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The horrors they endured under the Islamic State group may be in the past for the people of Iraq, but the traumatic memories remain.

Now a research project is recording their witness testimonies for posterity.

Omar Mohammed, founder of the Mosul Eye project, rose to prominence during the IS reign by bravely sharing news via Twitter from inside the city under jihadist rule.

Years later, he wants to make sure nothing is forgotten.

"When I was in Mosul recording everything myself, I felt the need to include all the people, to record our history in their own voice," he told AFP.

Bereaved mother Umm Mohammed, 55, is among those who have shared their memories of terror, suffering and loss with the non-governmental group.

The Sunni extremists of IS came for her family one night in 2015 and took away her son Ahmed, then a 27-year-old construction worker.

His brother Mohammed, 10 years younger, then made a fateful choice: he decided to join the ranks of IS, with a daring plan to find and liberate Ahmed.

"I told him: 'My son, don't join them'," recounted Umm Mohammed, her hair under a dark scarf.

"He said: 'It's none of your business. I'm going to get my brother. I'll go into the prisons.'"

The elderly woman told AFP, with sadness in her voice, that Mohammed left "and never came back".

And neither did Ahmed.

Both are presumed to be among the many killed under the group's self-declared "caliphate" that cut across swathes of Iraq and Syria.

Umm Mohammed said she suspects the jihadists felt that Mohammed "was not one of them. They must have thought he was a spy."

- Murder, rape, torture -

Speaking about those dark days years later for the Mosul Eye project has brought up a storm of emotions, but ultimately had a cathartic effect for Umm Mohammed.

"I had a volcano inside me," she said. "When I spoke I felt joy, sadness, despair, relief."

Iraq had already endured years of war and sectarian turmoil that followed the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein 20 years ago when IS launched its campaign of murder, rape, torture and enslavement.

Story continues

Sweeping out from their base in Syria, the Sunni extremists in mid-2014 rampaged across northern Iraq's ancient city of Mosul and Nineveh province.

There were fears they would attack Baghdad before they were pushed back by a US-supported alliance that eventually deprived IS of its Iraqi territory in late 2017.

Gruelling urban battles left much of Mosul in ruins and many of the survivors deeply traumatised.

Mosul Eye, with funding from the US Agency for International Development, has trained 10 students to conduct and film interviews, mostly in Mosul but testimonies have also been collected from people hailing from elsewhere in Iraq.

The youngest of the 70 witnesses are barely 10 years old. Others are in their 80s. The oldest is 104.

The footage will be kept at the group's archives at Mosul University, and George Washington University in the US capital, for use by researchers and for future generations.

"We wanted to show the world how the people of Mosul overcame this experience," said a spokesman for Mosul Eye, Mohannad Ammar.

- 'Opening wounds' -

Another witness is Moslem Hmeid, a 27-year-old law student whose Sunni Arab family endured five months of jihadist rule in Sinjar in 2014 before fleeing.

Seared in his mind especially is the "bloody first week, impossible to erase from memory".

He relived with pain how IS targeted the local Yazidi minority, whose non-Muslim faith the extremists considered heretical.

Hmeid remembered watching helplessly as the jihadists came and loaded Yazidi girls and women into lorries.

"Once I saw two or three trucks full of women," he told AFP. "And a few men, but mostly young women, aged 17 to 30, maybe."

Entire Yazidi villages were emptied and many fell victim to crimes since recognised as genocide by the United Nations and courts in several countries.

Women were forced into sexual slavery and the men were killed, while "those who could fled into the mountains," Hmeid said.

"Witnessing such a catastrophe happen to your neighbours and not being able to help... We were heartbroken," said Hmeid. "Psychologically, we were devastated."

With three of his brothers in the military and on the IS kill list, the family fled to Turkey but later returned to Iraq.

"By talking about these topics, we reopen wounds," said Hmeid. But, added the father of two, "the next generations must know exactly what happened".

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'Witnessing catastrophe': Iraq preserves memories of IS reign - Yahoo News

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Excerpt from:
Thomas Knapp: Time hasn't clarified facts about Iraq War - Daily Reflector

From: UpFront

It wasnt flawed intelligence that led to the war, says Bolton, a key proponent of the US invasion.

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John Bolton was a senior adviser to United States President George W Bush on matters of arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament in the lead-up to the US invasion of Iraq, 20 years ago.

Bolton, one of the strongest proponents for the war, repeatedly made the case that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a threat not just to the United States but also to the wider world, pushing and amplifying claims about weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda.

But were these claims just pretexts used to forward the longtime objective of some in the Bush administration to overthrow Saddam? And how much dissenting evidence was ignored in the run-up to the war?

On UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks to the Bush-era undersecretary of state for arms control and international affairs and later US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.

