Back to Square One in Iraq

"Honourable Iraqis, your land has been completely liberated. The liberation dream has become a reality. We achieved victory in difficult circumstances and with God's help, the steadfastness of our people and the bravery of our heroic forces we prevailed."
"The flag of Iraq is flying high today over all Iraqi territory and at the farthest point on the border."
"I urge everyone to refrain from returning to the inflammatory and sectarian discourse that empowered gangs to occupy our cities and villages. Our people have paid a dear price. We must turn this page forever."
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi

"All Iraqi lands are liberated from terrorist Daesh gangs and our forces completely control the international Iraqi-Syrian border."
Lt.Gen. Abdul-Amir Rasheed Yar Allah, Iraqi military commander

"[The United States offers] sincere congratulations to the Iraqi people and to the brave Iraqi Security Forces, many of whom lost their lives heroically fighting [Daesh]."
Heather Nauert, U.S. State Department spokesperson

Members of the Iraqi forces flash the victory gesture as they ride in the back of a pickup truck on a street in the southern city of Basra on Sunday amid victory celebrations after Baghdad declared victory in the war against the Islamic State (IS) group. | AFP-JIJI

Three years ago the courageous Iraqi military fled in panic as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant jihadists neared Mosul, their fiercely barbarian reputation for atrocities preceding them. In their desperate haste to leave the city of two and a half million people to fend for itself, they left behind a treasure trove of American-supplied military vehicles and arms caches for the jihadis to take advantage of. ISIL was also, in the absence of the Iraqi military, able to loot the Mosul main bank of a billion dollars to advance their agenda.

Mosul's Sunni population initially might have welcomed the Sunni terrorists feeling living under them could not be any worse and might improve on the oppression they lived with under the Shiite government. They were soon to learn otherwise, as ISIL turned to enforcing life in their version of Sharia upon the majority Sunnis in Mosul, once they had finished with the Shias, the Christians and the Yazidis and the city became accustomed to capital punishment meted out in public squares to any deemed to be delinquent in their ISIL-type Islamism.

Prime Minister Abadi's conciliatory words to Iraqis, his urging that sectarian differences not flare up again is no doubt aimed at Iraqi Sunnis and at Kurds; with his now-secure alliance with Iran and the Iran-backed Shiite militias and the re-empowerment of Syria's regime with its Hezbollah back-up, there is obviously no need of remediation of the ruling Shiites in their persecution of the Sunnis. A situation which led to the former Saddam Hussein-era military commanders becoming ferocious ISIL leaders.

The Prime Minister's speech was notable for the deliberate absence of any mention of the Peshmerga. It would be strange, that omission, since it was the Kurdish Peshmerga whose fighting spirit and courage protected Iraq's minority populations, and who were in the forefront of the fighting, meeting ISIL in battle that the Iraqi forces shrank from, but not viewed through the lens of denial of sovereignty. Without the U.S. air power nothing would have been accomplished in ridding Iraq of the terrorists. And without the Peshmerga forces the United States would have been absent a fighting ally they could depend upon.

The Kurds had their reward when they assumed that after all their sacrifices and their proven record in establishing an egalitarian and welcoming society based on universal human values along with their heritage traditions and their sheer ethnic numbers augmented by their aspirations to have their ancestral homeland finally recognized for the sovereign nation it is, the Iraqi Prime Minister sent in those brave Iraqi troops backed by Shiite militias to quell the hopes raised high after a referendum that saw the vast majority of Kurds voting for independence.

Baghdad's central government is determined, like that of Erdogan's Turkey, al-Assad's Syria and the Ayatollahs' Iran to deny the 40-million Kurds in their collective territory the recognition they deserve.
To that end, Abadi snubbed the Kurds entirely, praising in his speech the Iranian trained and backed Popular Mobilization Forces loyal to Iran, prepared at the drop of a hat to persecute Iraqi Sunnis, and not averse to threatening Kurds, while withholding any mention whatever of the peshmerga's role in defeating ISIL, a backhand slap at the Kurdistan Regional Government.

Nabih‏Verified account @nabihbulos

#Kurd-ish troops cheer when they see an explosion among the #Iraq-i ranks. A sad day for what's left of the country's unity.   6:15 AM - 20 Oct 2017

In his speech the Iraqi Prime Minister deftly laid out another position which no doubt has been the cause of much discussion in the Shiite cabinet, that the state should have a 'legitimate' monopoly on arms: "Weapons should only be in the state’s hands. The rule of law and respect for it are the way to build the state and achieve justice, equality, and stability". That would have great resonance with Iraqi Kurds in their recall of the devastation that Saddam Hussein carried out with his deadly chemical attacks on Kurdish towns and villages.

"The joy of victory is complete with Iraq’s unity after it was on the verge of division. The unity of Iraq and its people is the most important and greatest accomplishment", he waxed self-congratulatorily, the man responsible in large degree for the rise of the terrorist opposition of Sunni Iraqis left out of any positions of equality in the sectarian atmosphere of traditional suspicion and hatred between Iraqis.

But Are They Salvageable?

"With the fall of Mosul and as the fight in Raqqa [the de-facto Islamic State capital in Syria] intensifies, we are definitely going to see some foreign fighters or women try to surrender."
"So, [the report] is not entirely surprising."
"There are some Canadian women who travelled to Syria and Iraq together, so it might be that they tried to leave together as well [to return to their home country on the defeat of Islamic State in Mosul]."
"There's this assumption that women are travelling just to get married or something, which is sometimes true, but mostly false [driven by ardent religious fundamentalism]."
Amarnath Amarasingam, researcher, radicalized Islam, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S.

"I recently spoke with a mother whose child is there [in Iraq]. The parents are worried. There are some parents who haven’t had any news from their children since the bombing of Mosul began. It’s a time of desperation right now."
"There are some parents who have maintained communication with their children, who give them updates from time to time. But in the last four or five weeks it has been radio silence."
"We have young people and those who have lived through horror. We also have children who have been born over there. The problem is larger than we think."
"I think Canada has to have a greater presence. We have to take this seriously because there are still about 200 Canadians in Syria and Iraq."
Herman Okomba-Deparice, director, Centre for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence, Montreal, Quebec

Some 300 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters remain in the small patch of territory still controlled by the group in Mosul’s Old City, a senior Iraqi commander said on July 5. HurriyetDailyNews

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Some of it [incentive for Canadian women to respond to Islamic State's invitation to young women to join them in Iraq as 'wives' of the Caliphate] is for the glory of caliphate, some of it 'Because I was bored', some of it 'Because these guys were kind of hunky'."
"But ... the one thing we have learned: we never saw females going to Somalia, we never saw females going to Afghanistan, we never saw females going to Bosnia in the '90s. This is a real new phenomenon."
Phil Gurski, former Canadian Security Intelligence Service analyst

© Global Look Press    Iraqi forces have detained a group of female Islamic State fighters in Mosul, five of whom are reportedly German. Berlin is investigating whether one of them is a 16-year-old girl who left the country a year ago to join the terrorist group.

