberated neighbourhoods would spring back to life quickly. Families returned to their homes and teams of young volunteers cleared rubble from their streets. Even as the fighting raged just a few blocks away, someone would start selling cigarettes, a grocer would reopen with a box of half-rotten tomatoes and canned beans, and refurbished shops and restaurants would spring up, albeit without water or electricity. Those who could raise a bit of money began rebuilding their homes, while still waiting for the compensation their government had promised them. People allowed themselves the small reward of a meal out with their families.
It was close to 2pm when Ahmad’s family settled down to have their lunch, but there were no shaded areas in the park. The boys suggested that they go to Umm Rabaen, a pleasure island on the Tigris River. It was cooler by the water and there was a picnic area, and another amusement park. Ahmad called another taxi and they headed to the island.
He didn’t want to be reminded of death on such a beautiful spring day
Umm Rabaen embodies the mixture of ruin and resurgence that defines Mosul. It was first turned into a pleasure island during the late 80s, when riverside cafes, restaurants, chalets and the pyramid-shaped Oberoi hotel were built as part of a grand development plan. The hotel is now a ruined shell, and most of the trees have been chopped down for firewood. But cafes and restaurants have been restored and reopened, and on weekends, the people of Mosul flock to the island to sit at white plastic tables, drinking tea or eating grilled kebabs. The familiar sight of the Tigris flowing beside them, fast and muddy, is a reminder of the endurance of their city, just as the view of the ruined buildings on the opposite bank brings back memories of the vicious war that they only just survived.
Like many businesses in Mosul, since the liberation of the city from Isis, the island was part-owned by a member of the economic wing of a powerful militia. Earlier this year, a parliamentary commission reported that armed groups, working through their economic wings, have secured public contracts for businesses, in return for large kickbacks. They control the multimillion-dollar scrap metal trade and oil smuggling operations, as well as imposing illegal tolls on commercial traffic. The businesses they own are unaccountable, their funding is untraceable and, through a combination of fear and corruption, there is almost no oversight. The result, for the people enjoying their new year holiday in Mosul, was disaster.
That same morning, in a different part of Mosul, a woman named Shahla woke up feeling cheerful and decided to take her mother to a new restaurant for brunch. Tomorrow would be her mother’s 72nd birthday and Shahla and her two sisters had bought gifts, ordered cakes and sweets, and stuffed aubergines, zucchini and vine leaves with meat and rice, arranging them in a large dolma pot for the family feast. Today, though, Shahla had her mother to herself.
The two women shared a particularly close bond after living as virtual prisoners under the rule of Islamic State. Their prison had been their two-storey house, which sat in a quiet neighbourhood, nestled among olive, tangerine and eucalyptus trees, not far from the eastern banks of the Tigris. Shortly after June 2014, when Isis officially declared its caliphate, the 13 Christian families that lived in the neighbourhood were expelled, their doors marked with the letter N (for Nazrites) and their houses redistributed to the organisation’s senior foreign fighters. A Chechen commander lived across the street, while a Russian woman moved in next door and shouted at Shahla and her mother to cover their eyes even in their own garden. She would also send over her Egyptian husband to demand some of Shahla’s mother’s food.
When the battle to liberate Mosul began in September 2016, the houses of the foreign fighters in the neighbourhood became a target. Three were levelled in airstrikes that shook Shahla’s home and shattered their windows. Russian snipers set up a base in a house across the street. Other fighters fired their rocket-propelled grenades at the approaching Iraqi armoured vehicles from barricades at the end of the road.
A street near Mosul University after fighting between the Iraqi counter-terrorism service and Islamic State, January 2017.
Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images
Towards the end of the battle, as the fighting intensified and Iraqi troops got closer, Islamic State fighters came knocking at their door in the middle of the night. They ordered them to leave their house and go with them: they would be human shields for the retreating fighters. The women gathered their belongings in small bags, piled food into an old wheelchair and set out. Distant explosions shook the ground under their feet. At the end of the street they came across other neighbours who had slipped away from the Isis fighters, and together they hid in the basement of an abandoned house. Twenty-five women and children hid in that dark basement for three nights, while above, battle raged. When finally they heard on the radio that their neighbourhood was liberated, they remained trapped in their hiding place. They could hear fighters in the house, searching for civilian hostages to ensure their safe retreat. In the basement, the families crouched in darkness, holding their breath. Not until they heard the roars of army trucks and armoured vehicles had they dared to move.
