BROOKE GLADSTONE:  As Arab and Kurdish forces pushed ever closer to the ISIS stronghold in Raqqa, on Monday, a parallel operation in Mosul, Iraq brought bittersweet news.

[CLIPS]:

FEMALE CORRESPONDENT:  The Iraqi government has announced its forces have finally taken full control of Mosul, the city held by so-called “Islamic State extremists” for the past three years.

[SOUND OF CROWD CHEERS]

FEMALE CORRESPONDENT:  They’re jubilant in Mosul. They’ve driven the extremists out. But it’s come at a price. After nine months of fighting, the city lies in ruins.

MALE CORRESPONDENT:  Many of the tens of thousands of civilians trapped by the fighting, with little food or water, are now trying to flee to safety.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  And it got worse from there. On Thursday, the media got hold of a video depicting brutal acts of retribution against suspected ISIS members.

MALE CORRESPONDENT:  The latest shows what appear to be Iraqi soldiers throwing a suspect over a cliff and then shooting at his motionless body.

[END CLIP]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  So the people of Mosul are not free yet of terror, but now at least its citizens can savor basic freedoms, like listening to the radio.

[RADIO SOUNDTRACK/WOMAN SPEAKING IN ARABIC]

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI, INTERPRETING:  She’s saying congratulation to the people of Mosul, to all of us, to the Iraqi security forces of the victory of liberating Mosul. She’s also greeting Al-Ghad Radio station. Her name’s Omanore.  

[SOUND OF WOMAN ULULATING]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  This is one of the countless devoted listeners who call in to Radio Al-Ghad, a community station that defied the media blackout and broadcast to the besieged city during the darkest days of the ISIS occupation.

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  In June 2014, what we've never expected happened. One day we were forced to leave Mosul without being able to get our belongings from the city.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  That’s Mohammed al-Musali, Radio Al-Ghad’s founder. He and his 24-person staff of journalists, DJs and scholars still use fake names and operate the station in a secret location some 60-plus miles from the city. Mohammed says that when Mosul fell to ISIS or "Daesh" three years ago, he created the station to fight the Islamic State’s devastatingly effective propaganda.

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  Media was their weapon. The first thing they established is their radio station. People in Mosul were completely isolated by Daesh, not allowing people to have access to cell phones or to the internet or satellite TVs at their homes. People only have Daesh media and, somehow, the Iraqi media message was aligned with Daesh message, showing people of Mosul to be supporters Daesh. This is why it was very important to counter that message and to show the truth and to make sure that the voice of the people inside the city, inside Mosul, will be delivered to the rest of the world, and this is what we did.

[MAN SPEAKING IN ARABIC LANGUAGE]

AL-MUSALI/INTERPRETING:  We’ve been hurted by Daesh. They stopped our lives. They stopped us from going to complete our education. And we are left with no future. We are living in a prison.

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  From the first week we started the broadcasting, Daesh starting jamming our frequency. We had to change the frequency and then after one week they did jam us again. And then they become even faster. In one day they jam us again. And then it becomes two hours it takes them to jam the new frequency. For this reason, we had to install more transmitters to make sure we are broadcasting on many frequencies simultaneously and to make sure people know that we are there and they just have to look for us.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Now, one way that you fought back against ISIS propaganda was with a program you did called Daesh in the Scale of Islam and Civilization. And this was a talk show intended for ISIS supporters. I think that may be a first for any media outlet based in Iraq that wasn't produced by ISIS. What was the show about?

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  That program was presented by a scholar who has a PhD in Islamic Theories. He speaks the language that Daesh would speak, highlighting the biggest vulnerabilities within the Daesh argument and make sure people have both sides.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  He pointed to actions of ISIS, right, destroying historical places or mosques, forcing minorities to leave. He was saying that the behavior of ISIS was inconsistent with its religious preachings?

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  Yes, that was exactly what was the program about. We even asked Daesh to call the radio station and we promised them that we are not stopping their calls. And some of them, they tried to have that live debate, which, I think, is quite neat.

[MAN SPEAKING IN ARABIC]

AL-MUSALI/INTERPRETING:  The Daesh member said, you don’t have the respect to the Islamic State. The Islamic State is staying and expanding. It will be all over the Arabic countries and we’ll take these countries to be part of our Islamic State while you are looking.

