Forbes | A New Mechanism for Syria. But what about Iraq? Forbes Since their rise as a major terrorist group in the Syria and Iraq conflicts, Daesh has perpetrated some of the worst atrocities and war crimes that we have witnessed in years. It has become clear that the atrocities committed by Daesh against religious ... |
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A New Mechanism for Syria. But what about Iraq? - Forbes
There is a scratchy patch of land south of Mosul that is dotted with dozens of burnt-out oil tanks and bits of scorched grass.
The men from so-called Islamic State used this spot to refine petrol in what was a great do-it-yourself fuel distillery.
But they also had another purpose for this place - mass murder.
Some 200 metres off the main track, there is a cavernous hole in the earth that locals call "the Khasfa" - a circular sinkhole carved from porous rock with water flowing through the bottom.
IS turned the crater's rim into an execution site and threw their victims down the hole - and these acts of depravity were committed so frequently that the Khasfa is almost certainly the biggest mass grave in Iraq.
It is for that reason that Fawaz Abdelabbas, the deputy head of the International Commission for Missing Persons in Iraq, is determined to survey the site as quickly as possible - and we found him and other members of his Baghdad-based delegation on a dirt track some 300 odd metres from the hole.
"This is the way," said the urbane director. "Now we try to find to get to the sinkhole. Murphy, what do you think?"
But there was a serious problem - IS has saturated this wasteland with land-mines.
:: Traumatised children of Mosul
Sky News understands that five people had lost their lives trying to get there, including Kurdish journalist Shifa Gardi, who trod on an explosive device four weeks ago.
Unsurprisingly then, Mr Abdelabbas's mission was about to come grinding to a halt.
He said: "We agreed with the Iraqi government that they would have the forces to support us with a de-mining team because we are told the route (to the hole) is full with mines and. let's discuss the matter with the police chief."
But the district police chief was shuffling uncomfortably from side-to-side. He did not have a de-mining team.
The delegation was stuck.
"Is it frustrating?" I asked the commission's deputy head. "Of course," he replied. "But this is the reality of Iraq."
We put a drone in the air and flew it over the hole, although high winds made it difficult to control.
Nonetheless, we saw that IS had tried to fill it in with earth - a giant construction project, recently confirmed by satellite photographs.
Still, one section has begun to slip and we noticed what looked like several vehicles lying at the bottom.
:: The battle for Mosul: A timeline
That came as little surprise to Mohamed Abdelkarim, who is head of a nearby village.
He regularly witnessed prisoners crammed in trucks and buses being taken to the hole. Other witnesses report seeing vehicles (and their passengers) being physically pushed into the Khasfa.
"How many bodies are in there?" I asked him.
"We think 6,000, maybe more," said the village chief. "The population of Mosul is 3 million, plus other villages and towns in Salahaddin Province. Any public servants, policemen, military officers, doctors, scientists (were thrown in the hole)."
Getting to the hole and investigating Islamic State's crimes will be a colossal task - a job that will stretch the capabilities of this fragile, war-weary nation.
But Mr Abdelabbas says it is essential. "We want to exhume the bodies and begin the process of identification and we will do it according to international standards," he told me confidently.
"Returning the remains to grieving families will help them deal with the past but it will also demonstrate that the (Iraqi) government actually cares and respects them.
"This is about reconciliation."
:: Watch a special programme, The Battle For Mosul, at 7pm on Monday on Sky News.
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IS turn Mosul sinkhole into 'biggest mass grave' in Iraq - Sky News
After all, Donald Rumsfeld was right.In Iraq, there were known knowns and known unknowns.But the hardest of all for Iraqis to deal with are the unknown unknowns: the things they dont know, either because, frankly, no one has cared to look or because the facts have been actively hidden.
The United States is still investigating an air raid in Mosul last week that killed over 200 civilians. The facts have yet to be established, but that air strike, while the US has admitted responsibility, is very different from the air strikes that started the US invasion of Iraq 14 years ago last week.
Today, the US and Iraq are partners in the war against ISIL, and the devastation that the US wrought in Iraq has been forgotten at least officially by the Iraqi government.
But for Iraqis there are still so many unknowns. So many things that happened during the war that are simply off-limits to them.
Where to start? How about with the most startling fact: that, today, more than a decade later, no one knows the number of Iraqis who died during the war.
