Tag: yazidis
Watch Trump Fumble Meeting With Yazidi and Rohingya Refugees

Watch Trump Fumble Meeting With Yazidi and Rohingya Refugees

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Amid outrage this week over President Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric and policies regarding asylum seekers and immigrants, critics expressed shock on Friday over two viral videos of the president meeting with several refugees from all over the world in the Oval Office.

One observer on social media accused Trump of displaying a “sociopathic inability to empathize” while another said “he couldn’t even manage to have a coherent three-minute conversation” with a Nobel laureate.

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Trump appeared unaware of the plights of refugees like Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad, who has campaigned for human rights following her escape from ISIS captivity in Iraq, and Mohib Ullah, one of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who were forced to leave Myanmar.

Murad explained how she and thousands of other women were abducted by ISIS when the group took control of parts of Iraq in 2014. The president has spoken frequently about his alleged defeat of ISIS in Iraq, but as Murad explained, “it’s not about ISIS” any longer.

“We cannot go back because the Kurdish government and the Iraqi government, they are fighting each other over who will control my area,” Murad said. “And we cannot go back if we cannot protect our dignity, our families.”

“I hope you can call or anything to the Iraqi and Kurdistan [governments],” she added, telling Trump that French President Emmanuel Macron has been vocal in his support for the Yazidis and their desire to return home.

Murad also spoke about what drove tens of thousands of Yazidis to seek asylum in Germany, as thousands of refugees are currently hoping to be welcomed into the United States while the Trump administration moves to eliminate asylum rights and considers cutting the number of refugee admissions to zero next year.

“After 2014 about 95,000 Yazidis, they immigrated to Germany through a very dangerous way,” Murad said. “Not because they want to be refugees, but we cannot find a safe place to live. All this happened to me. They killed my mum, they killed my six brothers.”

On social media, critics expressed shock at Trump’s apparent lack of knowledge and interest in the experiences of refugees around the world, even as he enacts xenophobic policies to keep them out of the United States.

 

 

 

 

Some noted that Trump appeared engaged in his conversation with Murad mostly when he inquired about her Nobel Peace Prize, an award that Trump has said he hopes to win and which Murad was awarded for her work combating sexual violence around the world.

After speaking with Murad, Trump turned to Ullah, a member of the Rohingya religious group which was subjected to genocide in Myanmar in recent years. Ullah asked how the U.S. will help the Rohingya return to the country.

“Good afternoon, Mr. President,” said Ullah. “I am a Rohingya from Bangladesh refugee camp. So most of the Rohingya refugees are waiting to go back home as quickly as possible. So what is the plan to help us?”

After Trump asked Ullah what country he was from, Ambassador for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback quickly explained that the Rohingya have been expelled from Myanmar, but the president offered no answer to Ullah’s question.

 

United States Carries Out 15 Air Strikes Near Iraq Dam

United States Carries Out 15 Air Strikes Near Iraq Dam

By Serene Assir

Badriyah (Iraq) (AFP) — U.S. warplanes and drones carried out 15 air strikes on Monday against Islamic State (IS) militants battling for control of a major dam in northern Iraq, the military said.

Fighter jets, bombers, and unmanned planes destroyed nine IS positions and eight vehicles around the Mosul dam, where insurgents are fighting Kurdish forces, US Central Command said.

Kurdish peshmerga fighters backed by federal forces and U.S. warplanes pressed a counter-offensive Monday against jihadists after retaking Iraq’s largest dam, as the United States and Britain stepped up their military involvement.

The recapture of Mosul dam marks the biggest prize yet clawed back from Islamic State (IS) jihadists since they launched a major offensive in northern Iraq in June, sweeping Iraqi security forces aside.

U.S. aircraft are carrying out strikes in support of the forces battling IS militants, who have declared a “caliphate” straddling vast areas of Iraq and Syria.

The jihadists also came under attack in their Syrian stronghold of Raqa by Syria’s air force for a second straight day on Monday.

In Iraq, “the planes are striking and the peshmerga are advancing,” a Kurdish fighter told AFP on Monday near the shore of the lake formed by the vast Mosul dam.

AFP journalists heard jets flying overhead, and saw smoke rising from the site of a strike that a peshmerga member said targeted one of the entrances to the dam.

Fighting on Monday also broke out in an area south of the barrage while engineering teams worked to clear booby traps and bombs left by jihadists, said Kawa Khatari, an official from Iraq’s main Kurdish party.