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  Most of the scholars were avoiding these topics in public, and this is why I felt we are quite responsible to give the people an alternative and make sure they have access to information that they need in that critical time.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Did it have any impact, do you think?

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  Yes, it had a big impact and after the liberation we start getting some calls from people who were deceived and they were very thankful to the presenter because they said, we used to listen to every single episode. Some of those people quit joining Daesh and they had a lot of people to witness what they call like repentance from what they did.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Over the last nine months, Iraq's campaign to take back the city intensified. Your station acted as an intermediary between the people of Mosul and Iraq's armed forces.

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  There was a lot of misunderstanding from both parties. For example, when Iraqi people were accused to be supporters of Daesh, Daesh used that point to tell the people, by the time the Iraqi security forces will enter Mosul, they will take your women, your kids. They will kill you all. But the same time, Iraqi soldiers had different opinion about people of Mosul. So having both talking and for the Iraqi soldiers saying, we are ready to sacrifice our lives to liberate you, that was a very important and emotional message that reached both sides that was not possible without the radio station.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Didn't you also get pretty granular in your reports during the liberation of the western part of the city?

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  We were coordinating with the civil defense to say, there are people who are hostages in an area or people were struck and they are still alive, they are underground, they need urgent help.

[CONVERSATION IN ARABIC]

AL-MUSALI/INTERPRETING:  A woman calling Al-Ghad Radio and saying, my brother’s daughter with her family are all in Mosul, their house being struck. All her and her family with a newborn kid, they are all underground and we need someone to help them. We don't have anyone, except you. Please help.

[WOMAN SPEAKING, CRYING/CUT]

Sometimes the information is not completed by a person describing a house in a neighborhood because he doesn't know the coordinates of the house, and we try all our best to find the information and pass it directly to the civil defense.

To be honest, like one of the things I feel most proud of is saving people lives. Whatever I’m going to do in the future, I would not be able to do something more human than this.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Mohammed, Mosul was the largest city held by the Islamic State. Even before Iraqi forces officially took it, Prime Minister al-Abadi announced the end of ISIS’s caliphate. Do you think it's premature to do that?

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  It’s quite a big achievement but there are still some areas in Iraq, like Tal Afar and Ouja.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Mm-hmm.

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  So Iraq is not fully liberated. And, of course, Daesh would try to reestablish their network in a different way. And today, even though Mosul is liberated, there are a lot of sleeping cells living among civilians in the east part of Mosul.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  So as the residents of Mosul and the Iraqi government, which didn't serve the city all that well in the past, start the process of rebuilding, what do you see as Radio Al-Ghad’s new role?

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  I want to make sure the Iraqi government knows what the people feel, and I don't want to have a lot of filtration process in the middle, where the reality is not being delivered to the officials. We want to give the people a voice where they can speak freely about their problems, so they can be part of the change, instead of waiting for someone to change their lives, to make sure my people will not fall into the same trap again.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Mohammed al-Musali is the founder of Radio Al-Ghad, a community radio station broadcasting to Mosul, Iraq. Mohammed, thank you very much.

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  Thank you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  You also have a talent show, right?

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  Yeah, the talent show started when 70 percent of the east part of Mosul was liberated.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Mm-hmm!

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  And it was the first live talent show in radios in Iraq.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  [LAUGHS] Did they just sing on the phone?

MOHAMMED AL-MUSALI:  Yes, a lot of them, they just start singing on the phone, and then it went through different stages. By the end, we sent reporters to Mosul to record to those people.

 [MUSIC UP & UNDER]

And this week, we’ve published their first production about the liberation of Mosul, and that was from the top three who won the talent show.

[MUSIC, SINGING]

BOB GARFIELD:  That’s it for this week’s show. On the Media is produced by Alana Casanova-Burgess, Jesse Brenneman, Micah Loewinger and Leah Feder. We had more help from Jane Vaughan. And our show was edited – by Brooke. Our technical director is Jennifer Munson. Our engineers this week were Sam Bair and Terence Bernardo.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Katya Rogers is our executive producer. On the Media is a production of WNYC Studios. I’m Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD:  And I’m Bob Garfield. This show is dedicated to Erin Brenneman.