Resident of Hamdaniya district stands before a house destroyed in a Coalition airstrike, February 2017. Credit: Mark Lattimer /Ceasefire

By Mark Lattimer
LONDON, Jan 22 2020 (IPS)

As Iraq this month faces the threat of new conflicts – including a proxy war between the US and Iran – the shadow of the last conflict runs long.

Two years ago the Iraqi prime minister declared victory over ISIS, but parts of Ninewa and Anbar are still in ruins, some 1.5 million people remain displaced and families have only begun to grieve for the tens of thousands killed.

Nowhere is this devastation more apparent than in Mosul, Iraq’s second city and the epicentre of the ISIS conflict. The World Bank has estimated that losses to the Mosul housing sector alone are estimated at US $6 billion.

And as revealed in a new report from the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights and Minority Rights Group International, 35,000 claims for reparation for deaths, injury or destruction of property have now been lodged by victims of the ISIS occupation and the ‘liberation’ battle.

Interviews with civilians on the ground uncover a complex picture of loss and abandonment. The population who suffered under the occupation feel they were doubly punished by the devastating conflict waged to end it. Yazidis, Christians and other minorities who were forced to flee still remain largely displaced, despairing at the fact that no-one has been brought to justice for the crimes committed against them.

In such circumstances, individual reparations are essential, not least for reconciliation, a concept much-invoked by international missions in Iraq but rarely specified. Without formal recognition for the loss they have suffered and practical help to rebuild, civilians cannot move on.

As one interviewee explained: ‘The compensation payments will never bring me back the loved ones I lost, nor will they allow me to rebuild my house as if nothing happened. But they will help us all to rebuild the city and bring back life into it.’

But among those claiming reparations, long-standing frustration is turning into growing resentment. The claims have been made under Iraq’s Law 20 which established a system for awarding compensation to ‘the victims of military operations, military mistakes and terrorist actions’.

Over 420 billion Iraqi dinars (US $355 million) has been awarded under the scheme since it was first established ten years ago, but it has been overwhelmed by the scale of claims from the ISIS conflict. Claimants in Mosul complain of cumbersome bureaucratic procedures and pay-outs are agonisingly slow.

Meanwhile, the US-led Coalition against ISIS appears to have washed its hands of responsibility. During the nine-month battle the Coalition supported Iraqi forces mainly from the air, and it was Coalition bombardment which, along with ISIS vehicle-borne IEDs, was responsible for most of the material destruction of the city.

The monitoring group Airwars has conservatively estimated that between 1,066 and 1,579 civilians were killed by Coalition air and artillery strikes during the battle for Mosul. Local estimates are much higher. The Coalition describes all civilian deaths caused by its action as ‘unintentional’ and refuses to accept any liability for violations for which reparations should be paid.

Even the system of making discretionary ‘condolence’ payments in such cases, which the US employed previously in Afghanistan as well as Iraq, appears not to be applicable. In its annual report on civilian casualties, the Department of Defense states: ‘…in cases where a host nation or government requests US military support for local military forces, it may be more appropriate for the host nation or its military to respond to the needs and requests of the local civilian population by offering condolences themselves’.

But questions about the tactics used by the Coalition in Mosul, and in other recent sieges, are becoming hard to ignore. The civilian death toll acknowledged by the Coalition is slowly climbing, as it is pressured to reassess credible local reports, and currently stands at 1,347 deaths caused by Coalition actions in the anti-ISIS conflict across Iraq and Syria.

A claim last year by the UK Ministry of Defence that no civilians had been injured in over 1,300 Royal Air Force strikes in Iraq was met with open disbelief. In November the Dutch Defence Ministry finally admitted that Dutch forces had been involved in two airstrikes in Iraq in which at least 74 people, including civilians, were killed, but it still denied any liability for reparations.

The people of Mosul have nonetheless started to rebuild their homes and their city, albeit with inadequate support. Sponsorship by foreign governments of prestige projects, including the reconstruction of the great mosque of al-Nuri, is important for restoring Moslawis’ pride in their city and their cultural heritage.

Less high profile, but arguably more significant, is the ongoing work of UN and other humanitarian agencies to support basic services, including for IDPs. But, as so often in Iraq, the UN is caught in a bind. UN OCHA warned earlier this week that operations to deliver medicine, food and other assistance to 2.4 million in need were now compromised by the delay in the Iraqi government renewing letters of authorization.

Nor is the ISIS conflict over. In the west of Iraq military operations against ISIS continue, including with the support of the Coalition.

ISIS’ supporters are now gone from Mosul, a city which more than any other in Iraq knows the reality of ISIS rule. But with little official acknowledgement of the suffering of the population, practical help slow in coming for civilians to rebuild their lives, and tens of thousands of young men growing up in displacement, the situation is not sustainable.

As one interviewee for the report said: ‘I haven’t seen such anger in Mosul since 2003. It is a very dangerous situation.’