Of course, every one of those killed has been mourned many times over by their families, friends and communities. But in terms of overall figures, none exist. Was it 650,000, as The Lancet put it in 2006? Or was it over 1 million Iraqis, as the NGO Physicians for Social Responsibility put it 10 years later?
We dont know, not because of any oversight, but because of a specific decision by the US in every recent war Iraq in 1991, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 not to count civilian deaths.
As early as April 2, 2003 just 14 days into the war The New York Times reported that no one in the US military was counting the dead. "It is not," wrote the paper, "a statistic that interests [US officials]. They count destroyed tanks and artillery pieces and missile launchers. They do not count people."
Such disregard for the lives of ordinary Iraqis lives that the US had ostensibly gone into Iraq to liberate from Saddam Husseins rule was merely the beginning.
Later cases, such as the massacre in Haditha in 2005, when US soldiers killed 24 unarmed Iraqis, or the gang-rape of 14-year-old Abeer Al Janabi and murder of her entire family in Mahmudiyah in 2006, only perpetuated a belief that US soldiers were acting with impunity.
Both of those crimes finally came to court, after painstaking journalistic investigation and tireless efforts by family members. They exposed more about the conduct of the war than about one specific crime.
The killings at Haditha were not "remarkable", an official US report said. Iraqi civilians being killed was the "cost of doing business", according to a US commander in Iraq.
Nor was such a reprehensible attitude confined to the lower rungs of the US military. When the horrors of Abu Ghraib were finally exposed, they showed entire parts of the military were complicit in the dehumanisation of the very people they should have been protecting. After all these years, can we be sure those were the only cases?
Those were merely the "active" suffering caused to Iraqis. In Fallujah, scene of a long-running insurgency against US soldiers, researchers are still seeking to pinpoint the exact cause of dramatic increases in rates of cancers and birth defects after 2003.
Elsewhere, there are questions of air pollution and environmental contamination. The US military simply set fire to huge quantities of military waste including batteries, explosives and human waste in open-air pits in the middle of populated cities. Since 2003, 85,000 American Iraq war veterans have been diagnosed with respiratory diseases and cancers after returning from Iraq. How many thousands of Iraqis also suffered the effects of these burn pits? We may never know. No one, either in the US or Iraqi governments, seems interested in finding out. Some will point to ISIL or militias in Iraq that have committed horrific crimes and ask, "What about them?". But crimes by one group do not negate crimes by another. And the US is a state, bound by laws, that argued the Iraq invasion was both necessary and would be beneficial for Iraq.
Certainly, once the ISIL threat is over, a complete accounting of its crimes must take place, including the failures of the Iraqi government that allowed ISIL to remain and expand.
For Iraqis today, though, there are still no answers for the majority of what happened in the fog of war and the fire of its aftermath.In some ways, the true cost cannot ever be known. The psychological trauma of an entire population is immense. Like the vastness of space, it is impossible to conceptualise.
We can only imagine it individually: the fear of air strikes and the chaos of darkness and roaming militias. The tragedy of losing a wife or daughter. The bewilderment of seeing a father or son handcuffed and taken away by soldiers speaking a foreign language.
The immense scars of the 2003 invasion will be with Iraqis for many years to come.
These scars defy accounting. But others do not. The reality of what happened in Iraq is unknown, but not unknowable. Yet 14 years on, no one, neither the US military nor the government in Baghdad, wants to know.
On Twitter: @FaisalAlYafai
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Fourteen years after Iraq, we still don't know the truth of what happened - The National
Prince Dudley | Staff Photographer
Tron Bosse, a junior policy studies and history dual major, decided college wasn't the best step for him after high school. Instead he joined the United States military.
When Tron Bosse walked off the helicopter, he immediately heard the sound of gunfire. It was 2005 and he was on his first tour of Iraq.
Bosse is now a junior policy studies and history dual major at Syracuse University. A smile washed over his face as he admitted he is considering adding a third major.
The military prepared him for college, he said. After finishing up high school, he wanted to leave home as fast as possible, but college wasnt right for him at the time. So, a 17-year-old Bosse set his sights on the military. He wanted to see the world.
Transitioning back to civilian life has brought some big changes, Bosse said. He is conscious of the fact that when in Iraq, he always had a weapon on him.
Your first day back, you wake up and automatically check, wheres my M-16, but then you realize youre back in the States, Bosse said.
