Ethnic Cleansing



The western world, led by America, has responded to the genocide in north west Iraq, but this report from The Guardian explains the background to the ethnic and religious cleansing that's been taking place in recent weeks.

I must trawl the internet to see what Islam's religious leaders have to say about these terrible events, but as I said back in July so far there's been a deafening silence. 

US air strikes to help Iraq’s Yazidis have come at the 11th hour


Five days after jihadist forces triggered mass emigration in northern Iraq, the west is acting to avert an extinction event – let’s hope it is not too late


By Christine Allison - The Guardian
Displaced Yazidis in Sinjar, west of Mosul. ‘If, through our own inactivity, we allow the Yazidis and Christians to suffer so much that they leave the country, what are we doing to Iraq, the cradle of civilisations?’ Photograph: Reuters

The world is now aware of the desperate plight of the Yazidis, a little-known minority in northern Iraq. President Obama has, in the last 24 hours, decided to act. This help has come none too soon, since it is five days since jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) seized control of Mount Sinjar from Kurdish forces, triggering mass emigration of the Yazidi population.

Of the estimated 200,000 refugees, many have reached towns in the Kurdish zone, where emergency supplies are running low; others are stranded on the mountain, dying of hunger and thirst but too afraid to move, aware that IS is killing Yazidis it finds or forcibly converting them to Islam, since it sees them as “polytheists” or – worse – “devil worshippers”. Some supplies have now been dropped, and air strikes have been announced.

Yazidis all over the world and their friends are receiving harrowing reports of family members being killed and of large numbers of women and girls being abducted.

On the other side of Mosul from Sinjar, on the fringes of the Kurdistan region, lie the Yazidi villages of Sheikhan. Although the IS has not penetrated so far, and Sheikhan and the strategic Mosul dam are secure so far, rumours of defensive breaches are persistent, and many Yazidis have moved further into the Kurdish area.

The Yazidis are a close-knit community – they have to be – and Yazidi memory is long. In Sheikhan they have not forgotten how in 1892 they were massacred in their fields by Ottoman soldiers. Their leader was made to convert, and their holiest shrine of Lalesh was confiscated. Any Yazidi will tell you this is only one of more than 70 past campaigns of violence against them, including the destruction of their villages by Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida bomb attacks. So it’s hardly surprising that many have left for Turkey, to sit things out or to move on towards Europe. Meanwhile, the BBC has reported the fall of Qaraqosh, on the Mosul plain, to the IS, with yet more hard-pressed Christian refugees on the move.

The bishop of Manchester has called for the UK to open its doors to Christian asylum-seekers. Any Yazidis seeking asylum would also have a compelling case, especially since they are equally affected by the UK’s past policy in Iraq. But we should not allow this nightmare scenario to happen.

If Iraq’s Yazidis leave their homeland, there will be nothing left of a community that once spanned eastern Anatolia, stretching from Syria to the Caucasus. Sinjar and Sheikhan and their many holy places are a focus of devotion for Yazidis worldwide.

Yazidi religious practice has a strong link with the land, and severing this link changes the religion irrevocably. Yazidi tradition evolved in rural Kurdistan; as its young people take to city life, it is changing to meet the community’s needs, but a brutal shift to diaspora may kill it within a couple of generations.

If, through our own inactivity, we allow the Yazidis and Christians to suffer so much that they leave the country, what are we doing to Iraq, the cradle of civilisations? What about the smaller minorities, Shabaks and Mandaeans, who have found stability and shelter in the Kurdish region? Do we sit back and watch an extinction event in northern Iraq? As we commemorate the centenary of the first world war, we have only to look over Iraq’s border to see Turkey’s struggle to come to terms with its past in those years. Inaction in Iraq now will produce the same result: an ethnically “cleansed” landscape, a haunted population.

So now, in addition to our humanitarian efforts, we must turn to the Kurds, who, with their referendum on independence are apt to be perceived as causing “the break-up of Iraq”.

But paradoxically, with their forces on the ground, they are the best protectors of northern Iraq’s diverse population. Air strikes and humanitarian drops are a beginning. But in the medium and longer term, London and Washington must find a way to maintain the balance of power between Baghdad and Kurdistan and still work closely with Kurdistan’s fighting forces to assure security.

Whether this is through the use of drones, supply of weaponry, logistics, training or other measures, what these minority populations need is protection and freedom in their homeland. We need to stop paying lip service to the notion of “Iraq” that was created by colonial forces nearly a century ago, and take action to preserve the true essence of Iraq: her people.



Deafening Silence (22 July 2014)


I can't begging to imagine the fury, violence and condemnation that would be unleashed if Muslims were persecuted in the way that is reported by Patrick Cockburn in The Independent.

Now it may be that Islam's religious and political leaders are speaking out elsewhere - the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, the most influential Sunni Muslim in the world apparently, or his counterpart amongst Shia Muslims, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Iran.

But if so, I've yet to come across anything these powerful religious figures have to say which is odd, don't you think?      

