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By Gne Murat Tezcr By Gne Murat Tezcr August 15 at 8:00 AM

Three years ago this month, the Islamic State started a systematicattack againstthe Kurdish-speaking Yazidi minority based in the Sinjar area ofnorthwestern Iraq. We now have a better understanding of the militant groups patterns of violence and goals because of the discovery of mass graves, survivor testimonies and the Islamic Statespublic declarations.

This new evidence tells us that while the Islamic States extremist ideology provided the guiding principle, large numbers of locals with varying motives actively participatedin these atrocities. The pursuit of material gains and stigmatization of the Yazidis as a marginalized religious minority have been the driving factors of the violence at the local level.

The precarious existence of the Yazidis

While many other ethnoreligious groups in northern Iraq have been subject to various degrees of Islamic State violence, the treatment of the Yazidis at the hands of the groupamounts to what human rights organizationsdeem genocide: including mass executions and abductions, sexual enslavement and forced conversions. Out of an estimated 400,000 Yazidi people living in Sinjar, at least 10,000were either killed or abducted. Almost the entire population is displaced.

The Yazidis, an insulated and internally hierarchical community, have a long history of persecution and victimization at the hands of Muslim rulers and extremist organizations. While the Yazidis have lived among Sunni Arabs and Kurds side by side for centuries, discriminatory practices and social distance characterized interreligious relations, including the widespread perception that Yazidis are devil worshipers. In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, many Yazidis gained new employment opportunities under the de facto Kurdish control over the area that generated resentment among local Arabs.

The Islamic States ideology and Yazidis

In this historical context, the rapid advance of the Islamic State into the Sinjar area became a disaster for the Yazidis. The Islamic States ideology defines the Yazidis as polytheists who have no right to exist under Islamic rule. In many instances, captured Yazidis were given the choice of conversion or death and enslavement.

In 2014, a large village about 15 miles south of Sinjar called Kocho held off Islamic State fighters in a siege that lasted 12 days. As recounted by a survivor, eventually, the Islamic State fighters stormed the village and massacred about 400 men immediately and about 80 elderly women later. The remaining women and children were treated as slaves and sold to Islamic State fighters. Even while the Islamic State took pains to say that it prohibited gang rape as Yazidi women were supposed to be the exclusive property of their owner Islamic State fighters simply sold their slaves to other fighters.

A recent study shows that perpetrators ideology often plays a decisive role in their choice of targets and means of violence. At the same time, one needs to look beyond ideology to opportunism and deep-rooted stigmatization of the Yazidi minority to explain how the Islamic States violence against that community faced no opposition from the local population.

A recurrent theme in my conversations with Yazidis and testimonies of femalesurvivors is that not only foreign fighters but also local Iraqis and Syrians, both men and women, were actively involved in their rape and enslavement. In the words of a survivor, They did not attack us because of their ideology, but to simply have the opportunity to rape us.

While some Sunnis from the Sinjar area tried to protect their Yazidi neighbors, many others, including godfathers of Yazidi boys who were supposed to act as their protectors, participated in the enslavement of women and the robbing of the Yazidis and looting of their properties resulting in revenge attacks after the defeat of the Islamic State. The mass abduction of Yazidis has become a profitable activity for both the local population and Islamic State fighters, who often sold their captives back to their families for hefty sums via smugglers.

It is too simplistic to argue that the Yazidi tragedy is a direct and inevitable result of historical religious antagonisms. Yet, even if many of these locals did not subscribe to the Islamic State ideology and were not its members, they readily dehumanized the Yazidis after the ascendancy of the Islamic State. Deep-rooted stigmatization of Yazidis and general insecurity in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq contributed to their vulnerability as a community and enabled the Islamic State to implement its exterminating ideology and find collaboration among the local population.

This pattern of genocidal political projects mobilizing ordinary people in mass crimes has been observed in settings as diverse as Nazi Germany and Rwanda. The uniqueness of the Islamic State ideology should not obscure the fragility of intercommunal coexistence in times of crises and the difficulty of intercommunal reconciliation.

Gne Murat Tezcr isthe Jalal Talabani chair of Kurdish Political Studies and directs the Kurdish Political Studies Program at the University of Central Florida.

See the rest here:
Three years ago, the Islamic State massacred Yazidis in Iraq. Why? - Washington Post

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The governor of the oil city of Basra has stepped down and gone to Iran after Iraq's anti-corruption body began investigating graft allegations against him, people close to him and officials said on Tuesday.

