Islamic State group releases over 200 captive Iraqi Yazidis
Source: AP-Excite
By SAMEER N. YACOUB
BAGHDAD (AP) — The Islamic State group released more than 200 Yazidis on Wednesday after holding them for eight months, the latest mass release of captives by the extremists targeted by U.S.-led airstrikes and an Iraqi ground offensive.
Gen. Hiwa Abdullah, a peshmerga commander in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, said most of the freed 216 prisoners were in poor health and bore signs of abuse and neglect. He added that about 40 children are among those released, while the rest were elderly.
No reason was given for the release of the prisoners who were originally abducted from the area around Sinjar in the country's north. The handover took place in Himera just southwest of Kirkuk, 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of Baghdad.
The freed captives wept and called out to God when greeted by their families, some so weak they lay on the arid ground. Women wiped away tears with their long headscarves.
FULL story at link.
A Yazidi, right, released by Islamic State group militants arrives in Kirkuk, 180 miles (290 kilometers) north of Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, April 8, 2015. The Islamic State group released more than 200 Yazidis on Wednesday after holding them for eight months, an Iraqi Kurdish security official said, the latest mass release of captives by the extremists. (AP Photo)
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20150408/ml--islamic_state-02a19ff417.html
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cosmicone
(11,014 posts)We have to mow down ISIS - no matter what it takes.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)Are you just engaging in thoughtless "tough guy" rhetoric, or are you honestly going with "the ends justify the means" ideas here?
I'd rather we didn't go back to destroying villages to save them y'know?
snooper2
(30,151 posts)Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)The organization controls several hundred other towns and small cities in Iraq and Syria. There are also Daesh-affiliated groups claiming territory in Libya, Nigeria, and Yemen.
The CIA estimates that Daesh forces are somewhere around fifty thousand fighters, total. Iraq-Syria, Nigeria, Libya, and other scattered locations.
So. "By any means necessary" is it?
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)Four years on, civilian deaths continue in Syria
Since a lot of the fighting of Syria’s conflict takes place in heavily populated towns and urban areas, sniper kill zones often dissect neighborhoods and fighters dig in and embed among the civilian population. Effectively, this makes human shields of their inhabitants, and inevitably ensures they suffer disproportionately when those entrenched combatants start to fight and shell each other’s positions. This is made worse by the very nature of this type of urban warfare, which usually produces deadly stalemates, or only excruciatingly slow advances at terribly high cost. This callousness and indifference to the suffering of Syrians by those fighting in their name the Syrian regime and the rebel and jihadist groups opposing it has been a central and dominant theme throughout this messy and brutal war.
Another disturbing aspect in which civilians are caught up in the war is through the heavy indiscriminate bombing of their neighborhoods by the infamous “barrel bombs” dropped by regime helicopters from high altitude on rebel-held areas, the main purpose being to clear out the residents and make the areas easier to capture. Needless to say, the results of such bombing campaigns are catastrophic. This sometimes goes in tandem with crippling sieges that can last for months or even years, causing untold misery and suffering for the people trapped inside, who have to not only contend with a possible quick death from above but also a slow agonizing death from starvation and poverty.
Being in an area that one of the warring camps controls does not necessarily delineate support for that camp, although it is matter-of-factly portrayed as such by the propaganda machine of the other side, seeking to justify its excessive brutality. This divisive “us against them” is a rather peculiar aspect of this conflict, even if not surprising. A terrified populace can easily be polarized against their former friends and neighbors, especially when told that they are now the enemy, with corroboration of that coming in the form of deadly shells and bombs fired from their areas. We have experienced this first hand in Aleppo city, for instance, where rebels shell neighborhoods in the west (the regime-controlled part) on a daily basis, killing and wounding many people, with the justification being that anyone still living there must be “shabiha,” a derogatory term for a regime loyalist.
Thus, the warring camps in Syria seek to consolidate support among “our civilians” while demonizing “their civilians,” which makes mass slaughter of people more palatable and acceptable. In fact, in the tit-for-tat shelling of Damascus city and eastern Ghouta earlier this month, there were calls to wipe Douma out, and everyone in it, by people in Damascus, while those in Ghouta cheered with glee every time rockets were fired into the capital. Of course these sentiments are not universally shared or accepted, but illustrate how quickly desensitized and dehumanized people living through the horrors of war can become. The end result, though, was equally as grotesque as those attitudes, with many deaths and injuries in Damascus, and a disproportionate number of people killed in Ghouta, too, with the unsettling prospect of this mutual slaughter now becoming the new norm as both sides continue to threaten and escalate their rhetoric.
<snip>
You will see this echoed everywhere you go in Syria, regardless of which side that person supports or hates. We have come to the realization as a people — finally — that this bloodshed serves no purpose and has to stop by any means necessary. We have paid a heavy price and gained nothing but death and destruction in return. Unfortunately, the key to ending the war is not in our hands, nor is it our choice to make.