– ‘Dam entirely liberated’ –

And a senior peshmerga officer told AFP that there was sporadic fighting with militants in the town of Tal Kayf southeast of the dam, and that only a “small number” of jihadists remain in the area of the dam itself.

Iraqi security spokesman Lieutenant General Qassem Atta confirmed on Monday that Mosul dam was entirely liberated in a joint operation by Iraqi “anti-terrorism forces and peshmerga forces with aerial support”.

Atta added on state television that while the dam had been retaken, fighting was continuing in adjoining facilities.

The Mosul dam breakthrough came after U.S. warplanes and drones at the weekend carried out their heaviest-yet bombing against IS militants in the north since they began launching air strikes on August 8.

The U.S. Central Command reported that the military had carried out 14 air strikes Sunday near the dam located on the Tigris river, which provides electricity and irrigation water for farming to much of the region.

Sunday’s strikes destroyed 10 IS armed vehicles, seven IS Humvees, two armoured personnel carriers, and one IS checkpoint.

That military action followed nine U.S. strikes near Arbil and Mosul dam on Saturday.

U.S. President Barack Obama told Congress that the “limited” air strikes he has authorized on Iraq to support the fight for the dam protected U.S. interests there.

Highlighting the stakes at hand, Obama said: “The failure of the Mosul dam could threaten the lives of large numbers of civilians, endanger U.S. personnel and facilities, including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, and prevent the Iraqi government from providing critical services to the Iraqi populace.”

IS also faced air strikes on the Syrian side of the border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In Raqa province, the Syrian air force on Monday carried out at least 14 raids against jihadist positions, a day after launching 16 strikes which killed at least 31 jihadists and eight civilians.

“The regime wants to show the Americans that it is also capable of striking the IS,” said the Britain-based group’s director, Rami Abdel Rahman.

British Prime Minister David Cameron described the Islamic State fighters sweeping across Syria and Iraq as a direct threat to Britain, and said all available tools must be used to halt their advance.

Cameron, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, said that while it would not be right to send an army into Iraq, some degree of military involvement was justified due to the threat that an expanding “terrorist state” would pose to Europe and its allies.

– ‘Extreme form of terrorism’ –

His Defense Minister Michael Fallon, in comments published Monday, said Britain’s Iraq involvement now goes beyond a humanitarian mission and is set to last for months.

“We and other countries in Europe are determined to help the government of Iraq combat this new and very extreme form of terrorism,” he was quoted as saying.

Two months of violence have brought Iraq to the brink of breakup, and world powers relieved by the exit of divisive premier Nuri al-Maliki are sending aid to the hundreds of thousands who have fled their homes as well as arms to the Kurdish peshmerga forces.

In the north, members of minority groups including the Yazidis, Christians, Shabak, and Turkmen, remain under threat of kidnapping or death at the hands of the jihadists, rights groups say.

Amnesty International, which has been documenting mass abductions in the Sinjar area, says IS has kidnapped thousands of Yazidis in this month’s offensive.

Tens of thousands have fled, most of them seeking refuge in areas of northern Iraq still under Kurdish control, or in neighbouring Syria.

AFP Photo/Ahmad Al-Rubaye

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Obama: ‘We Broke The ISIL Siege Of Mount Sinjar’

Obama: ‘We Broke The ISIL Siege Of Mount Sinjar’

Martha’s Vineyard (United States) (AFP) — President Barack Obama declared Thursday that U.S. air strikes had broken the siege of an Iraqi mountain sheltering civilian refugees and that troops conducting reconnaissance there would be withdrawn.

But he added that U.S. air strikes would continue against extremists from the so-called Islamic State or ISIL if they threaten U.S. personnel and facilities in the region, including the Kurdish regional capital Arbil.

“The bottom line is — the situation on the mountain has greatly improved and Americans should be very proud of our efforts because the skill and professionalism of our military and the generosity of our people we broke the ISIL siege of Mount Sinjar,” Obama said in a statement to reporters during his vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

“We helped save many innocent lives. Because of these efforts, we do not expect (there) to be an additional operation to evacuate people off the mountain and it’s unlikely we’re going to need to continue humanitarian air drops on the mountain,” Obama said.

Obama, a longtime skeptic of the use of U.S. force in Iraq, last week authorized air strikes as he warned that thousands of members of the Yazidi community risked genocide as they fled to the mountain under pursuit from ISIL extremists.