The Iraqi military and police are enjoying a belated revenge. In a country dissolved and rent by sectarian violence, the Iraqi military represent the majority Shiite demographic whom their Sunni minority counterparts once dominated under Saddam Hussein. They are delighted to turn the tables. Even more so to turn around their inglorious scampering away to safety when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militias first entered Mosul years earlier to loot and dominate the geography as a competing religious-political force whose feared reputation for savagery cowed the Iraqi military.

The women, particularly those hailing from Muslim communities in Europe and North America who responded to the siren call of ISIL through social media accessed on laptops, smartphones and tablets with their sophisticated public relations formula, and boastful claims of being in possession of sweeping areas in Syria and Iraq in which they were preparing to administer a bold, brave and exciting new world of crystal-pure Islam whose doctrine fed in a straight, unadulterated line from Mohammad to ISIL, obviously thrilled women, eager to join this brave new world.

Picture allegedly showing a 16-year-old German Isil member after being captured by Iraqi forces     Credit: Twitter

Captured now, in the ruins of the Old City of Mosul, surrounded by gloating Iraqi Shiites who view Sunnis like the young 16-year-old ISIL 'wife' from Germany, those women have reason enough to be fearful. They cannot communicate, with no Arab-language proficiency with their captors, and can only be grateful that there is U.S. oversight to ensure that they are handed over to American military personnel. Tales will eventually ensue of these women's handling by Shiite militias loyal to Iran who are settling into Mosul for good, to weight the mostly Sunni population in Mosul in favour of Shiite domination.

Canada has been informed that two of the Islamic State 'wives' rounded up in a maze of tunnels among caches of weaponry are Canadian. They are admittedly Canadian citizens, but they are as 'Canadian' as the results of living within Canada in the midst of a close-knit Muslim community where mosque attendance ensures that readings of Koranic scriptures emphasize duty to Islam including strict separation of the faithful from the infidels, and prayers invoking jihad and the primary duty of killing unbelievers. The message from ISIL had no need to be more persuasive than to guarantee that joining them would fulfill those obligations.

These foreign conscripts to Islamic State who left the comfort of their family homes to set out on a journey of their own into a future of idealized Islamic splendour and punishment of the most lethal kind for those spurning the opportunity to join the collective of the faithful, not only travelled to become wives and mothers for ISIL, but were indoctrinated into the arts of warfare, attending combat classes, learning how to use weapons and use them well.

Perhaps the most potent weapon in their arsenal however, would not be lethal devices to kill, but the will to use the same public relations methodology that ensnared them into the ideology of Islamic State, bringing to practical life the Hadiths reminding faithful Muslims of their duties to Islam. Not only are Canadian prisons rife with Islamists sentenced to incarceration for petty criminal activity, and doing their part to convince other prisoners, Muslim and those who are convinced enough to convert, to subscribe to the Islamic State ideal; they are now joined by returning jihadis.

Within society, released back into the social contract of Islamic societies that they know so well, the returned Canadian women and those from elsewhere can go about their self-assigned promulgation of the splendid virtues of Islamic State's caliphate, describing it in the calculated, admirable terms they are familiar with, to exert influence on those ripe to join the group's ideological struggle for a unified Islam and a defeated host country.

Social media images alleging to show an Isil sniper believed to be 16-year-old German Linda W    Credit: Twitter

And should any of the Canadian ISIL "brides", repatriated by an understanding and concerned-for-their-welfare Canadian government, turn out to have been in their formative-adult years when they pledged themselves to Islamic State, the current Liberal-led government of Justin Trudeau will then have the opportunity to demonstrate to the rest of the non-Muslim world just how forward-looking and "feminist" Canada is, by enriching the returnees through a cash settlement of millions, while rehabilitating their reputations by apologizing to them on behalf of furious and non-assenting Canadians.

Pity the children they've borne to Islamic State, to populate the caliphate, obeying yet another Koranic injunction. Those that survived the massive assaults on Mosul in bombed buildings, collapsing on the children whose plaintive cries of pain alerted to their presence. And the babies found abandoned while their parents pursued their obligations to martyrdom. 

A little girl named Amina was found by Iraqi Army soldiers when they heard her cries from the rubble.  Credit: Rex

Taking Offence : U.S. Harming Iranian Sensibilities

"Repugnant WH statement & Senate sanctions as Iranians counter terror backed by U.S. clients."
"Iranian people reject such U.S. claims of friendship."
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif

"There is this belief in the world that Saudi Arabia is the ideological source of these terrorist movements, but it is too soon to say Saudi Arabia was behind the attack because we don't want to make statements without evidence."
Mahmoud Alavi, Iranian Intelligence Minister

Members of the Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) secure the area outside the Iranian parliament during an attack on the complex in the capital Tehran on June 7, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

Official Iran speaks disparagingly of President Donald Trump's note of condolence over the double attacks in Tehran, tinctured with his aside warning that violence begets violence: "We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote". One of the more coherent and spot-on statements to issue from this man's mouth. And as such, calling the Islamic Republic of Iran the spade that it is.

This is, after all, the very same administration in Tehran that speaks of the "Great Satan", the United States, and the "Little Satan", Israel. And when it comes to conspiring against them, and in the process hoping to do each great harm in the process through of course, a terrorist agenda, Iran has few equals.

The former, a country of huge power and influence that Tehran imagines itself capably matching in both power and influence, the latter an insignificant irritant on the local scene that the Republic plans at some future date to extinguish through the kind of violence that would ensure no Jews would be left to call the State of Israel their very own.

Although Tehran is fond of stating that the Holocaust is a figment of Jewish imagination, the Islamist theocracy aspires to destroy what the Nazis did not. Who now recalls that Nazi Germany, proud of its Aryan status, acknowledged Iran in that category? Both Nazi Germany and Shiite Iran shared a hatred of Jews; fascists have that in common.