After their brunch, Shahla was in the kitchen preparing a pot of sweet Turkish coffee, while her mother sat reading in the garden, when Umm Yussuf, a friend of her mother, called to invite them for tea at the pleasure island that afternoon. Shahla didn’t want to go out. She thought that on a sunny public holiday the island would be too crowded. But her mother wanted to go – the weather was beautiful, and she hadn’t seen Umm Yussuf for weeks, so Shahla eventually agreed. She prepared a basket of food and a flask of coffee and they set off.
It took Shahla and her mother 20 minutes to walk from their house to the river. Her mother was glad to be out, and her cheeks were flushed from the warm afternoon sun. When she saw the large crowd that had gathered at the river bank, Shahla thought the whole of Mosul must be here. She didn’t like crowds, and she was trying to ask her mother if they could leave, when Umm Yussuf found them. The two old women hugged and the three of them slowly headed towards the ferry to the island.
Umm Rabaen island is connected to the east bank of the Tigris, less than 100 metres across the water, by two cable-pulled flatbed ferries, which were owned and maintained as part of the amusement park and island. The ferry allegedly had no safety provisions, security staff were reportedly unskilled and inept, and the service was rarely, if ever, subject to inspection.
As the crowd waiting for the ferry swelled, a short man with alert, beady eyes watched with growing unease. Omar was sitting nearby in an old motorboat whose white fibreglass coating had turned yellowish-brown with age. He noticed that in the past couple of hours the water had risen quickly. The lower decks of the riverside cafes, where he had moored his boat, had been submerged, and plastic tables and chairs taken to higher decks.
The day before, the river police had told the ferry management that it would need to suspend operations because of the unusual quantity of water being released from the Mosul dam higher up the river, after heavy rainfall. Everyone who lived or worked along the river had been informed – boatmen, cafe owners, even the farmers who raised water buffalos on the southern edge of the city. But the ferry was running as normal.
The ferry allegedly had no safety provisions, security staff were reportedly unskilled and inept, and the service was rarely, if ever, subject to inspection
At 3pm, it docked at the jetty on the eastern bank, and a single line of people descended, squeezing their way through the families waiting to board. The two crowds intermingled in a sea of coloured headscarves, pushing, and moving slowly. Everyone was in their holiday clothes, young men and boys wore suits and bow ties, girls wore dresses with frills.
Shahla went down the steps on to the ferry carrying her bag, the food basket and her mother’s handbag. She noticed that the water level was very high. Her mother and Umm Yussuf walked behind her slowly, holding hands. Ahmad and his family climbed down the steps backwards with the pram, one step at a time. The back of the ferry was full, but more people pushed to enter. By the time it started moving, nearly 300 people were crammed onboard.
The ferry was a contraption made from two sections of an old pontoon bridge welded together and decorated with arches that rose high on either side. Steel wires stretched between the arches above a row of benches. Motors mounted on opposite sides of the river pulled cables connected to the front and back of the ferry. A third, guiding cable resisted the push of the currents and maintained the ferry on a straight course.
Guardian graphic.
Image: Google Earth, 2004
The ferry shook and shuddered as it moved. The strength of the current pushed it downstream before the cable pulling it corrected its path and it shifted slightly upstream. The operator, standing in the back, noticed the ferry was tilting and started walking to the front, telling people to move away from the listing right side. The back of the ferry was being dragged by the current, pulling the ferry off its line. As the ferry jerked and swayed, a few kids climbed over the right-side railing, trying to see what was going on.
