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.
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.
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.
Labels: Arabs, Conflict, Iraq, Islamic State, Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, Yazidis
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