Iran is also one of four countries in the Middle East -- comprised of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria -- hosting a large Kurdish population. That Kurdish population lives, in fact, within the historical geography that was always Kurdish; it is the border nations of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria that have absorbed Kurdish territory, calling it their own. And the millions of Kurds -- an estimated 40 million in all -- that has been cheated out of their sovereign territory, ruled by others and who despite the Kurdish desperation for recognition, refuse to surrender that land back to greater Kurdistan.

Little wonder, then, that Iran, which formed, trained and armed Shiite Lebanese to become a death-loving terrorist group which they use as their own non-state militia, is affronted that Kurds living in Iran, their needs ignored by the government are as restive as the Kurds in Turkey, determined to regain their historical lands. Some of whom joined the Sunni terrorist group Islamic State to fight Shiites. And then with the experience they gained in Syria and Iraq, returned to Iran as a potential threat, under watch by Iranian intelligence.

Which, though it claims to have apprehended earlier terrorist plots, evidently had little advance warning of the two that transpired on June 7th when the seat of government and the tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were attacked by five gunmen who managed to kill 17 Iranians and  wound an additional 52. Security forces responding to the attacks killed the five men after they opened fire and created violent havoc.

Since then hundreds of Kurds under suspicion have been detained, and Iranian authorities claim to have killed the commander and planner of the attacks.

A gunman entering Iranian parliament building June 7, 2017, Tehran, Iran. © IRIB / Reuters

The Iranian government speaks of the attackers as "long affiliated with the Wahhabi", identifying them as having been influenced by the Salafist form of Sunni Islam that Saudi Arabia holds dear. Along with the five men there was a female who blew herself up as a suicide bomber at the Khomeini mausoleum. While another woman was captured, held as a participant in the attacks, and was being interrogated. Her fate can most certainly be guessed at with a fair amount of accuracy; torture, then an unfortunate death due to some mysterious and fatal medical condition.

Tehran June 9, 2017. © Atta Kenare / AFP

So, robust calls for "Death to America!", "Death to the Zionist entity!", have now been joined with "Death to the Kurds!", in Iran. None of these imprecations are held by the Iranian regime to be outside the bounds of polite nation-to-nation diplomacy. So the reaction of the regime to the U.S. president's note of condolence with its little addendum is fairly amusing in an absurdly dark, sinister way that reflects the peculiarly illogical and deadly mindset of revolutionary Iran.

Cold Comfort and Abandonment

"What is happening in Aleppo is tragic and it needs to change."
"Our [Canadian government] focus has always been in in Iraq and that is our focus now. Right now we have no plans to be militarily involved in Syria."
Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan: London meeting of defence ministers fighting ISIL

Reuters -- Israelis protested about the war in Syria in Jerusalem

"We slept in the streets [through rain, freezing winter temperatures]. It's shameful. Where is the world?"
"You don't know if it's an airplane [overhead] or shelling or rockets. You never know."
Unnamed east Aleppo Syrian, weeping in fear and despair, leaning on crutches

"It took four thousand years to build Aleppo -- hundreds of generations. One generation managed to tear it down in four years."
"We feel all strongly that the history of Aleppo through this war will be a black chapter in the history of international relations."
"[Aleppo] gave to world civilization, and world civilization was not there to assist the people of Aleppo when they needed us the most."
Jan Egeland, UN humanitarian aid co-ordinator for Syria

People walk as they gather to be removed from a rebel-held sector of eastern Aleppo, Syria, on Thursday (Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters) 

Meekly seeking official agreement that the United Nations would be authorized by the Syrian regime to aid in the evacuation plans of east Aleppo, it has instead found itself locked out while pro-government forces prevent aid vehicles from entering the rebel-held districts from where an estimated 50,000 people have managed to flee. Precluding witnesses to summary killing of civilians, to detaining of young men.

The Syrian state news agency SANA reported that 985 "terrorists and their families" had been evacuated through the auspices of the regime, sending its infamous green school buses, re-purposed to transport fear-dazed residents of east Aleppo who show up at checkpoints out of the city systematically destroyed by their government in its determination to demolish any hope of opposition survival.

"According to several sources, an Iranian-backed militia blocked a road that the evacuees would be using to reach the Aleppo countryside. It then started firing."
"According to the reports, they were protesting against this evacuation deal, which would see the villages of Fua and Kefraya evacuated in a similar way east Aleppo was."
Al Jazeera reporter

Laying siege, starving out the residents, refusing to permit humanitarian aid to deliver medicines and medical assistance along with potable water, offering safe passage to those wishing to leave, permitting rebel fighters to leave to travel to rebel-held territories, making arrests, disappearing hundreds of young men, imprisoning and torturing others, never to be heard from again. Others yet forcibly conscripted into the military. And repeat and repeat where necessary.

Bashar al-Assad is jubilant. "History is being made. What is happening is bigger than congratulations", he exulted, describing it on a scale of world-class historical events, comparable to the birth of Christ and the Prophet Mohammad's introduction of Islam's Qur'an to warring Bedouin tribes. The buses that are assigned to pick up anguished Syrians to deliver them to rebel-held territory in Idlib, bear Assad's portraits displayed prominently.

According to Mohammed Abu Jaafer, head of the enclave's forensics department a "tremendous crowd" appeared at a pre-designated collection point to be evacuated by bus on Thursday. He estimates that 70,000 civilians are yet awaiting evacuation. The Turkish news agency Anadolou was informed by a Turkish official that Syrian government forces had taken at least 800 people into custody before the latest ceasefire agreement was suspended and with it, the evacuations.

Some injured children are being treated in a field hospital near Idlib -- Associated Press

Once government forces had retaken most of east Aleppo, some six thousand civilians and rebels are said to have since left. Among them an estimated 2,700 children, according to an UN agency report. Tens of thousands of cold and hungry people remain stranded in the east of the city, awaiting their turn to leave that immense graveyard of civilization. In Idlib and Aleppo provinces whee the rebels still hold ground, finding housing for the evacuees has become a high priority, many of them consigned to camps.

But the rebel-held areas are precisely where the evacuated Syrians out of east Aleppo choose to go, where they are at least temporarily safe. Until such time as the regime completes its command of east Aleppo, though rebel commanders state that thousands of rebel fighters remain there and intend to fight to the end. Once the end arrives, the regime will inevitably turn its attention to restoring other rebel-held positions to itself, through siege, bombardment, starvation, privation, barrel bombs.