Iraq's Integrity Commission on Monday evening issued a statement asking the foreign ministry in Baghdad to ask Iran to repatriate Nasrawi.

A Basra-based politician close to Nasrawi said the accusations against Nasrawi were "politically motivated" by rivals.

"He can travel wherever he likes as long as there are no legal obstacles," the politician said, confirming that Nasrawi had left for Iran. The governor's family declined to comment and the lawyer's association in Basra said he had no known attorney.

Oil-rich Iraq ranks 166st out of 176 nations in Transparency International's Corruption Index.

In a separate case, Samir Kubba, the director general of Iraqi Airways, has been arrested and referred to trial on graft charges, a spokesman for the Supreme Judicial Council said on Tuesday.

Judge Abdul Sattar Birqadr said he faced accusations of "bribery cases and job violations".

Majid al-Nasrawi and the Iraqi Airways boss are the highest ranking public figures to come under investigation for alleged corruption since Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was elected three years ago, partly on a pledge to fight graft.

Graft has exacerbated the effects on the economy of a sharp decline in oil revenue caused by falling crude prices and the costs of fighting Islamic State, which took control of large parts of northern and western Iraq after 2014.

Fourteen years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, the country still suffers shortages of electricity, water, schools and hospitals, and infrastructure has been widely neglected.

Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; editing by Andrew Roche

Link:
Iraq oil city governor quits, travels to Iran after corruption investigation - Reuters

Despite the recapture of swathes of territory from the Islamic State group, the conflicts in Iraq and Syria are far from over as their governments face major political challenges, experts warn.

In July the jihadists lost control of Iraqs second city Mosul in a major setback three years after declaring a caliphate straddling the two countries.

Across the border around half of ISs de facto Syrian capital Raqa has been retaken by US-backed fighters.

But divisions across political, religious and ethnic lines will again rise to the surface in Iraq after the extremist group is driven out of its last bastions, said Mathieu Guidere, an expert on jihadist organisations.

A month before Iraq declared the liberation of Mosul, the countrys autonomous Kurdish region announced plans to proceed with a referendum on statehood in September.

The idea was not new but its timing was criticised by Baghdad, which opposes Kurdish independence, and by Washington, coming as it did with the anti-IS campaign still unfinished.

Analysts said the referendum is one of the many challenges facing the Iraq government along with the presence of a Shiite paramilitary force in Sunni-majority areas and the fate of minorities such as the Yazidis.

How the government deals with these thorny issues will determine whether it succeeds in a post-IS era, experts said.

The jihadist group is the illustration -- violent, long and complex -- of the dystrophy that reigns in Iraq, said Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, professor of international history at Genevas Graduate Institue.

- New Iraq covenant -

Ould Mohamedou advocates a new national covenant for Iraq that would allow the Shiite-dominated government to gain the trust of the Sunni population and other minorities, particularly in the northern Mosul region.

At the same time the government will also have to skilfully deal with the paramilitary Hashed al-Shaabi umbrella organisation which is dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias.

Some of the components within Hashed al-Shaabi, which battled IS in Iraq, have for years been sending fighters to support the Syrian regime in its conflict with various rebel groups.

Even as leaders in both Iraq and Syria savour the setbacks inflicted by their forces on IS, they still need to examine the reasons that led to the formidable rise of the jihadist group.

After declaring victory over brutality and terrorism in Mosul, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said there were lessons to be learned to ensure his country never again falls into the grip of IS.

Huge mistakes have been made, he said.

- Reorganisation, redeployment -

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also faces huge challenges in the countrys multi-sided war, despite his forces being backed by allies Russia, Iran and the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah in the battle against jihadists and rebels.

IS fighters are steadily losing chunks of Raqa to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed Arab-Kurdish alliance which broke into the northern city in June.

A Russian-backed government offensive has also targeted IS forces in the central Syrian desert.

Analysts said that if Raqa falls, the Kurdish fighters that dominate the SDF could clash with regime troops.

Assad does not want an autonomous administration taking control of Raqa, said Syria expert and geographer Fabrice Balanche.

Ould Mohamedou said the war in Syria goes beyond the question of IS, having erupted six years ago with peaceful anti-government protests that were brutally put down by the regime.

In the name of the fight against Islamist terrorism, more and more Western governments have closed their eyes to the massacres perpetrated by the Syrian regime, he said.

The war in Syria has killed hundreds of thousands of people while millions more have been displaced in the two countries.

Rebuilding infrastructure and restoring stability to allow the displaced to return home will be a massive challenge.

The United Nations has said the level of destruction in Mosul alone is one of the largest and most complex challenges it has faced.

