The safety of the peshmerga lines would only come after another two hours of walking in the dark. During that journey, they could hear drones flying above, but didn’t know whose they were. They could belong to the peshmerga, or they might be part of the ISIS surveillance plan. At that point it didn’t matter. There was no choice but to continue walking and hope for the best. Mayam had recounted the tale up to this point with what I perceived to be lingering PTSD-like effects from her two years in hell; she was constantly rocking back and forth, staring at a wall sometimes, even as she spoke. But when she told me the next part, for the first time she looked me right in the eye, and a smile broke out on her face.

“Once we were safely with the peshmerga I was greatly relieved. I was so happy to be away from such barbarism!” When her brother, Aziz Maoulood, got the very unexpected news that his sister and family were not only safe but free, he immediately got up and drove to the safe holding area. “Hearing that news was indescribable!” he said during the interview. “ISIS does not deserve the time they’ve had on this planet,” he added, with obvious conviction. When I asked both Aziz and Mayam why the primarily Sunni ISIS would be so intolerant to the Sunni population, Aziz quickly said that ISIS wasn’t really Islam. “They are a fraud!” he said without hesitation. “They’re not really Muslims. 99.5 percent of all Sunnis under ISIS domination hate them. They are a perverted ideology, not a religion.”

It is not clear how many of Mosul’s Sunnis hate ISIS, and how many others will fight with them against government forces. In an interview on March 15, General Bahram Yassin, commander of all peshmerga troops poised opposite Mosul, told me the percentages are likely mixed. “There are some tribal Sunni leaders that will move their people out of the battle zone as soon as government forces begin the assault,” he said, “but there are others who have common cause with ISIS and will likely fight us.”

No one really knows what’s going to happen once the battle starts, but Mayam said there was only one thing she really cared about. All she wanted was the Iraqi and allied troops to free the oppressed population and make other families as safe as she is now. “I just don’t want any more war,” she said, as all emotion again drained from her face.

“We only want to live peaceful lives.”

Daniel L. Davis is a widely published analyst on national security and foreign policy. He retired as a Lt. Col. after twenty-one years in the U.S. Army, including four combat deployments, and is a member of the Center for Defense Information's Military Advisory Board. The views in these articles are those of the author alone and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Government. Follow him on Twitter @DanielLDavis1.

Image: Daniel L. Davis.