generalspeaking

Thanking Barack Obama

"In some of the images we have obtained there are lines of dead Yazidis who have been shot in the head while the Islamic State fighters cheer and wave their weapons over the corpses."
"This is a vicious atrocity."
Muhammed Shia al-Sudani, Iraqi human rights minister

"We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them."
"We think that these women are going to be used in demeaning ways by those terrorists to satisfy their animalistic urges in a way that contradicts all the human and Islamic values."
Kamil Amin, spokesman, Iraqi human rights ministry

"[It is] appalled by the rapid deterioration of the humanitarian situation. [Some of the militants' acts] may constitute crimes against humanity and must be investigated swiftly, so that the perpetrators are held accountable."
European Union statement

"Held accountable?" To whom, exactly? The Islamic State considers itself accountable to no one. It will be as accountable to the International Criminal Court as has been Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, flaunting his honoured status within the Arab League, none of whom would ever blink an eyelash at the barbarous attacks on Sudan's Darfurians. Much less improbably consider surrendering him to face international justice.

Kurdish peshmerga fighters appear to be the only Iraqi forces prepared to battle the jihadist terrorists that have blasted their way through Iraq, taking towns and villages, oil fields and critical dams, while terrorizing the population and engaging in carnage of unspeakable proportions, warning non-Muslims that without turning to Islam their lives are forfeit. The Yazidis, a Kurdish ethnic group worshipping an arcane religion, are first in IS's sights, and then Iraqi Christians.

Tens of thousands of Yazidis have been surrounded, the IS troops prepared to kill them, assembled at the base of Mount Sinjar, the fearful people above, on the slopes of the mountain, hoping to beat out the native goats for scarce water, with children dehydrated and dying. One Yazidi had witnessed the storming of his village, the slaughter of all males, and women being abducted. Another report had it that women and children were being buried alive by the jihadis.

Those who have sustained wounds have no access to medicine or assistance so wounds become infected. There is no water to spare for hygiene for there is not enough to assuage thirst. The Iraqi army has sent some helicopters to the mountain bringing in a medical team, which can evacuate no more than a dozen desperate people at a time. The single road down the mountain is guarded by the Kurdish YPG from Syria, but only vehicles laden with Yazidi refugees can make that journey.

The Iraqi peshmerga desperately need arms and ammunition before they can effectively confront the Islamic State fighters who were enabled to take possession of all the advanced weaponry abandoned by fleeing Iraqi troops from Mosul and elsewhere. Leaving Mosul, its banks and weapons caches in the possession of the jihadis. And though Iraq promised it would arm the only resistance to the terrorists, it did not, and it has been left to the United States to arm the Kurds.

In Irbil, the Kurdish stronghold in Iraqi Kurdistan, the United States is defending its human assets, Americans deployed there to aid the Kurds in their military manoeuvres, not fighting, but advising on best-practise strategy. A series of U.S. air strikes on IS convoys has given the Kurds the kind of assurance they need that they are not alone and abandoned. Kurdish militiamen now are aware of the full thrust of the IS ferocity.

Kurdish peshmerga Captain Ziyran Mahmoud said the IS fighters wear suicide belts in their advance in armoured vehicles, planning to detonate them, in effect killing soldiers from both sides, if Kurdish fighters approach too closely. Now that they are being armed by the United States, Khalid Jamal Alber of the Religious Affairs Ministry in the Kurdish government stated : "We thank Barack Obama."

Labels: Conflict, Humanitarian Crisis, Iraq, ISIS, Kurds, Terrorism

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, August 12, 2014