A small wave gushed over the deck, covering Shahla’s feet. Growing scared, her mother said that the three of them should go back and sit in a cafe on the shore, as if they could still walk away. Shahla tried to reassure her, but she could see that people were frightened. Elsewhere on the ferry, where Ahmad was standing, women were crying. He stuck by the railing, assuring his wife and children that the ferry would right itself, while clutching the pram handles tightly.
A second, bigger wave surged in. The ferry began listing to the right. The boys hanging on the right side railings threw themselves into the frothing water. Just over a minute into the crossing, the ferry had tilted so far that one third of the deck was underwater, and most of the people were clambering on the other side, but the ferry couldn’t right itself. Ahmad, standing in water up to his neck, held on to the pram, trying to keep the baby above water. Then he heard a loud grinding noise and saw that the ferry was turning over and people were sliding down towards him. He gripped the handles of the pram tightly but it sank, pulling him underwater, his baby daughter disappearing into the darkness of the river.
At this point, the cable pulling the ferry snapped. The left side of the hull, standing almost vertical now, hit the cable pulling the second ferry back from the island, and started to turn over. People fell on top of each other. Shahla was pushed into the water. She was still holding her mother’s hand. She managed to get her head above the water, but a body fell on her, she sank again, and lost her mother’s hand. When she got back to the surface, a woman in a black robe grabbed her, desperate to stay afloat, and tried to climb on top of her, pushing Shahla down again. Shahla took a breath and sank underwater, allowing herself to be dragged downstream.
The hull stood vertical; people were trapped between the jaws of the arches and the rods connecting them. As it turned over, the arches closed like giant fangs on the people below. The ferry flipped, a green floating whale drifting downstream, chasing after dozens of bobbing heads.
Deep under the water, Ahmad lost the pram. He saw a boat nearby and swam to it, trying to grab on to the engine at the back. He shouted for help but no one heard him, or they were too absorbed in pulling people from the water. The owner of the boat came down to the stern, where Ahmad was still clinging desperately to the engine, and, ignoring the man hanging on to the propellor, pulled a cord to start the engine. It roared into life and the blades cut into Ahmad’s sides. He screamed as the propellor cut his flesh.
He let go. He knew he had lost his family. Better to die, he thought, as he sank into the water. But his body would not let him die, and involuntarily he kicked his way to the surface. He wept and mumbled thanks be to God, thanks be to God, his tears sinking into the water that carried him downstream, past riverside cafes where people stood, watching and filming.
He reached another boat, and clutching on to the reeds, stretched out his hand and asked for help. Two men grabbed him by his arms, and a third pulled him by his belt and swung him over the edge. The body of a woman lay in the bottom of the boat, next to two dead children. The men hauled in another woman and a child, and started the engine, setting off towards the island.
A ferry taking people to the Umm Rabaen island amusement park in Mosul, June 2018.
Photograph: Claire Thomas
By now, a handful of fishing boats had driven into the middle of the river to try to pull survivors out of the water. Omar, the boatman who had been anxiously watching the crowds waiting for the ferry earlier, steered towards the drowning crowd. Among the people hauled on to his boat was Aya, a young woman a few days short of her 20th birthday, who had gone to the island with her mother and sister, along with some of her aunts and cousins. Sitting in the boat, with the shock of air flowing back into her lungs, Aya recovered enough to scream. A large man, with his son hanging on his back, grabbed the side of the boat and it started teetering dangerously. Aya begged him to let go, in case he flipped the boat and drowned them all, but the man held on with all his might. A young man bent over and pulled the child hanging on the man’s back into the boat. They all tried to pull the man, but he was too heavy. Too tired to hang on, he was dragged away by the current.
In the water, Shahla was bumped and rammed by objects and bodies. She looked for her mother among the people screaming and struggling around her, but the water was pushing her fast. She saw white gulls, so loved by the people of Mosul, circling overhead. Oh lord, she thought, is it possible that they are feeding on the bodies of the dead? She had been in the water for half an hour by now. The water was cold, her winter clothes were getting heavy, her headscarf was choking her, but she hung on tightly to her mother’s green bag. She didn’t want her mother to lose her ID card and go through the hassle and the humiliation of long queues.