Buses evacuate rebel fighters and their families from rebel0held neighbourhoods in the Syrian city of Aleppo. A convoy of ambulances and buses left rebel territory Thursday in the first evacuations under a deal for opposition fighters to leave the city after years of fighting. Karam al-Masri/AFP/Getty Images

The evacuated civilians who remain in Idlib and Aleppo provinces know that their agony is not over, merely suspended.

Refugee Liberation

"In Syria, because of the family and social pressures, I submitted to him. But here [in a Lebanon-based refugee camp supervised by international humanitarian groups], the circumstances we've passed through made me stronger. Here, I feel independent."
"He was behaving like he was God, controlling my life. And when I took this decision, that's the first point I started feeling independent from him."
Samar Hijazi, Bekaa Valley village

"This is against God's will."
"If you divorce, you'll have problems with your children. God will be against you. God won't bless you. Will you reconsider?"
Sunni Sharia court judge

Samar Hijazi, a Syrian refugee in Lebanon, greets her grandson Hamza on Oct. 22, 2016, as she returns to the Bekaa Valley camp where she lives after a judge granted her a divorce.
Kristen Chick for The Washington Post

Samar Hijazi was firm in responding with a resounding "no". And all it took was the judge's pronouncement that she was summarily divorced to free her from a 33-year marriage. She was all of twelve years old when she was married to a man who would domineeringly control every aspect of her life for the following 33 years. Immediately upon her marriage she gave birth in swift succession to six children. Just as she was under her husband's thumb, so were the children.

She is now 45 years of age, and for the first time since age twelve responsible for herself. Her home is now a tidy, tiny prefabricated structure within a dusty refugee camp where she has a small bed along one wall, her clothing and suitcases neatly placed on shelves, and little else. But it's her home and hers alone, and it is where she is confident and comfortable. She now has grandchildren of her own, and she hopes their lives will be far different than her own.

While the Syrian conflict has created millions of displaced Sunni Syrians within the country, an estimated seven million more have become refugees finding shelter outside Syria. They chose to leave Syria because they could no longer live under threatening intimidation, regime bombing and the fear that the next barrel bomb or chemical bomb attack would end their lives and those of their families. This woman insisted that her family leave their home in a suburb of Damascus.

She had mustered enough strength of purpose and conviction to feel that death awaited her and her family, remaining in Syria. She had lived for 33 years under the brutal domination of her husband who beat her and her children and never would give her permission to exit their home if he did not accompany her. Early in the marriage she had tried to escape by running back to her parents. Who then turned her back over to her husband.

The war that created such a massive upheaval that one-half of the entire Syrian population became homeless -- and Europe was invaded by masses of Syrians desperate, along with migrants from Libya and North Africa, hoping to escape poverty, sectarian conflicts and degraded life conditions of oppression that offered no economic stability -- created as well the opportunity for this woman and others like her, influenced by the support given them by humanitarian agency workers to shed their traditional custom of submitting to male coersion.

The degree of personal autonomy they have gained since leaving Syria as a matter of existential duress has had the effect of increasing their quality of life. Not in the area of personal possessions, certainly, but in personal development, happily taking on the responsibilities that were before denied them, with the familiar social constraints shoved aside through their exposure to the promotion of women's rights thanks to the aid groups' influence.

First Revenge, Then Subordination

"In the beginning, there will be revenge. But then it will be better."
"[When ISIL militants arrived in our village], we were all deceived by their appearance. We thought they were Muslims. [Once they began punishments for petty crimes and extorted residents], we realized they had nothing to do with Islam."
Ali, 40, Sunni Iraqi driver

"The whole village received me. They all like me. They cried for me [when she left her husband. She began to brace herself for recriminations from her husband’s affiliation with Islamic State]."
"It wasn’t my fault. I’m not guilty. Why should we [her wailing children] be displaced?"
Khowla, Sunni Iraqi woman, wife of Islamic State fighter

Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images

Khowla fled with her six children from her village to seek refuge in one of the many camps set up by the United Nations to hold the tens of thousands of Iraqi Sunnis expected to flee from Mosul and surrounding towns and villages as the Iraqi military, the Kurdish Peshmerga and Iran-allied Shiite militias establish themselves on the perimeter of the country's second-largest city with its remaining 1.4-million inhabitants, nervously awaiting the battle set to enter Mosul itself.

Those in the camps are guarded by armed men allied with the Iraqi regime. The camp doesn't offer much; no electricity, only tents set up where children play in the dirt while their mothers wonder where the food to feed them all will come from. In Khowla's instance, the camp has been placed close to her home village. She is not permitted to enter the village, to go to her home, already being used by another family. She is kept in the camp awaiting interrogation by Iraqi officials interested in her husband.

Gradually, thousands of Sunni Iraqis have begun their exit from their home villages, as the 30,000-strong allied Iraqi forces move closer into Mosul's surrounding perimeter preparatory to recapturing the city ruled by Islamic State for the past two years. The Sunni Iraqis sitting in the camps await questioning from authorities to explain their own activities during the time they lived under the Islamic State jihadis. Uncovering any links they may have had with ISIL appears a primary objective.

Human rights groups have reported executions, torture, arbitrary arrests of Sunni Iraqis by the militias and Iraqi security forces. Any with family members who had joined ISIL are barred from a return to their villages by local officials, by tribal authorities, or by vengeful neighbours. East of Mosul another camp holds dozens of young men behind a padlocked gate, separate from families. Some of the men had been sequestered for 40 days, with no indication when, or if they might be permitted to leave.

"We fled a prison for another prison", Mohamed Asad said, sitting among a  group of young men.

In the Collective Opposition to Islamic State, Iraq's Shiite Military and Militias Consider Themselves the Alphas, Degrade the Equality of Iraqi Sunnis

"The killings and abuses committed by ISIL fighters when they captured Mosul in 2014, and the horrors they have subjected its inhabitants to ever since, should leave us in no doubt as to the risk civilians face."
"[There remains] a grave danger that ISIL fighters will not only use such vulnerable people as human shields but may opt to kill them rather than see them liberated."
Zeid Raad Al Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

So far, only 'modest' numbers of people have fled Mosul, the UN says -- Reuters

Islamic State fighters have prodded, threatened and herded hundreds of Iraqi Sunni families out of their towns and villages on the Nineveh plain, on the eastern edge of Mosul, to walk the considerable lengths from their villages into the city of Mosul. This move transcends mere threats -- when civilians are seen to be on the verge of altering their allegiance to the Sunni caliphate they likely welcomed when two years earlier the Islamic State jihadis overran the area -- the threats turn to violence and killings. The United Nations is citing this forced march of civilians into Mosul as proof that ISIL refuses to permit families to flee the area to seek haven in territory now held by the Iraqi army.