Unless all these challenges are tackled, IS jihadists driven out of territory in Syria and Iraq could re-emerge as a more brutal and formidable force.

For IS the key words now are reorganisation and redeployment, said Guidere.

Ould Mohamedou said that even if IS is defeated in Syria and Iraq it will bounce back elsewhere and... with a new look.

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Conflicts in Syria, Iraq far from over despite Islamic State setbacks - Hindustan Times

KEY FIGURES

839,490 Internally displaced Iraqis verified as being currently displaced from Mosul and surrounding areas since military operations to retake the city began on 17 October 20161

593,395 IDPs, returnees and members of the host community from Mosul and surrounding areas assisted by UNHCR since 17 October 2016.

271,171 Individuals (56,244 households) impacted by military operations to retake Mosul since October 2016 are currently enrolled in ASSIST, UNHCRs assistance tracking tool

3.3 million IDPs since January 20142

257,476 Iraqi refugees hosted in countries in the region, and 22,408 Iraqis received in camps in Hassakeh, Syria since 17 October 2016

FUNDING

USD 578 million requested for IDPs and Iraqi refugees in the region in 2017

POPULATION MOVEMENTS

Displaced families from Mosul continue to arrive in camps. Between 9 and 10 August, 17 families arrived at Nargizlia 1 and 2 camps (north-east of Mosul) while 171 families arrived at camps east of Mosul. The majority of families were from various locations in west Mosul, had experienced multiple-displacement and were arriving to the camps after running out of resources to pay for rent and basic goods.

New displacement from Tel Afar. On 10 August, some 136 families (953 individuals) arrived to the Hammam al-Alil screening site (south of Mosul) from Tel Afar and nearby villages fearing intensification of conflict. Families are finding shelter with relatives or renting accommodation in east Mosul, Hammam al-Alil or Qayyarah areas, or in camps east of Mosul.

Newly displaced families from Hawiga arrived at camps in Salah al-Din Governorate. Between 9 and 10 August, 14 families who had fled from Hawiga (Kirkuk Governorate) through the Hamreen mountains arrived at the Al-Hayakil screening site outside of Baiji city in Salah al-Din. From there, the families were transported around 20 km south to Al Alam and Karamah camps.

Departures from camps around Mosul have continued. Between 9 and 10 August, 226 families departed from camps east of Mosul and 39 families from camps north of Mosul. Most sought to return to their homes, while a few left to join families and relatives in other locations; or in the case of families leaving from camp in the north, to work tending herds in villages around Dahuk Governorate.

SITUATION UPDATE

UNHCR has been stepping up its aid effort for IDP families in Mosul, including those who have recently returned to the city. UNHCR, together with its partner, has distributed shelter kits to more than 3,200 families in east and west Mosul, and cash assistance to 700 vulnerable families. Given the scale of the destruction in Mosul, particularly in the western part of the city, humanitarian needs remain high.

United Nations Secretary-General's Envoy on Youth, Jayathma Wickramanayake, highlighted on 12 August that challenges will remain and continue to obstruct the path to development and peace if young people do not have real opportunities for education, employment and civic participation. As one of the most youthful countries in the world, with over 60 per cent of the population under the age of 25, Iraq despite the many challenges it faces is uniquely positioned to harness the potential of its young generation to promote peace and prosperity.

Investment in healthcare is urgently required to save the lives of mothers and newborn babies in Iraq. The Ministry of Health has launched the Every Newborn Action Plan (ENAP) developed with UNICEF, WHO and UNFPA to serve as a roadmap that redefines and focuses national and sub-national strategies and activities to reduce deaths and disability, ensuring no newborn is left behind.

RESPONSE UPDATE

55,584 families from Hawiga and Tel Afar currently hosted in camps in and around Mosul. The camps have capacity to accommodate a further 8,699 families and additional shelter plots are planned to house 13,448 more families.

Ninewa Civil Affairs Office conducted their first mobile mission to Khazer M1 and Hasansham U3 camps. 27 civil IDs were processed with the support of UNHCRs protection partner. Also, UNHCRs partner conducted 132 legal consultations and facilitated the issuance of seven birth certificates from the Erbil Maternity Hospital for IDPs in camps east of Mosul.

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Iraq Situation: UNHCR Flash Update - 14 August 2017 - ReliefWeb

ROMEThe ongoing migrant boat crisis, which has lured more than 600,000 mostly sub-Saharan Africans to Italy and killed more than 10,000 since 2014, has reached a crucial turning point.

