How an Iraqi Instagram Influencer Became a People Smuggler

Khalid felt obliged to inform. Between February 2020 and May 2021 he published 146 posts on his social media accounts. There are images depicting arguments in Arabic. Others use technology. One showed a meeting between Richard Dawkins and God. Dawkins shows the existence of blind faith to an ignorant God in an animation.

People who use gaps in knowledge as evidence for the existence of God are criticized by another. Feminism and Western philosophy are some of the topics addressed by several posts.

At that time, the user base in Iraq was growing fast. There were eight million Iraqis on the app last year. The number had doubled by the year 2020. Khalid had over 100,000 followers in a year. He says that he met a lot of people who think the same way as him. Khalid convinced Yasser al-Ansarry to change his religious views. Khalid was not careful in hiding his identity.

Khalid posted a photo of himself with a sarcastic caption about a Shia ritual. The post was shared tens of thousands of times. Someone from his community recognized him. Khalid's father got a late phone call. Khalid was making tea when he heard the conversation. Before his father confronted him, he knew what was going on.

Khalid's father didn't mind that his son was an atheist. He wondered why he needed an account on the social media site. He needed 100,000 followers. Khalid told his father that he was going to get rid of his account. He only disabled it for a short time.

Khalid received a death threat from his uncle. The Iran-backed Shia militias have been in charge of Iraq since the fall of the Islamic State. Khalid said he couldn't take it as a joke. The people weren't messing with each other.

Khalid reached out to a friend four weeks after talking to his father. He boarded a vehicle that was supposed to be a tourist vehicle. He was carrying only cash and a single set of clothes because he was afraid of his passport.

The bus went from north to south across Turkey. He was dropped off at the Turkish border and taken to Istanbul. Khalid was discovered by Turkish police at a checkpoint. Khalid used a guard's phone to call his friend who arranged a Turkish residency card for him. The lawyer drove the man to a city near Istanbul.