This interpretation of events relating to the Iraqi civilians in the area, caught between their oppressors loyal to ISIL, and the onslaught of the Iraqi, mostly Shiite military, may be illusory in nature. There is no trust whatever between Iraq's Sunni civilian population and the Shiite-led government of Iraq. And that situation prevails precisely because the Shiite-led government has chosen to give equal recognition to its Iraqi Sunnis short shrift. The civilians living in the now-largely-evacuated villages have turned instead to protection from Iraqi Kurds.

Islamic State is fighting back as only they appear to be capable of; or, at the very least reflective of the ideological passion of hatred that demands live sacrifices to appease the rage of militant Islam. They have been reported by witnesses to have executed by deadly fire, 284 men and boys in a paroxysm of vengeance as Iraqi troops begin to enter Mosul. The bodies were scooped by a bulldozer into a vacant building in the north of the city, once the need to use that group of men and boys as human shields was trumped by the more urgent need to massacre them, symbolically.

And with the escaping Mosul residents streaming out of the city and into Kurdistan, have inevitably been some ISIL fighters. They mounted an attack in Kirkuk, yesterday, attacking government buildings and a power station under construction, killing thirteen employees and at least six police officers. This was meant to be a counter-attack to demonstrate that the jihadis have not been defanged, the attack "clearly aimed at diverting the Iraqi army" from Mosul, according to the BBC's Richard Galpin, in northern Iraq.

However, in the aftermath of the attack, the governor of Kirkuk, Najm al-Din Karim, claimed that Peshmerga fighters and counter-terrorism forces were completely in control of the situation, blaming the attack on Islamic State sleeper cells.

Iraqi soldiers stoking tensions with Sunni Iraqis by flying Shiite flags -- wsj.com

In this most unconventional of conflicts, complications and distractions are everywhere in a region beset with tribal, ethnic and sectarian grudges. The very Iraqi soldiers engaged in the conflict to retake the largely Sunni city of Mosul from Islamic State have taken to mounting Shiite flags on their vehicles and raising them atop buildings. It takes no genius to realize that by doing this, they are stoking the often-violent sectarian divisions that Iraq’s government has sworn it intended to repair.

Affixed onto tanks or hoisted over government checkpoints and homes in reclaimed Sunni villages, these flags reflecting Shiite Muslim symbols often dwarf the Iraqi flags next to them. The flags' flagrant presence not only rankles Iraqi Sunnis but the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters taking part in the assault, as well. Sunnis regard the flag display as having the practical effect of undermining the Iraqi government's message of national unity against Islamic State, serving instead to reinforces their long-held impression that they are not accepted in Iraq’s state and security structure.

A Shiite religious flag hangs on the front of an Iraqi army vehicle in Khazer, Iraq, on Monday. Photo: Andrea DiCenzo for The Wall Street Journal

Under the agreement conceded by the coalition and approved by the U.S., only Iraq’s military, Federal Police and Sunni tribal fighters were to enter the city of Mosul, while the Iranian-linked Shiite militias and allied armed groups such as Kurdish Peshmerga forces would remain on the outskirts to hold regained ground. Allowing the fiction that Mosul should remain in Iraq's possession, even while the Peshmerga see it as part of their autonomous region, and Turkey insists that the city must remain a majority Sunni enclave.

The Peshmerga as usual have borne the brunt of the confrontations with Islamic State, leading operations north and east of Mosul since Monday, while U.S. helicopter strikes give coverage to the Iraqi military, giving short shrift to the need of the Peshmerga for that same type of air cover. The Peshmerga fly the flag of their semiautonomous regional government on their vehicles. They consider that the use of the Shiite flag in lieu of flying only the Iraqi flag confrontational and divisive.

The brother of the Kurdistan Regional Government President Masoud Barzani, Peshmerga Gen. Sihad Barzani, noted that in his opinion the Shiite Hussein flags represented a questionable omen for Iraq’s future. "That flag doesn’t represent the whole Iraqi people. The Iraqi flag is important because it represents everyone", whereas the flag being flown essentially indicates that the Iraqi army and the Shiite militias rule the enterprise, represent the totality of the opposition to Islamic State, and equate with the domination and conquest by Shia forces of Sunni interests.

Crediting the Iraqi Military

"[The offensive to be led by Kurdish Peshmerga] Then they will stop. We'll [Iraqi military] start after them and move after them to support them."
"The operation [to retake Mosul] will take much longer because of this [the large presence of well over a million Iraqi civilians]."
"For their safety, but it also means each neighbourhood needs to be surrounded and searched as we clear it."
Brig.Gen. Haider Obaidi, Iraqi special forces commander

"We do provide our intelligence capability, we provide our logistics, these are capabilities that the coalition has that are singularly distinctive. We are very capable in these areas, and it is a big help to the Iraqis as they move into position," he said. 
"The plan is for the Iraqis to liberate Mosul, They are going to be the ones that will move in to the city."
Colonel John Dorrian, spokesman, U.S. forces

"Today is a turning point in the war against terrorism. This is the first time that Peshmerga forces and Iraqi army have cooperated and fought in the same area,"
"We are hopeful that this operation will be successful and that Mosul will be liberated. But this does not mean that the terrorist threat is over."
Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani

Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani said the joint Iraqi force are launching the offensive from south and east of Mosul [Reuters]

Restoring the honour of a demoralized military, which, though trained and equipped by the U.S., turned and ran the very instant they became aware that Islamic State fighters were marching to enter Mosul and take the city from the command and protection of the Iraqi military. Rather than face the enemy whose ruthless reputation for slaughter and shedding blood in the most medieval-engaged atrocities, Iraqi forces, from commanders to enlisted men, chose to turn tail and decamp in such a panic that they left all their advanced military gear in their barracks, gifting Islamic State with up-to-date technically advanced arms and vehicles.

The staging for the retaking of Mosul has been in the planning stages for well over a year. Islamic State has been in possession of the city of over two million Iraqis -- of mostly Sunni Muslims, bordering on Kurdistan by Islamic State, considering it their Iraqi capital just as Raqqa is considered the Syrian capital of the caliphate -- for over two years. It is starkly obvious that the Iraqi military would be incapable of mounting an offensive for the return of Mosul on its own. Without the air- and fire-power of the U.S.-led coalition, and significantly, of the Peshmerga, Mosul would remain in ISIL possession.