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/02/syria-war-civilian-casualties-regime-opposition-jihadists.html#ixzz3Wkhrd6HL
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)ISIS is ethnically cleansing the Yazidi population but they're hardly the only one
Perhaps the most vivid and disturbing evidence that the Iraqi government simply does not share America’s core values emerged on Feb. 6. In a grainy video posted on YouTube, a three-minute horror show plays out on the front lines somewhere in Iraq. Iraqi military officers and presumably Shiite militiamen — dressed in black, skull-adorned “Sons of Anarchy” shirts — crowd an ambulance emblazoned with the Iraqi state seal. Inside, a blindfolded and hog-tied man in military fatigues pleads for mercy as the Iraqi vigilantes beat him over the head, taunting him with expletives.
“We will f— your sisters,” they shout.
“No, God,” the prisoner weeps.
One of the vigilantes picks up a metal toolbox and slams it down on the crying man, as others enter the ambulance to beat and kick the helpless prisoner. A minute into the video, the man is dragged out of the ambulance and onto the ground, still blindfolded, arms bound behind his back. A dozen fighters surround him and begin kicking him until he lies motionless, blood dripping from his head. With some yelling “enough,” a man in camouflaged trousers walks up to the prisoner and beats him over the head repeatedly with a sandal, a gesture of monumental insult. Another man, also in camouflaged trousers, leaps up twice and lands with his full weight on the detainee’s skull. A third man, in full military uniform, kicks and punches the hemorrhaging man, whose blood spills across the sand below.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/19/irans-shiite-militias-are-running-amok-in-iraq/
Assad is mass murdering Syrians
Syrian regime document trove shows evidence of 'industrial scale' killing of detainees
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/20/evidence-industrial-scale-killing-syria-war-crimes
Central Africa Republic has had & at great risk for future genocide as well. The Syria-Iraq situation is very sad -- a complex situation but I hope the US avoids applying double standards here. Iraq or Syria have illegitimate, corrupt, & oppressive governments that are engaging in ethnically cleansing themselves.
It saddens me very deeply the entirety of the situation that I actually very deeply want to solve & while I don't have the easy answers I hope people are very careful for what they advocate for but you have tens of thousands in displaced refugee camps without food, water, or care (children have frozen to death in the winter). KRG have handled the overall situation very admirable & have taken in numerous refugees. The crisis is unimaginable with the atrocities, ethnically cleansing, & other human rights violations.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)We should provide them with free alcohol, drugs, prostitutes, latest movies via satellite and all-you-can-eat ice cream?
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)Damn you're good!
Fantastic Anarchist
(7,309 posts)The other day you said something equally as disgusting.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)cosmicone
(11,014 posts)
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)<snip>
Over the last two years, we’ve worked side-by-side with Syrian women leaders as they propose concrete steps to end the war. Most recently, we brought several women representing large civil society networks to Washington, D.C., where they cautioned against the current approach of the international community – and proposed a very different blueprint for the region’s future.
More arms and more bombs, they said, are not the answer.
<snip>
“Oppression is the incubator of terrorism,” one woman told us as the group prepped for meetings with high-level officials in D.C. and New York. Her participation in peaceful protests during the early days of the revolution led to her two-month imprisonment in a four square meter room shared with 30 other women—yet she was adamant: “We cannot fight ISIS except through a political approach.”
<snip>
First, humanitarian aid must get to the millions in grave need. Almost three million people are registered as refugees in neighboring countries and over six million are displaced inside Syria. That’s in a country with a pre-war population of just under 18 million. Approximately half of the remaining inhabitants live in extreme poverty.
<snip>
Violent extremism thrives in areas where social services have all but disappeared. A woman who serves on the local council of an opposition-held town told us that she fears more of her neighbors may become radicalized because there’s no work, no education, and no other opportunities.
http://time.com/3513830/syrian-women-defeat-isis/
While the article mainly deals with Syria brutal oppression of Sunni & Kurdish populations from the Al-Maliki created this situation so the need for a political solutions exists there as well so these are suggestions that are more likely to be successful plus in reality the US would ally hypocritically with human rights violators as well as exploit & abuse migrant labor imported from Asia & Africa.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)said Saddam Hussein was the main problem.
There is plenty of oppression in China, North Korea, Singapore, Russia etc. but there is hardly any terrorism.
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)Yazidis suffered under Saddam Hussein himself
---
Organized anti-Yazidi violence dates back to the Ottoman Empire. In the second half of the 19th century, Yazidis were targeted by both Ottoman and local Kurdish leaders, and subjected to brutal campaigns of religious violence. "Yazidis often say they have been the victim of 72 previous genocides, or attempts at annihilation," says Matthew Barber, a scholar of Yazidi history at the University of Chicago who is in Dohuk interviewing Yazidi refugees. "Memory of persecution is a core component of their identity," he says.