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Published On 24 Mar 202324 Mar 2023

Read more here:
Twenty years on, John Bolton is still defending the USs Iraq War - Al Jazeera English

A recent incident has revealed the extent of the attempts to make the PKK terrorist organization grow beyond Turkish borders.

On March 15, a helicopter crashed in Iraqs Duhok region. Shortly after the incident, the counterterrorism force of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq announced that the helicopter carrying nine was a single chopper, a Eurocopter AS350 model designed and manufactured in France.

So far, everything seemed like a typical aircraft crash, until it was revealed that some of the victims who died in the accident were "high-ranking" PKK terrorists.

According to the statement by the PKK regarding the incident, one of the pilots was Sherfan Kobani, a cousin of the PKK's Syrian wing YPGs top commander Ferhat Abdi ahin (code-named Mazloum Kobani). Apparently, the terrorists trained and supported by the United States in Syria had somehow captured the helicopter and learned to fly it. Furthermore, the PKK/YPG stated that not one but two helicopters carrying PKK members had crashed in the region.

Of course, after this grave incident, eyes turned to the U.S., which is the protector of the PKK/YPG. Two questions were crucial: Who did these helicopters belong to? Who put them at the service of a terrorist organization?

On a question, Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder insisted that the U.S. did not give pilot training to the PKK/YPG. "As far as I know, we do not provide helicopter piloting training."

It is useful to highlight the "as far as I know" part here.

France, the manufacturer of the helicopter, applied a similar "lay to the dead" tactic. Anadolu Agency (AA) recently asked the French Foreign Ministry, who owned the AS350 model helicopter manufactured by French Airbus Helicopters: "The serial number of the helicopter appears in the images reflected in the press. So, do the French need to know to whom this helicopter was sold to?

As a response, the spokesperson of the French ministry said: "We have no comment.

Of course, after these evasive statements, eyes were once again turned to the KRG. The KRG's anti-terrorism unit has issued another statement regarding the helicopter on its official Facebook page. The statement noted that these helicopters were flying between the northern part of Syria and the Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah and that the official institutions in the KRG were not informed about this issue.

There are plenty of allegations floating around. Some argue that the helicopter was given by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) political party, while others claim that the second downed helicopter was kept a secret. However, there is the gospel truth and journalists working abroad do not give up on the issue. The evasive answers given by the U.S. officials at news conferences, in particular, once again reveal the seriousness of the situation.

Finally, the following dialogue between a TRT World reporter and a Pentagon spokesperson shows how stuck Washington actually is in supporting the PKK.

"I have a hard time understanding. Didn't you know about helicopters that take off from the ground, which is a U.S. base with 1,000 soldiers? reporter Yunus Paksoy asked, to which Ryder said "We weren't involved, adding that further questions about the incident should be directed to the PKK/YPG.

Upon that answer, Paksoy asked whether the U.S. had any information on the issue.

"We weren't involved. I choose my words specifically, Ryder replied.

After this scandal, which broke out just a few days after the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) officials visited the PKK/YPG, the statements of the U.S. remain "desperate," so to speak.

Let the parties try to cover up this issue as much as they want, or let the questions suffocate. I am confident that Turkish intelligence will shed light on this dark incident down to every detail with its evidence.

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US fails to account for downed PKK helicopter in Iraq | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) Complexes of McMansions, fast food restaurants, real estate offices and half-constructed high-rises line wide highways in Irbil, the seat of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

Many members of the political and business elite live in a suburban gated community dubbed the American Village, where homes sell for as much as $5 million, with lush gardens consuming more than a million liters of water a day in the summer.

The visible opulence is a far cry from 20 years ago. Back then, Irbil was a backwater provincial capital without even an airport.

That rapidly changed after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein. Analysts say that Iraqi Kurds and particularly the Kurdish political class were the biggest beneficiaries in a conflict that had few winners.

Thats despite the fact that for ordinary Kurds, the benefits of the new order have been tempered by corruption and power struggles between the two major Kurdish parties and between Irbil and Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

In the wake of the invasion, much of Iraq fell into chaos, as occupying American forces fought an insurgency and as multiple political and sectarian communities vied to fill the power vacuum left in Baghdad. But the Kurds, seen as staunch allies of the Americans, strengthened their political position and courted foreign investments.

Irbil quickly grew into an oil-fueled boom town. Two years later, in 2005, the city opened a new commercial airport, constructed with Turkish funds, and followed a few years after that by an expanded international airport.

Traditionally, the Kurdish narrative is one of victimhood and one of grievances, said Bilal Wahab, a fellow at the Washington Institute think tank. But in Iraq since 2003, that is not the Kurdish story. The story is one of power and empowerment.