Iraq has tragically demonstrated in recent decades that the failure to deal with the legacy of past conflicts affects both the speed and the severity of their return. For the cause of both justice and peace, the question of reparations for civilian harm is now urgent.

‘Mosul after the Battle: Reparations for civilian harm and the future of Ninewa’ is published on 22 January and available at https://bit.ly/3ayqB0M

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Yezidi girl from Khanke camp near Dohuk. Credit: Fernando Burgés

By Mark Lattimer
LONDON, Jun 7 2017 (IPS)

East of Mosul, many of the lands liberated from ISIS stand empty. Driving through the Nineveh plains, traditional homelands of Iraq’s minority communities of Yezidis, Christians, Shabak and Turkmen, you pass one ghost town after another, peopled only by members of the armed militias known in Iraq as the Hashd al-Shaabi, or ‘popular mobilization’.

Houses destroyed by ISIS vehicle bombs are juxtaposed with buildings flattened by international coalition air strikes. Inside the houses in many residential streets, there are holes smashed into the party walls to create the rat-runs used by insurgents to evade surveillance.

The battle to retake Mosul is already nearly eight months old and, as resistance on the city’s right bank has proved intense, civilian casualties have mounted rapidly. Yet many of the empty territories in Nineveh east of the city and in Sinjar to the west were first retaken months ago.

They join lands in Diyala, Kirkuk and Anbar where ISIS has been defeated but displaced people numbering in the millions have yet to return. To understand why is to appreciate the threats that now hang over the future of Iraq – threats that will not disappear when ISIS is defeated.

The Iraqi central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil are broadly in agreement that IDPs can only return once security and services are restored. They have a point. There is extensive destruction to essential infrastructure. When thousands of civilians first returned to Ramadi after it was retaken, there were dozens of reported serious casualties from booby-traps and other IEDs and explosive remnants of war.

But many displaced minority communities now believe that their return is being delayed for other reasons. Christians, Yezidis, Shabak and Turkmen all cite cases where IDPs and supplies have been stopped at checkpoints, as detailed in a new report published by four international NGOs, Minority Rights Group International, the International Institute for Law and Human Rights, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, and No Peace Without Justice. The fear is that land-grabbing is already underway.

Destroyed church building, Tal Kaif district, Ninewa Governorate. Credit: Mays Al-Juboori

A conservative estimate puts the number of armed militias controlling territory in liberated Nineveh at over 15, including ethnic militias drawn from members of local communities. On the ground, militia checkpoints have proliferated and you frequently have to pass through two or even three in a row. They play the game of who can fly their flag the highest. At the moment the relationship is one of mutual acceptance, but it is unclear how long that will last. Some are affiliated with the Iraqi Security Forces, others with the Kurdish authorities. Some take their orders from further afield.

Just as Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani called on Iraqi volunteers to mobilize in the fight against ISIS in June 2014, so many hope he will issue the fatwa to demobilize once ISIS is defeated. The practical challenges of Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration have hardly begun to be discussed in Iraq. Ensuring that members of local communities, including minorities, are properly integrated into the security forces is essential for their communities to feel safe.

But many of the most powerful militias supported by Iran, which for example control much of Diyala and key locations in Tel Afar, have already made clear that they have no intention of demobilizing. And as long as Turkey fears an Iranian corridor from Baghdad to Syria, its own attempts at securing a base in Nineveh will intensify. With those forces at play, the resurgence, post-ISIS, of Sunni Arab opposition under another name is perhaps inevitable.

In the face of this sectarian fragmentation members of minorities remain passionate about the future of their lands and many fiercely patriotic to the state of Iraq. Interviewing minority Shi’a IDPs in Kerbala last year, their gratitude at the religious authorities for giving them a temporary shelter was quickly followed by expressions of hope for their return to their homes in Tel Afar and the Nineveh plains. Assyrian and Chaldean Christians emphasize their millennia-long attachment to the land. Even Yezidi IDPs, who were subject to egregious crimes at the hands of ISIS and, in many cases, betrayal by their former neighbours, have begun to talk about the prospects of return.

But their hopes of return depend on security, and that must ultimately depend on a political agreement between the different forces now vying for control of their land. For years, the UN has tried to promote agreement between Baghdad and Erbil over ‘disputed territories’ in Nineveh and Kirkuk. With de facto boundaries being redrawn and new parties added to the conflict, the task just got a lot harder.

The battle against ISIS has created in Iraq a rare moment of unity. Sunni tribal forces and Shi’a militias, Iran and Turkey, the US and the other members of the international coalition, the Government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government are all cooperating in the face of a common enemy. As Gyorgy Busztin, deputy head of the UN mission, emphasized to me in Baghdad in March, that presents a window of opportunity, for Iraq’s people and for the international community.