Time runs out for Christian Iraq: Isis deadline passes with mass flight

The ultimatum imposed by militants for Christians to convert to Islam, pay a tax or be killed has passed with the collapse of communities that have existed for millennia

By PATRICK COCKBURN  - The Independent

The last Christians in northern Iraq are fleeing from places where their communities have lived for almost 2,000 years, as a deadline passed for them to either convert to Islam, pay a special tax or be killed.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) issued a decree last week offering Christians the three options accompanied by the ominous threat that, if they did not comply by midday on 19 July, “then there is nothing to give them but the sword”.

It is the greatest mass flight of Christians in the Middle East since the Armenian massacres and the expulsion of Christians from Turkey during and after the First World War. Isis, which now rules an area larger than Great Britain, has already eliminated many of the ancient Christian communities of eastern Syria, where those who had not escaped were given a similar choice between conversion, payment of a special tax or death.

Christians leaving Mosul – which was captured by Isis on 10 June – in order to seek refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan are being stripped of all their possessions.

A Christian man said: “The Islamic State [Isis] stopped my relatives at a checkpoint when they were fleeing and when they found out they were Christians, they took everything they were carrying, including their mobile phones. They left them only with the clothes they were wearing.”

Mosul is one of the most ancient centres of Christianity and on the east bank of the Tigris river that flows through the city is a mosque housing the tomb of the Biblical figure of Jonah. This is now in danger of being destroyed by Isis, whose puritan and iconoclastic version of Islam is opposed to the worship of tombs, shrines, statues and pictures.

Tens of thousands of Shabak and Shia Turkmen, demonised as polytheists and apostates by Isis, have fled their homes following raids by Isis gunmen.
The persecution of Christians, of whom there were over one million in Iraq before the US and British invasion of 2003, was slower to develop.

But a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) says that from 14 July a number of homes in Mosul were painted with the letter “N” for Nasrani (the Arabic word for Christian). Others were painted with the letter “R” for Rafidah, a word commonly used by Sunni to describe Shia.

Mosul previously had a great diversity of Muslim and Christian communities, all of which are vulnerable. The Christians are mostly Assyrians, known as the Church of the East, or Chaldeans, an Eastern rite of the Catholic Church.

The Yazidis are linked to the Kurds and have a 4,000-year-old religion that centres on the Peacock Angel
The church of Mary in Mosul, 225 miles from Baghdad, was closed by Islamic militants

The Shabak, also ethnically connected to the Kurds, are mostly Shia, though some are Sunni, while the Turkmen are majority Sunni with a Shia minority.

Christians were ordered by Isis to attend a meeting with them on 16 July, but they refused to go and a decree was issued the following day offering the three options of conversion, payment of jizia or special tax by non-Muslims or expulsion on pain of death.

The decree had the black logo of Isis and was issued by “Caliph Ibrahim”, who is otherwise known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group’s leader. But even before the decree was issued, the report says that money was demanded from Christians: one merchant with a mobile-phone shop was asked to pay between $200 (£117) and $250 a month.

Two Christian nuns and three orphans were kidnapped for 15 days when they stopped at a petrol station. Christian churches in Mosul have been progressively occupied and despoiled.
The reclusive Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi preaches jihad at a mosque in the centre of Iraq’s second city, Mosul, according to a video recording posted on the internet

Chaldean Archbishop Nona told HRW that four cars had come to his archdiocese compound: “Each car carried three gunmen, most of them with masks. They broke open the doors and took some small statues from inside the property and broke them outside. They took control of the premises and placed their black banners on the roof and entrance.

“They told neighbours, ‘this is our property, don’t touch it’.”

Isis’s treatment of the Shia, or any Muslims they do not believe are orthodox Sunni, has been even more brutal than that of the Christians. A statue of the Virgin Mary was destroyed, but so were 13 Shia mosques and shrines. Some 28 Yazidi border guards were held captive for ransom for 25 days, repeatedly beaten with guns and sticks and denounced as “infidels”.

HRW says that “between 13 June and 10 July, Isis rounded up at least 83 Shia Shabak men from villages on the eastern outskirts of Mosul. Seven of the men were later found dead and the rest remain missing”.

Isis raiding parties have been plundering Shia villages, seizing men whose names are on lists, as well as driving off sheep and cattle and telling people to leave.

One man said that Isis told people in one village that the Shia “‘shouldn’t be living here, leave by Friday’. Before they left they tried to make people chant ‘Islamic State! Islamic State’.”

Isis may not be liked by the Sunni population, though there is not much they can do about it for the moment. But there is also deep fear about what government forces would do if they recaptured Mosul.

One woman says that Mosul University has been bombed, adding that she dreads the time when the army of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “will reach us in Mosul, killing its people or turning them into refugees”.

The Sunni majority has not been targeted by Isis, whose members, a source living in the city said, are mostly non-Iraqis. He added that people “sense that the locals (Baathists, ex-army and tribes) are biding their time.

“There is no sympathy for Isis. The shops have been told to get rid of ‘unsuitable merchandise’ (eg women’s wear, sportswear, etc) and they are complying’.”

The draconian measures are coming from foreign fighters from Libya, Algeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. Their language is barely intelligible, so here is no attempt to communicate. Money is very tight, so it seems it is going into buying arms.

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