With the Ottoman Empires collapse after World War I, the Kurds were promised an independent homeland in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. But the treaty was never ratified, and Kurdistan was carved up. Since then, there have been Kurdish rebellions in Iran, Iraq and Turkey, while in Syria, Kurds have clashed with Turkish-backed forces.

In Iraq, the Kurdish region won de facto self-rule in 1991, when the United States imposed a no-fly zone over it in response to Saddams brutal repression of Kurdish uprisings.

We had built our own institutions, the parliament, the government, said Hoshyar Zebari, a top official with the Kurdistan Democratic Party who served as foreign minister in Iraqs first post-Saddam government. Also, we had our own civil war. But we overcame that, he said, referring to fighting between rival Kurdish factions in the mid-1990s.

Speaking in an interview at his palatial home in Masif, a former resort town in the mountains above Irbil that is now home to much of the KDP leadership, Zabari added, The regime change in Baghdad has brought a lot of benefits to this region.

Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid, from the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, also gave a glowing assessment of the post-2003 developments. The Kurds, he said, had aimed for a democratic Iraq, and at the same time some sort of self-determination for the Kurdish people.

With the U.S. overthrow of Saddam, he said, We achieved that ... We became a strong group in Baghdad.

The post-invasion constitution codified the Kurdish regions semi-independent status, while an informal power-sharing arrangement now stipulates that Iraqs president is always a Kurd, the prime minister a Shiite and the parliament speaker a Sunni.

But even in the Kurdish region, the legacy of the invasion is complicated. The two major Kurdish parties have jockeyed for power, while Irbil and Baghdad have been at odds over territory and the sharing of oil revenues.

Meanwhile, Arabs in the Kurdish region and minorities, including the Turkmen and Yazidis, feel sidelined in the new order, as do Kurds without ties to one of the two key parties that serve as gatekeepers to opportunities in the Kurdish region.

As the economic boom has stagnated in recent years, due to both domestic issues and global economic trends, an increasing number of Kurdish youths are leaving the country in search of better opportunities. According to the International Labor Organization, 19.2% of men and 38% of women aged 15-24 were unemployed and out of school in Irbil province in 2021.

Wahab said Irbils post-2003 economic success has also been qualified by widespread waste and patronage in the public sector.

The corruption in the system is really undermining the potential, he said.

In Kirkuk, an oil-rich city inhabited by a mixed population of Kurds, Turkmen and Sunni Arabs where Baghdad and Irbil have vied for control, Kahtan Vendavi, local head of the Iraqi Turkmen Front party, complained that the American forces support was very clear for the Kurdish parties after the 2003 invasion.

Turkmen are the third largest ethnic group in Iraq, with an estimated 3 million people, but hold no high government positions and only a handful of parliamentary seats.

In Kirkuk, the Americans appointed a governor of Kurdish nationality to manage the province. Important departments and security agencies were handed over to Kurdish parties, Vendavi said.

Some Kurdish groups also lost out in the post-2003 order, which consolidated the power of the two major parties.

Ali Bapir, head of the Kurdistan Justice Group, a Kurdish Islamist party, said the two ruling parties treat people who do not belong to (them) as third- and fourth-class citizens.

Bapir has other reasons to resent the U.S. incursion. Although he had fought against the rule of Saddams Baath Party, the U.S. forces who arrived in 2003 accused him and his party of ties to extremist groups. Soon after the invasion, the U.S. bombed his partys compound and then arrested Bapir and imprisoned him for two years.

Kurds not involved in the political sphere have other, mainly economic, concerns.

Picnicking with her mother and sister and a pair of friends at the sprawling Sami Abdul Rahman Park, built on what was once a military base under Saddam, 40-year-old Tara Chalabi acknowledged that the security and safety situation is excellent here.

But she ticked off a list of other grievances, including high unemployment, the end of subsidies from the regional government for heating fuel and frequent delays and cuts in the salaries of public employees like her.

Now there is uncertainty if they will pay this month, she said.

Nearby, a group of university students said they are hoping to emigrate.

Working hard, before, was enough for you to succeed in life, said a 22-year-old who gave only her first name, Gala. If you studied well and you got good grades you would have a good opportunity, a good job. But now its very different. You must have connections.

In 2021, hundreds of Iraqi Kurds rushed to Belarus in hopes of crossing into Poland or other neighboring EU countries. Belarus at the time was readily handing out tourist visas in an apparent attempt to pressure the European Union by creating a wave of migrants.

Those who went, Wahab said, were from the middle class, able to afford plane tickets and smuggler fees.

To me, its a sign that its not about poverty, he said. Its basically about the younger generation of Kurds who dont really see a future for themselves in this region anymore.

___

Associated Press writer Salar Salim in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report.

See more here:
Kurds remain biggest winners from US-led invasion of Iraq - The Associated Press