But as control over retaken territory continues to fragment, and the militias become entrenched, the window is closing fast. By the time Mosul is finally declared liberated, it may already be too late.

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Demonstrators in front of the White House call for greater U.S. intervention against ISIS to save Iraqi minorities, including Yazidi and Christians, from genocide. Credit: Robert Lyle Bolton/cc by 2.0

By Mark Lattimer and Mahmoud Swed
LONDON, Oct 18 2014 (IPS)

Through all of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s campaigns of ‘Arabization’, they survived. The diverse Iraqi communities inhabiting the Nineveh plains – Yezidis, Turkmen, Assyrians and Shabak, as well as Kurds – held on to their unique identities and most of their historic lands.

So too they survived the decade of threats, bombings and killings that followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, remaining on lands that in some cases they have settled for over 4,000 years.Responsibility for many of these attacks falls to ISIS or its predecessors, but regular killings have also been carried out by other militia groups, and by members of the Iraqi Security Forces.

But in less than three months this summer, much of the Nineveh plain was emptied of its minority communities.

The advance by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was marked by a series of atrocities, some of them recorded and posted on the internet by ISIS itself, which have outraged the international community.

Now the first comprehensive report on the situation of Iraq’s minorities, released Thursday by Minority Rights Group (MRG) International and the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights, documents the full extent of violations committed against all of Iraq’s minority communities and reveals ISIS as an organisation motivated by the logic of extermination.

Minorities have been principal targets in a systematic campaign of torture, killings, sexual violence, and enslavement carried out by ISIS.

It should be stressed that nearly all of Iraq’s communities have suffered at the hands of ISIS, including Shi’a and Sunni Arabs, but the varying religious and social status attributed by ISIS ideologues to different peoples – as well as the value of the lands they inhabit – have made some communities much more vulnerable, with the nature of abuse often being determined by the particular ethno-religious background of the victims.

Under the pretence of a religious edict, for example, ISIS confiscated Christian-owned property in Mosul and enforced an ultimatum on the community to pay jizya tax.

Yezidis have repeatedly been denied even a right of existence by ISIS, and some other extremist groups, on the erroneous grounds that they are ‘devil-worshippers’.

The report delineates a pattern of targeting of Yezidis and their property, now overshadowed by the latest wave of violence that has cost the lives of at least hundreds and the kidnapping of up to 2500 men, women and children since August.

Captured Yezidi men have been forced to choose between conversion or death, whilst Yezidi women and children have been sold to slavery and subjected to sexual abuse.

But it would be a mistake to imagine that the violations suffered by Iraqi minorities date from a few months ago – or to believe that ISIS was the only perpetrator.

Since 2003, Christians have been the target of bombings, assassinations and kidnappings, with groups often targeting property and places of worship. Most of Iraq’s Christian population, up to one million people, had already fled the country by the start of the year.

Yezidis suffered the single deadliest attack of the conflict, when a multiple truck bombing in Sinjar in 2007 killed as many as 796 people, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent.

And one of the most sobering pictures to emerge from the report is the series of mass killings of Turkmen and Shabak carried out in recent years, the violence intensifying in the latter half of 2013.

Responsibility for many of these attacks falls to ISIS or its predecessors, but regular killings have also been carried out by other militia groups, and by members of the Iraqi Security Forces.

Throughout these years of violence the Iraqi government has proved either unable or unwilling to protect its minority communities. Few incidents are properly investigated and the perpetrators nearly always go unpunished, in some cases with indications of official complicity.

Aside from the immediate threats of violence, communities including Yezidis, Roma and Black Iraqis continue to face chronic and institutionalised discrimination that hinders their cultural and religious rights as well as imposing restrictions on access to health care, education and employment.

The choice now confronting many of Iraq’s diverse communities is be forced to flee en masse or to endure a life of continuous fear and suffering. Some peoples, such as the Sabean-Mandaeans, have already seen their numbers reduced by emigration to the point where their very survival in Iraq as a distinct community is under threat.

Some community leaders interviewed expressed the hope and determination that they could return to their lands; others saw emigration as their only possibility.

A comprehensive plan for the restitution to minority communities of their former lands and properties in the Nineveh plains and elsewhere is thus an essential component of any positive vision for Iraq’s future.

The need to ensure that those responsible for attacks are held to account also requires Iraq to accede to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

More immediately, there is nothing to stop the ICC prosecutor from opening a preliminary investigation into alleged crimes committed by the growing number of nationals of existing ICC state parties fighting in Iraq.

But Iraq’s own response to the ISIS threat holds serious dangers, including in particular the wholesale re-mobilisation of the Shi’a militias.

With the international coalition beginning to ratchet up its air campaign against ISIS, it is imperative that the international community does not appear to condone or even encourage the growing sectarianism now gripping Iraq’s security forces.

From a new sectarian war every community stands to lose.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Editing by Kitty Stapp

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