Obama said that the United States would still carry out air strikes along with stepping up military assistance to Iraqi government and Kurdish forces battling ISIL.

“We will continue air strikes to protect our people and facilities in Iraq,” said Obama, who had cited the risk to the U.S. consulate in Arbil as a reason for the military intervention.

AFP Photo/Nicholas Kamm

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Time Ticks Down On Iraq Siege As Survivors Stream Into Camps

Time Ticks Down On Iraq Siege As Survivors Stream Into Camps

Dohuk (Iraq) (AFP) – Time was running out for starving Yazidis trapped on an Iraqi mountain Wednesday as the West ramped up efforts to assist survivors and arm Kurdish forces battling jihadists.

The United States has carried out air strikes against members of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group in the area of Mount Sinjar, where the UN refugee agency says 20,000-30,000 people, many of them members of the Yazidi minority, are besieged.

Thousands more poured across a bridge into camps in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region on Wednesday after trekking into Syria to escape, most with nothing but the clothes they wore.

Some women carried exhausted children, weeping as they arrived to the relative safety of Iraqi Kurdistan.

But there are still large numbers on the mountain, said 45-year-old Mahmud Bakr.

“My father Khalaf is 70 years old — he cannot make this journey,” he told AFP when he crossed back into Iraq.

UN minority rights expert Rita Izsak has warned they face “a mass atrocity and potential genocide within days or hours”.

The displaced who managed to flee a siege that began ten days ago found relative security in Kurdistan but complained that their living conditions had hardly improved.

“We were besieged for ten days in the mountain. The whole world is talking about us but we did not get any real help,” said Khodhr Hussein. “We went from hunger in Sinjar to hunger in this camp.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that Washington is looking at options to bring the trapped civilians out.

“We will make a very rapid and critical assessment because we understand it is urgent to try to move those people off the mountains,” he said.

Washington has already said it would ship weapons to the cash-strapped Kurds and on Wednesday France followed in U.S. footsteps.

“The president has decided, in agreement with Baghdad, to deliver arms in the coming hours,” President Francois Hollande’s office said.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the United States has sent 130 more military advisers to northern Iraq to assess the scope of the humanitarian crisis.

A U.S. defense official said the temporary additional personnel would also develop humanitarian assistance options beyond the current airdrop effort in support of the displaced civilians trapped on Mount Sinjar.

Britain said it has agreed to transport military supplies for the Kurdish forces from “other contributing states”.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Wednesday his country would join humanitarian airdrops in Iraq, and did not rule out the possibility of greater military involvement.

Washington has urged Iraqi premier designate Haidar al-Abadi to rapidly form a broad-based government able to unite Iraqis in the fight against jihadist-led insurgents who have overrun swathes of the country.

Abadi came from behind in an acrimonious process to select Iraq’s new premier when President Fuad Masum on Monday accepted his nomination and tasked him with forming a government.

He has 30 days to build a team which will face the daunting task of defusing sectarian tensions and, in the words of U.S. President Barack Obama, convincing the Sunni Arab minority that IS “is not the only game in town”.

On Wednesday, Maliki continued to defy international pressure to step aside, declaring that it would take a federal court ruling for him to quit.

“I confirm that the government will continue and there will not be a replacement for it without a decision from the federal court,” Maliki said in his televised weekly address.

The two-term premier has accused Masum of violating the constitution by approving Abadi’s nomination, and vowed he would sue.

But the prospects of Maliki — who told AFP in 2011 that he would not seek a third term — succeeding in his quest to cling to power appear dim.

Whatever ruling the court might deliver, analysts say Maliki has lost too much backing to stay in power.

International support has poured in for Abadi, including from both Washington and Tehran, the two main foreign power-brokers in Iraq.

The political transition comes at a time of crisis for Iraq.

After seizing the main northern city of Mosul in early June and sweeping through much of the Sunni heartland, jihadist militants bristling with U.S.-made military equipment they captured from retreating Iraqi troops launched another onslaught this month.

They attacked Christian, Yazidi, Turkmen and Shabak minorities west, north and east of Mosul, sparking a mass exodus that sent the number of people displaced in Iraq this year soaring.

A week of devastating gains saw the IS jihadists take the country’s largest dam and advance to within striking distance of the autonomous Kurdish region.

U.S. strikes and cross-border Kurdish cooperation have since yielded early results on several fronts, with Kurdish troops beginning to claw back lost ground.

AFP Photo/Ahmad al-Rubaye