The estimated 30,000 assembled forces of Peshmerga, Iraqi troops, Shiite militias representing tribal warlords, target an ISIL opposition of an estimated three to four thousand fighters. This unequal contest on a battlefield might readily be seen to be heavily in favour of the larger contingent of adversaries. But in a city the size of Mosul with its huge remaining population of over a million residents, with all the buildings and houses, the underground tunnel system, the IED-rigged buildings and back-alleys, the complications are diverse and numerous. With ISIL well ensconced and familiar with their surroundings, using explosives-laden vehicles in suicide attacks, their threat is ominous.

They will exact a steep price for the privilege of retaking Mosul from their grasp. In their wisdom, the United States persuaded the Peshmerga and Iranian backed Shiite militias to remain on the perimeter of Mosul, enabling the Iraqi army's counter-terrorism special force, Iraqi federal police and local tribal fighters to initiate and conduct house-to-house fighting in Mosul. The purpose, to ensure that sectarian violence is kept to a minimum once the battle for Mosul has succeeded and ISIL ousted.

Considering that Mosul's population is mostly Sunni, with a smattering of ethnics such as Arameans and Armenians, and the Islamic State occupation was likely comprised of no more than several thousand administrator/fighters, the city of two million might conceivably have put together a core group of opponents to oust ISIL. But for the majority Sunni Iraqis in Mosul there is no love lost for the Iraqi government comprised mostly of Shiites in an unequal sharing of national trusts. Many of the dismissed former Saddam Hussein military commanders came from Tikrit and Mosul.

And the core group of leaders of Islamic State were represented by many of these former Saddam-loyalist Sunni Iraqis. It stands to reason there was sympathy in Mosul for the Islamic State and its defense of Sunni Iraqis. With the incursion of Shiite militias and the Iraqi military comprised largely of Iraqi Shiites there will be an eventual reckoning meted out to the Sunni population of Mosul. Many of whom will be vacating Mosul as expeditiously as possible, leaving the UN to settle them in refugee camps for their own protection.

The resumption of Iraqi government control of Mosul will be months in the making while ISIL fighters are being routed from the city. The need to ensure that the terrorists do not infiltrate the tens of thousands of fleeing Sunni civilians will most certainly be a time-consuming and fraught affair. And when the city is finally freed from the talons of ISIL, other situations will erupt; that Kurdistan claims Mosul for its own, and that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan insists that Mosul remain a Sunni enclave, under the protection of Turkey, not Iraq. Even while local warlords and Shiite militias argue violently that Mosul is their heritage.

"This is the first time the Peshmerga and Iraqi forces have worked together against Daesh [ISIS] … we hope this will become a concrete foundation for our future relations with Baghdad."
"The liberation of Mosul is not an end to terror and terrorism but this was a good lesson so in the future we will resolve our differences through understanding and working together. We reassure the people of Mosul that both the Peshmerga and the Iraqi army will do everything not to cause any loss to the people and no revenge killing will take place."
Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani

Horror Stories? Aplenty!

"The catalogue of horror stories featured in this report depicts in gruesome detail the dreadful abuse detainees routinely suffer from the moment of their arrest, through their interrogation and detention behind the closed doors."
"This journey is often lethal, with detainees being at risk of death in custody at every stage."
"With tens of thousands of people forcibly disappeared in detention facilities across Syria, the real figure is likely to be even higher."
"For decades, Syrian government forces have used torture as a means to crush their opponents. Today, it is being carried out as part of a systematic and widespread attack directed against anyone suspected of opposing the government,"
Philip Luther, director, Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa program

"One man said that when he arrived at Damascus' Saydnaya Military Prison with 60 other people, the beatings were so brutal that by the time he reached his cell, he heard that 20 men had been killed."
Nicolette Boehland,  Amnesty researcher

"They treated us like animals. They wanted people to be as inhuman as possible."
"I saw the blood, it was like a river ... We used to always say here that there was no justice in Syria but I never imagined humanity would reach such a low level."
Samer, Syrian lawyer

Ah well, Amnesty International is describing a fundamental pathology afflicting the Middle East when he speaks of  "a systematic and widespread attack directed against anyone suspected of opposing the government". It is a time-honoured institutionalized methodology that is generic to the region and beyond, from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, Turkey to Qatar, Pakistan to Iran and on to the Palestinian Territory and Gaza; quite simply, it really does come with the territory.

Back in March of 2011 when the peaceful protests by Sunni Syrians began and their president, Bashar al-Assad, confidently informed U.S. interviewers that the protesters were 'terrorists' and 'scum' hardly worth noticing, he took note when a teen-age schoolboy wrote an anti-regime message on the wall of his school, was arrested, tortured and died in custody before being returned to his aghast family. And that seemed to set the tone for what was to become routine.

The protesters who began the civil war never in their wildest nightmares might have believed that their quiet protests against the regime's discriminatory treatment of the majority Sunni population of Syria, would result in the government's bitterly vicious crackdown. They became criminals in short order of having criticized Assad, hunted down, arrested, interrogated, tortured, and occasionally murdered; sometimes released from prison, battered but unchastened.

In the years since the beginning of the civil uprising responding to the regime's contempt of dissent and its method of dealing with an insurgency that was meant initially to be a reproach with the confidence that some workable arrangement leading toward equality could be reasonably agreed upon, the dissenters became outlaws to be hunted down, shot by snipers and by artillery, by helicopter gunships and bombed, their neighbourhoods razed and emptied of all but the dead.

Inmates are seen behind bars in Aleppo's main prison on May 22, 2014. Amnesty International says tens of thousands of people in Syrian prisons have been tortured and nearly 18,000 have died since March 2011. (George Ourfalian/Reuters)

In the five years that the conflict has raged while the destroyed country has been invaded by Islamist jihadis and terrorist groups who saw as opportunists an opening for themselves to become ensconced on an regime-abandoned territory, Sunni Iraqis too moved in to join, then split with al-Qaeda to present to an incredulous world the spectre of an atrocity-loving caliphate. In the five years since the conflict began, Bashar al-Assad has himself been just as hideously barbarous as Islamic State jihadis.

Almost a half-million Syrians have died at his hands, with the support of Iran's al Quds Republican Guard Corps, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Iraq's Shiite militias and Russian warplanes. Over half of the entire country's population has been internally displaced, and under constant threat of bombardment, starvation, privation, and death. Four million Sunni Syrians and Christians have fled the country; the Sunnis from the regime's threat of total obliteration, the Christians from the Islamic State threats.