Over the weekend, three of the eight major nongovernmental organizations with migrant rescue operations announced they would suspend their search and rescue operations out of fear the Libyan coast guard would shoot at them. The suspensions come at a time when migrant arrivals in Italy have dropped around 70 percent compared to last year.

Make no mistake, the Libyans threat is real. In July, they fired shots in the air over a Spanish rescue vessel, warning it away from their territorial waters. And late last week, Libyas navy announced that it would establish its own search and rescue zone off its international waters. Any smuggler boats with migrants would be rescued and taken back to Libyan ports. Likewise, any foreign vessels breaching that new search and rescue perimeter would be seen as aggressors and dealt with accordingly, Libyan coast guard spokesman Ayoub Qassem told Reuters.

The Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center in Rome, which coordinates all distress calls and rescues in the Mediterranean, warned the rescue boats of increased security risks at the hands of the Libyan navy. In other words, they couldnt promise that the Libyans wouldnt shoot their ships.

In exchange for stopping the flow of smugglers boats, Libya has been promised a series of rewards, from investments in infrastructure to basic credibility for its fragile officially recognized government. In fact, not even a day passed between the first announcement of an NGO suspending its mission and Italys seeming call for funds to help the fragmented state.

We need a significant, I repeat a significant European economic investment in Libya and in Africa, Italys interior minister, Angelino Alfano, said on Sunday, calling on Europe to reward Libya for its part in stemming the flow of people into Italy.

The crackdown on migration from the Libyan side in exchange for economic rewards is highly reminiscent of a similar deal Italys former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, made with Libyas former ruler, Muammar Gaddafi, in 2008 when Gaddafi had threatened to open the spigot and turn Europe black if Europe did not take him seriously.

Italy, then as now, was on the front line of the crisis and promised investments of around 200 million a year into the country. So pleased were the Libyans that they watermarked Berlusconis photo in their passport pages. And the flow of African migrants into Europe stopped quite abruptly, almost exactly as it has now. When Gaddafi was deposed and later killed, the migrant flows picked up again.

Just as they were a decade ago, Libya and Italy have been under increased pressure from Europe to do their part to stem the flow of migrants. And, borrowing a page from the history books, Italy once again dangled a carrot to get Libya to cooperate, a move likely made even more urgent for Rome by the fact that Italy will go to the polls in early 2017 to elect a new leader.

In May, Italy gave the Libyan coast guard four repaired patrol boats and helped train their crews for search and rescue missions. In early August, Italy sent two warships to aid the Libyan coast guard in stopping the migrant boats. On Sunday, Alfano applauded the Libyan threats toward the NGO ships, calling the move an end to the Wild West of migration.

The new measures prompted Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, and German Sea Eye to at least temporarily ground their rescue vessels. Several others have had to scale back their operations and change their strategy to stay clear of the Libyan off-limits zone, which means migrants have little chance of getting through alive.

The recent developments represent another worrying element of an increasingly hostile environment for lifesaving rescue operations, Brice de le Vingne, Doctors Without Borders director of operations said in a statement. European states and Libyan authorities are jointly implementing a blockade on the ability of people to seek safety. This is an unacceptable assault on peoples lives and dignity.

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The threats toward the NGOs, coupled with a new code of conduct established by the Italian government that requires the NGO boats to allow armed Italian officials onboard, is working to get the rescue ships out of the water, though that does not necessarily equate to stopping smuggler boats from leaving Libyan shores. The International Office for Migration estimates that more than half a million people are currently in Libya hoping to get to Europe by sea. With fewer charity boats to rescue them, there will surely be an increase in fatalities at sea, since smugglers will undoubtedly find it hard to give up their lucrative business.

Those migrants who are rescued by the Libyan authorities are put into inhumane detention centers run by militia groups where they face torture, slavery, and rape. Bullet wounds and unplanned pregnancy were common among those rescued at sea who spent any time at all in Libya. The United Nations Refugee Agency UNHCR special envoy for the Central Mediterranean route Vincent Cochetel called the Libyan detention centers just prisons, some controlled by the authorities, some by militants and traffickers with terrible conditions to which all migrants who disembark on the Libyan coasts are subjected.

Despite the dramatic change in course, the migrants are clearly still migrating. Last week, a rubber dingy with African migrants landed on a tourist beach in Spain, which has seen a four-fold increase in migrant arrivals since those to Italy started decreasing. With so many people on the move, solving one problem almost certainly creates another.

More here:
Libya Says It Will Shoot Refugee Rescue Boats on Sight - Daily Beast