Bosse always knew he wanted to go to college, and now that he is back in the United States, he can be found poring over his books before classes. He wants to go to law school after graduating hopefully at SU, he said, grinning and crossing his fingers.
When SU students learn that Bosse is older than the typical college student, they dont treat him any differently. When they learn he is a military man however, the questions start. Some of his stories surprise them, he said, describing how a Humvee he was riding in Iraq was once hit.
SU has always been welcoming to him, Bosse said. When he was younger, he had always looked to SU as a possibility. He admired John Wallace, the basketball player, and wanted to follow in his footsteps. It wasnt until he had completed two tours of Iraq and a tour of Africa that he decided to move up north.
Although he was born in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and raised in Texas, Bosse came prepared for the weather, having experienced extreme weather conditions before.
One time in Iraq we left where it was 110 degrees and we landed in Maine where there was two feet of snow outside, Bosse chuckled. You just have to be ready to deal with whatever the weather throws at you.
Every day, Bosse tries to absorb as much information as possible. The military taught Bosse that discipline is the instant willingness to follow order. But he defines it differently.
Discipline is really the ability to choose between what you want now, and what you want the most, Bosse said. To me, thats discipline.
Published on March 26, 2017 at 9:41 pm
Contact Rachel: rcgilber@syr.edu
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Tours in Iraq prepared Tron Bosse for college - The Daily Orange
Baqouba, Iraq, 25 March 2017 The United Nations took its Iraq: Youth and Coexistence Forum to Diyala Governorate, hoping to enrich the discussions aimed at gauging the opinions of the young generation on reconciliation with experiences from an area that symbolizes diversity but one which has paid a heavy price from conflict and violence.
It is the fourth of a series of cross-country youth forums intended to give a voice to youth for their crucial role in charting the road to peaceful coexistence in a future Iraq. With these kind of fora, the young generation of Iraqis across different ethnic and sectarian backgrounds has the opportunity to deliberate post-conflict issues, engage on national reconciliation and voice their opinion.
A total of 68 youth in the age group of 18-35 from Diyala Governorate participated in the Iraq: Youth and Coexistence forum, which the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) organized in collaboration with the Iraqi Al-Amal Association.
The opening session was attended by Mr. Khidr Muslim Hafez, secretarygeneral of the Diyala Governorate Council representing the governor, some members of the Diyala Governorate Council, Mr. Jaafar al-Zarkoush, director-general the Education Directorate in Diyala, Ms. Hana Edwar, head of the Al-Amal Association, and Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General (DSRSG) for Iraq for Political and Electoral Affairs, Mr. Gyrgy Busztin.
Mr. Busztin noted in his address that the Diyala Governorates mix of various ethnic, sectarian and religious groups and the conflict it endured makes this stop all too important. He recalled that the UN has lost a staff member as a result of the violence in Diyala.
This governorate has suffered immensely and has offered great and painful sacrifices in the fight against terrorism. Diyala knew how to vanquish terrorism, rivalry and hate. The role of the young in peaceful coexistence and national reconciliation gives this stop in the series of forums great importance because of the diversity of this governorate and its suffering as a result of terrorism and rivalry, as well as triumphing over it, Mr. Busztin said.
The Diyala forum is the fourth of the cross-country forums. The first was launched in Basra on 28 January 2017 and brought together about 120 participants from the four southern governorates of Basra, Missan, Dhi Qar and Muthanna. The second followed in Erbil on 19 February with 135 participants from Ninewa Governorate. The third was held in Najaf on 18 March, with 115 participants from the Najaf, Karbala, Babel and Qadissiyah Governorates taking part. Other conferences are to follow in the Governorates of Suleimaniyah, Baghdad, Kirkuk and Salaheddin, culminating in an overarching national conference in Baghdad in May to be attended by representatives of the youth to incorporate recommendations from these forums in the decisions that support the process of reconciliation and coexistence.
As with the format for all the conferences, the participants in the Diyala forum broke up into working groups to deliberate and respond to questions about what they would like to see in a future Iraq and how they can contribute. At the end of the meeting, the participants debated their responses and adopted a set of recommendations.
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Iraq: Youth and Coexistence Forum Diyala Stop Underscores Iraqi Diversity's Role in Building Future [EN/AR] - Reliefweb