Human rights violations taking place in Syria's prisons are simply yet another reflection of murderous malice on the part of the Syrian government, its Shiite allies and the Russian desire to retain and expand a firm foothold once again in the Middle East, with the abrogation of the former role of the United States in the region. In the Middle East, with its deadly tribal antipathies, its sectarian hatreds and violence, there does not appear to be any 'right' or 'wrong' kind of intervention hoping to deter Arabs and Muslims from slaughtering one another.

But all is not yet lost with foreign interventions hoping to move one crisis after another to a humane conclusion. Russia and the United States are undergoing diplomatic manoeuvring. With the understanding that Russia would be expected to persuade Assad to halt his offensives. Good luck! And in exchange the U.S. is to persuade Syrian rebels to sever any relationship with Nusra. Good luck!

Good luck, good luck, good luck.

Iraq, Sundered

"When the attack on Fallujah started, ISIL forced us to leave our homes and kept moving us from one damaged, deserted house to another"
"All the time we were exposed to the exchange of fire."
"The afternoon of our last day there, the fighting became too fierce; they were shooting above our heads."
"I was carrying Hana [two-year-old daughter], and I quickly ran to reach the other families. My husband and other children were behind us all the time, trying to catch up with us, as he can't run as he's injured. That's how we left, taking nothing with us, not even our money. I even forgot to take my cellphone."
Suad Hadad, refugee camp, Lebanon

"The leading role played by radically sectarian, Iranian-controlled militias in the operation to 'liberate' Fallujah means that there will be parts of the Sunni population that see ISIL as the lesser evil."
"ISIL has local support and there are suggestions it is higher now than it was before the city was captured."
Kyle Orton, Middle East analyst, Henry Jackson Society, Britain

"It's going to be hard for the Iraqis to hold such a large area. And ISIL will not just let the city go -- they will continue to try to undermine the army however it can."
Tim Eaton, researcher, Chatham House, London

Iraqi counterterrorism forces face off with Islamic State militants in the Nuaimiya neighborhood of Fallujah on Wednesday. Very few families have managed to flee the city since the offensive started more than a week ago. Photo: Associated Press

The presence of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Fallujah, a mere hour from Iraq's capital Baghdad, allowed ISIL the too-frequent opportunity to bomb areas of Baghdad, which the Iraqi government, with its straitened control and influence over the geography that was once its own, would like to believe is impregnable to attack. This is a hopeful conceit difficult to maintain when ISIL uses suicide bombers to inflict the horrors of bombing raids in a capital city presumed to be 'safe' from incursion.

Fallujah's proximity to Baghdad mandated that the Iraqi government, with considerable help from Iranian-backed Shiite militias wrench the city of mostly Sunni Iraqis away from Islamic State. Its success in convincing Sunni Iraqis that their future could advance under the regime where sectarian  hostilities have been the order of the day, will likely hinge on how persuasive the government can be. Many Sunni leaders in the city claim to indifference; not particularly favouring ISIL, waiting to determine which way they should lean.

The Iraqi military's offensive has garnered some advances in its three-directional attack, gaining entry into the city finally. Air support from the U.S.-led coalition has been valuable in allowing the army to recapture what they claim is 80 percent of the towns and villages surrounding Fallujah, waiting now to see success in their "final push" to free the city from ISIL's clutches. The army is battling no more than 1,500 jihadists in the city centre.

They have had two years in which to secure the city, and bombs planted everywhere are testament to that. The use of suicide car bombings and the rockets they aim at the army have them holding on, despite superior numbers utilized by the regime and their more advanced weapons. "They are dug in. We think they will fight to the last", General Abdul Wahab al-Saadi said of the jihadists who had carried out a string of car bombings in Baghdad killing dozens, as a diversionary tactic.

The city that once held 350,000 people represents one of the most important strongholds for ISIL next to Mosul, the two large urban centres still in the hands of the terrorists, part of the "caliphate" since early 2014. General Sean MacFarland, commander of U.S. forces and allies in Iraq has warned that some Fallujah residents were "early adopters" of ISIL. "You could have a fairly large percentage of a fairly large city that's hostile to us", he commented, countering the claims of the city's leaders.

On the other hand, should the Iraqi army of Shiites, along with their Popular Mobilisation Forces (al-Hashd al-Shaabi), and local tribes, realize success as they mean to, routing the Islamic State fighters, the Sunni residents of Fallujah may not be too pleased that Iran-backed militias have taken their city, an important religious site for the Sunni minority. The city was front and centre of the insurgency against the Iraqi Shiite government.

All Is Forgiven

"[Rebels who surrender their arms will be given] full amnesty."
"Just to give up your armament, whether you want to join the political process or [are] not interested about the political process."
"This is the only thing that we ask. We don't ask for anything. As I said, we give them full amnesty."
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (left) is pictured answering questions during an interview with German public broadcaster ARD in the Syrian capital Damascus yesterday. He offered 'full amnesty' to Syrian rebels

What a good man, what a sterling character, what a role model for all embattled and empathetic heads of state faced with revolts from disaffected citizens. He has made it clear that 'moderate' rebels who are, he has always asserted, 'terrorists', could expect clemency from him. They would be restored to their former status as Syrian civilians. The most critical aspect, he asserted is that citizens cannot be permitted to have machine-guns and 'hurt people'.

Of course not. This is a man who cares deeply about prevention, about using all means at his disposal not to 'hurt people'. Needlesss to say people have been 'hurt'. Hundreds of thousands, in fact, hurt beyond the capacity to feel any more pain, having been sent to their untimely deaths, by rocket fire, by helicopter gunship fire, by deadly chemical-filled rocketry, by barrel bombs, and by deliberate starvation and privation, trapped by the military and allied Shiite militias along with Hezbollah in their enclaves.

This is the reasonable president of Syria who emulated and then went far beyond what his father ever visited in malevolent atrocities upon his people. Who brooked no dissent, even of the 'moderate' type that began as a popular protest among Sunni Syrians wishing to be granted the same civil privileges as their Shiite counterparts. Mr. Assad's immediate reaction was arrest, torture, death, irrespective of age, adult or child.

In his vehemence against the disloyal citizens of Syria who wished for their human rights to be recognized, he destroyed great swathes of Syria's major cities, towns and villages. But he is a much misunderstood individual, evidently, whose directives and actions have simply been misread, for he is a man of peace, a reasonable person who will sit down at a table with his enemies to bargain for peace, as long as they accept their defeat and the status quo.