Her chest was contracting, and she couldn’t breathe, she knew that if she didn’t keep swimming, she would die. She managed to catch on to a boat. She hauled herself over the side and collapsed into the bottom of the boat.
From the safety of the boat, Shahla was able to see the extent of the disaster. Bodies floated all around them, many of them children. There was a tiny boy, three or four, dressed in a onesie and floating on his back: it reminded her of the game she played as a child, with her sisters, floating their dolls in the bathtub. To her relief, she saw that the gulls were not feasting on the dead bodies, but the food people had brought for their picnics.
The boat dropped Ahmad on the island, where he wandered along with other survivors, and watched families still enjoying their picnics. Someone gave him water, another offered him a chair. A neighbour and his wife spotted him; they took him to the island’s administration office, but it had been abandoned. When the ferry sank, most of the staff had run away, fearing they would be arrested and anticipating the anger of the victims’ families. The neighbours took off Ahmad’s jacket and shirt and cleaned the three long cuts in his side with a piece of cloth soaked in antiseptic. At that point, he started to cry.
An officer from the Mosul Swat police unit arrived on the island in a large civilian motorboat they had commandeered and arrested everyone who was still working there – including vendors selling coffee and burgers – but the owners and directors of the island were nowhere to be seen. The officer took pity on Ahmad and gave him a lift back to the eastern riverbank.
Meanwhile, Omar brought Aya to the jetty and went back with his motorboat to see if he could rescue more people. She stood there shivering, her hair soaked in mud and her dress dripping with water. She was surrounded by a crowd of spectators and policemen who had gathered to watch the disaster unfold, their phones pointed at her. When Aya spotted a young policeman standing nearby, she began screaming at him. “My family, where is my family?” The bewildered policeman looked at her as if she were mad.
“My family, where is my family?”
In front of Aya, the ineptitude and failure of the Iraqi state seemed to be laid bare. In oil-rich Iraq, the Mosul River police department had just one boat, which had sat broken for many months; they had no ropes, and no lifejackets to throw to the people drifting and drowning in front of them. While the chief of the river police had jumped in one of the civilian boats and went to help with the rescue, some of his men just stood there staring. They didn’t know what to do; most of them had never trained for such a crisis and some didn’t even know how to swim. In the highly corrupt Iraqi security services, many of those policemen had paid a bribe to be appointed to a comfortable job by the river, rather than one of the more dangerous posts outside the city.
Once Shahla had been deposited back on land, a policeman stopped a passing car and told the driver to take her to the hospital. When she arrived, she searched out her mother and Umm Yussuf – first among the survivors, and then, with trepidation, among the bodies in bags. She didn’t find them. She was wet, shivering and exhausted, but she didn’t want to be in the hospital, which was packed with crying women and children. She collapsed on the pavement outside. “There was chaos, and no one was in control,” she recalled. “The bodies were dumped in the back of ambulances and pick-up trucks like they were sacks of garbage, while the policemen and the crowds filmed with their mobile phones.”
Later in the day, Shahla spoke to her brother on the phone. He was weeping. Before he said anything, she knew that her mother was dead.
The most organised institution in Mosul is the morgue. Two years after the war, it continues to receive the black and festering remains of corpses buried under mounds of debris and destroyed houses. The staff, who are efficient and thorough, compare DNA samples with their records and try to identify the victims among the thousands still missing.
The short, stocky young director, Hassan Watheq, who has a pencil moustache and wears rimless glasses, was having his lunch when he received a phone call from a friend to tell him about the ferry. He could hear the sounds of screaming families on the phone. He hurried to the morgue, knowing that the bodies would quickly begin to disintegrate, making identification very difficult. He knew all too well the chaos that would ensue, with families pushing and shoving, trying to reclaim their dead relatives. He called for a police guard to be stationed around the morgue.
Soon the bodies started arriving. Within an hour, there were 65 bodies in the refrigerators and hundreds of families gathering outside, women wailing, men pleading with the policemen to be allowed in. The director went outside, flanked by policemen, and climbed on top of a police truck. In his calm voice, he pleaded with the people to give him time.