Oh yes, and believe that he will be true to his word.

The rebel forces of Syria, however, are a stubborn, grim lot who have previously rejected their president's generous offers. They have sacrificed too much in blood, sweat, tears and foregone lives to simply return to the oppressive lives of subjugation that had been forced upon them by the benevolence of the Alawite leader of Syria who has, after all, Moscow, Tehran and Hezbollah in his corner.

The Anti-Humane Volatility of the Middle East

"There is no strategy planned by the [Kurdistan regional government] to destroy or destruct any component villages, any component set up in these newly liberated areas. [Peshmerga forces] have been in full obligation to implement the standards of and principles of international human rights, international humanitarian laws."
"[But] there are a few cases where an entire village stood against the Peshmerga ... they fought in line [alongside Isis militants]."
Dindar Zebari, Peshmerga spokesman, Iraq

"It does appear to be a form of collective punishment of perceived sympathizers [with Islamic State]. Rather than deal with individuals, they [Kurds] are punishing whole [Sunni Arab] communities."
"If you're interacting with those forces Canadian special forces working closely with Kurdish troops] I think you're obliged to know what they're doing."
"You have an obligation to ensure that violations of human rights and humanitarian law aren't occurring."
Hilary Homes, spokesperson, Amnesty International, Ottawa

"By barring the displaced from returning to their villages and destroying their homes KRG forces are further exacerbating their suffering," AFP

This is the Middle East. This is the geography of militant tribalism, of venomous sectarianism, of violent attacks against minority groups, led for the most part by Islamist distrust and hatred for non Muslims and 'apostates' alike. Where verses in the Koran enjoin the faithful to conflict with the despised infidels and Jews:  "Do not take the Jews and the Christians for your friends and allies” (5:51) and “You shall find none who believe in Allah and the Last Day on friendly terms with those who oppose Allah and His Messenger [i.e., non-Muslims] — even if they be their fathers, their sons, their brothers, or their nearest kindred" (Koran 58:22; see also 3:28, 60:4, 2:120).

The incessant violence being perpetrated by one Muslim sect against another reflects the culture of viral tribalism and poisonous sectarian animosities. And when geography throws in the complications of ethnic groups, the Kurds and the Yazidis, the Druze and other minorities whom the majority groups view as inferior and think nothing of depriving of their lives, the dangerous cocktail of Arab and Muslim dysfunction erupts under the volcanic pressures of endemic and constantly erupting issues of survival.

The West and its human rights groups look on from afar at what unfolds in the Middle East as one 'nation' after another implodes, and often with considerable assistance from the meddling West. Remove a totalitarian government and the vacuum that results invites even more intolerance and violence to explosively erupt as tribal and sectarian and ethnic and clan hatreds are inflamed, setting the landscape onto a trajectory of inflicting utter disorder and bloodshed in generous proportions.

Destroyed homes in the village of Barzanke in Iraq's northeastern Diyala province Photo: AFP

A new Amnesty International report highlights the region's Kurds taking the initiative to seek revenge for the humiliations and violence and depredations they suffered in Iraq under the regime of Saddam Hussein. This is the militant Kurds who have given haven and protection to the minority groups whom the Shiite Iraqis have persecuted more latterly and whom the Sunni terrorist groups like ISIL have tormented, enslaved  and slaughtered.

According to Amnesty its report accuses the Kurdistan Regional Government and its allied militias in northern Iraq of bulldozing, exploding, or torching thousands of homes in a deliberate campaign to banish Arab communities from the area the Kurds claim sovereignty in. The displacement of Arab populations by force and destruction reflects Amnesty's research of 13 villages and towns including testimony from eyewitnesses and victims.

"It would be very hard to see how this was militarily justified [widespread destruction of villages]. This is deliberate destruction, the punishing of entire communities", commented Hilary Homes, spokesperson for Amnesty International on security issues in Ottawa of the report corroborated by satellite imagery. The claim is that Kurdish Peshmerga forces and sometimes Yazidi militias and Kurdish armed groups from Syria and Turkey operated alongside the Peshmerga to force thousands of Arabs to abandon their homes.

Internally displaced Arab Iraqis at a camp in Khanaqin in Iraq's northeastern Diyala province  Photo: AFP

And the Kurdish Regional Government forces have barred those Arab civilians from attempting to return to the areas recaptured from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, where the Sunni Arab civilians lived under the banner of the Sunni ISIL jihadists. The Kurds are busy consolidating their territorial gains in "disputed areas" claimed traditionally by the Kurdish Regional Government as their own, in a drive to address abuses from the past by the Saddam Hussein tyranny.

Kurds had formerly been forcibly displaced by Saddam Hussein's military for the purpose of settling Arabs in those very same areas. It was the Kurds who launched the rescue of Yazidis trapped by Islamic State when the jihadi terrorists captured Sinjar, slaughtered Yazidis, took their women captive as sex slaves, and people fled in terror from the invasion onto Mount Sinjar, trapped without provisions on the winter mountain. Little wonder that Yazidis seek their revenge.

It is dreadful that the revenge falls not on the jihadists who attacked, raped and enslaved Yazidis, but on their co-sectarian civilian Sunni Arabs who may have viewed their actions with favour, or indifference. On the other hand, war is a dreadful human construct of misery and dread. And in the Middle East empathy and compassion always appear to be on short order unless it is directed at people of the same clan or tribe or religious sect.

The horrible excess of slaughter that has taken place under the command of a tyrannical president in Syria punishing his civilian subjects who protested their unequal treatment as opposed to that of the opposite sect, just about equals the wretchedly grotesque butchery of the non-state Islamist militias associated with al-Qaeda, and most particularly Islamic State. It is the danger posed by the Islamists who look beyond the region to inflict their brand of Islamic justice on the West that democracies are engaged in bringing to a halt.

Thus far, it is has not been the military of Iraq or of Syria that have successfully contested the advance of the Islamists, but the courage and perseverance of the Kurds in defending their people and their territory. And it has been the Kurds whom the Americans and the Canadians have favoured in tutoring in the art of successful warfare against an implacable enemy of humankind. There should be the recognition of a universal standard of human rights obligations, that much is true.

The old adage, when in Rome do as the Romans do might not fit exactly here, but it does go a long way to explaining why and how it happens that a large ethnic group long suffering persecution and existential hardship is finally determined to claim its territory and to defend its population and in so doing is deserving of the assistance of those attuned to the situation and immersed in doing what they can to change it.