The most organised institution in Mosul is the morgue
The majority of the bodies that arrived from the ferry were women and children. Even the staff of the Mosul morgue, accustomed to the sight of death, were weeping. “I saw a woman clutching a five month-old child,” recalled the director. “Both were dead, and I thought of my own two girls and started crying, even though death had become normal for us.”
He began posting headshots of the victims on the morgue’s gate. Where ID had been found with the body, he was able to post the names of the dead. His other priority was preventing bodies from being stolen. “Iraqi law doesn’t recognise the missing as dead until five years have passed,” he explained to me, “and all this time they can’t get pensions or any rights. So a lot of people tried to register their missing as dead in the ferry disaster.”
Of the 128 confirmed dead, 57 were women, and 44 children. Another 69 are still missing. The latest body to be found was brought in on 11 September, almost six months after the ferry sank.
Even in a nation accustomed to fanatical militias, occupying armies and mad dictators, the ferry disaster was shocking. “I have seen death in this city,” the morgue director said, “but nothing as sad as this. People dressed for holidays lined up in body bags.” When the public discovered that the River Authority had issued a warning about the dangers of operating the ferry that day, grief turned to anger. People were enraged by the failure of the state and the apparent recklessness of the pleasure island’s owners.
The prime minister arrived in Mosul on the evening of the disaster and announced three days of mourning. He also formed an investigation committee and declared all the victims as martyrs, to be added to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi martyrs killed in the war. The president came the following day, and was booed by a crowd protesting against political corruption. He was bundled into a police pick-up while crowds pressed around, banging on the car.
Iraqi civil defence workers recover the ferry that sank in the Tigris, 23 March 2019.
Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Within days, the media was reporting that there was a connection between the owner of the island, Ubaid al-Hadidi, and a notorious militia commander. Before the ferry disaster, people in Mosul had felt too scared to speak openly about the activities of the militias’ economic arms. Now there were protests and sit-ins. On 24 March, the governor of Mosul, Nufal Hammadi, already under investigation for embezzlement of public funds and international aid, was sacked. He was accused of involvement with the militias’ business enterprises, of raiding public funds and annexing public land. The governor told a press conference: “I deny that I received a single cent or dinar from any party.”
A member of Mosul city council, who was on the investigation committee, told me the ferry had been overcrowded and sailing in very fast waters. “The official regulations specified that the ferry was allowed to work in [river speeds] that do not exceed 700 metres per minute, preferably between 400-300 metres, with a maximum capacity of 80 people on board. On the day it sank, it was carrying 287 people, and the current speed was 1,400 metres per minute,” he said.
The councillor, who asked to remain nameless, said the owners and management of the island bore direct responsibility for the incident, having apparently ignored the safety warnings. “[The owner] was informed by the river police the night before, and he signed the memo. But he saw a vast crowd, and he wanted to load as many people as possible. The state institution that was supposed to monitor the work of the ferry failed in their responsibility.”
The fact that the island’s owners were backed by a leader of the economic wing of one of Iraq’s fiercest militias, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, would have made it less likely that the rules would be enforced against them. Shirwan Dubadani, MP for the city of Mosul, Shirwan Dubadani, who also sat on the parliamentary fact-finding mission last year, told me that during a meeting he attended between the former governor of Mosul, the president of Iraq and the speaker of parliament, the governor confirmed that one of the militia’s most powerful men, Hayder al-Sa’edy, was a partner in the island, and his men provided security. Since the liberation of Mosul, al-Sa’edy had been in charge of the lucrative scrap metal business, running companies as fronts for the militia and its political party that were awarded public contracts by the governor.
“I imagine all that happened as a dream; I talk about it as if it was a story that happened to someone else.”
The owner of the island, Ubaid al-Hadidi, was a mid-level contractor before the fall of Mosul. Under the Isis occupation, he made a fortune buying and selling residential and agricultural lands confiscated from Christian residents expelled from the city. In 2015, he bought the concession for the island and ran it for a year and a half before he was forced to close it because of the lack of electricity and the approaching war. After the liberation of Mosul, a warrant was issued for his arrest on terrorism charges. But after al-Sa’edy allegedly intervened, the charges against al-Hadidi were dropped. In return, according to MPs and intelligence officers who spoke to me about the disaster, al-Hadidi paid a “contribution” of 5bn Iraqi dinars and gave al-Sa’edy a 30% share in the island.
The day after the ferry sank, al-Hadidi claimed in a phone interview with an Iraqi TV station that he and his son had not been in Mosul when the disaster occurred. The reason, he said, was that an Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq security representative had threatened them and demanded a large payment. “We would always shut the island if the water level climbed, but we haven’t been in Mosul because of the threats we received,” he said. Three days later, al-Hadidi and his son were arrested in Erbil and taken to a prison in Mosul. In an interview with an Iraqi TV network, a representative of Asai’ib Ahl al-Haq’s political wing said: “Even if we accept that someone connected to the movement is a partner in the island, that does not mean that Asa’ib are responsible for what happened.”
When they brought the body of Ustad Ahmad’s wife to his house on the night of the accident, he refused to see her. He did not attend her funeral. The body of his eldest boy was found the day after the ferry sank, trapped under the capsized hull. His other son and baby girl will never be found.
After the disaster, Ahmad could not stand to see his boys’ toys and school bags. “I asked my mother to remove all their belongings and give them away,” he said. “I don’t want to remember them. I want to forget their memories.” As he spoke, his voice was breaking. “I imagine all that happened as a dream; I talk about it as if it was a story that happened to someone else.” He was sitting in his mother’s house, the confident pride of the school principal was gone. He looked old and tired, his back bent and face sagging.
Ustad Ahmad’s wife, sons and baby daughter.
Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
“You know, we had lost another baby girl two years ago, she was the same age, a mirror image of this one, same laughter, the same face,” he said. Two years earlier, when their house was struck by an Isis mortar, Ahmad had run into the street carrying the other daughter, his wife and boys following him. His brother and neighbours rushed to help them. His brother pulled the baby from his arms, while Ahmad and his wife went back to the house to collect their valuables. When the couple were back in the house, another mortar exploded. Ahmad ran outside to find his brother and 10 of the neighbours dead. His baby daughter was dead. “Maybe it was in our fate to die on that day, but we missed death, and it caught up with us on the ferry,” he told me.
Ahmad does not blame incompetence or corruption for the ferry disaster. “Yes,” he said, “there was negligence, but what can I do about the owner, how can I get my justice from him? Is he much worse than the people who stood watching while people were floating in front of them? No one came to save us; no one volunteered to come down into the water; people just stood watching. No one helped. When they took me back to the island, I saw people sitting eating their picnics. This unfeeling attitude – is it because of all the death the city had seen?”
In the autumn, I visited Aya at her aunt’s house. “What caused the ferry to sink was corruption and negligence; treating the people as if they are nothing,” she told me. She spoke forcefully, her grief mixed with the bitterness of being abandoned by the state. “My mother said after this war, the destruction, the savagery of the killings, nothing worse would happen to us. We were liberated in March 2017, and in March 2019 she died.”
“No one cares this happened here,” she said. “The ferry will be forgotten just like all these other deaths were forgotten.” In October, Aya started receiving phone calls from prominent tribal elders, pressuring her to accept an offer of blood money from the owner of the island. Al-Hadidi was offering bereaved families 10m Iraqi dinars and a plot of land on the outskirts of the city, if they would drop any charges against him and his son. The elders told her that all the other families had accepted and she was one of the last holding out. “I was refusing to sign, but all the families had signed, they tell me that they won’t get anything from the state and they need the money. I don’t know what to do,” said Aya.
I called the MP Shirwan Dobadani to ask him about the compensation offer. He told me that it was true – two prominent tribal sheikhs had intervened as intermediaries. “If the families wait for the judicial system to give them justice, they won’t get anything,” Dobadani said. “There are thousands of cases of murder and assassination that haven’t been solved. The worst disaster in Iraq is forgotten after 72 hours.”