Isolated geographically, and accustomed to discrimination, the Yazidis forged an insular culture. Iraq's Yazidis rarely intermarry with other Kurds, and they do not accept religious converts. "They became a closed community," explains Khanna Omarkhali, of the University of Göettingen.
Victims of Hussein's Regime
Yet, as Kurdish speakers, Yazidis often share the same political fate as Iraq's other Kurds. In the late 1970s, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein launched brutal Arabization campaigns against the Kurds in the north. He razed traditional Yazidi villages, and forced the Yazidis to settle in urban centers, disrupting their rural way of life. Hussein constructed the town of Sinjar, and forced the Yazidis to abandon their mountain villages and relocate in the city.
After the United States toppled Hussein in 2003, Iraqi Kurds were given an autonomous region in northern Iraq known as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). But Sinjar, along with many border regions at the edge of the KRG, remains an area of dispute between the Kurds and the government in Baghdad. The KRG claims Sinjar as Kurdish, while Baghdad still considers the area under its control.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/08/140809-iraq-yazidis-minority-isil-religion-history/
Russia is actually a target of terrorism all the time. Outside of North Korea none of the other countries come close to the oppression under Assad or Iraq or other countries in the region such as Saudi Arabia or Egypt.
WTF does terrorism matter if you're not free? And what is the difference between people fighting against their oppressive government & terrorism? In the 2010 - Iraqis protested Sunni & Kurdish people demanding either participation in the new government or portions of the country to elect a country more representative to their interests. This went on until the 2014 Iraqi Offensive.
Same thing in Syria
While protesters were only demanding freedom and some reforms, it was not long before they started calling for the toppling of the regime and its security apparatus.
Today, four years into the Syrian revolution, the scenario is not what protesters had wished for. The country is divided into four states — the Kurds’ state, the revolutionaries’ state, President Bashar al-Assad’s state and the the Islamic State's (IS) state — while regional forces such as Iran, Turkey and others act as a main engine in the war. Several rebel factions and groups have emerged under several names, such as the Levant Front or Jabhat al-Shamiyya, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Jabhat al-Nusra, while Assad is still clinging to the presidency although some neighborhoods in the capital, Damascus, have spun out of his control.
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/03/syria-revolution-fourth-anniversary-arms-against-assad.html#ixzz3WlJBjC8G
The "Arab Spring" inspired people in several countries of the region to fight their oppressive governments so explaining how Assad & Al-Maliki are responsible in how it relates to the current problem is certainly correct. In Iraq you have the entire northern half of the population that doesn't view the new government as legitimate. Saddam Hussein isn't a good analogy because Assad is just about a Hitler style mass murderer (not so much concentration camps but wiping out men, women, & children in mass killings). Saddam Hussein wasn't as oppressive as his neighbors down south and there were far more legitimate candidates for "regime change" all around the around.
To his credit Hussein did do this
------
Saddam sets free political prisoners
Saddam Hussein ordered a surprise amnesty for almost all prisoners, including those in political detention, yesterday in an apparent attempt to strengthen his support in the face of US threats of war.
Large crowds gathered to celebrate outside the country's jails shortly after the midday amnesty was announced. All those who are to be pardoned, thought to number several thousand, are to be released within two days.
Officially the amnesty was to mark the Iraqi president's victory in a strictly controlled referendum last week in which he claimed he won a 100% Yes vote.
"The generous amnesty by his excellency the president is to show gratitude and pride in the heroic stand of the people who said Yes to him," Mahmoud Diyab al-Ahmed, the interior minister, said.
The decision is more likely to be part of an attempt to build up the president's support at home. For a regime in which paranoia flourishes at the highest levels, the release of sensitive political prisoners is unprecedented.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/oct/21/iraq.rorymccarthy
You're right that Saddam Hussein isn't the main problem the US is. I actually think the House of Saud is but the US isn't helping things especially with its insane double standards
RiverNoord
(1,150 posts)You don't seem much like discussing things with, but, seriously...
So, let's start with China - 1992 and 1997 Urumqi bombings, 2010 Aksu bombing, 2011 'knife and bomb' attacks in Hotan, 2011 knife and bomb attacks in Kashgar, 2014 knife and bomb attack in Urumqi...
Every hear of this little thing called the Cultural Revolution? Or a place called Tienanmen Square? Those weren't episodes of 'oppression' - they were very, very violent state-perpetrated acts of terrorism. Violence committed against unarmed people for a political purpose.
Then there's North Korea. North Korea is basically a terrorism-run state. The terrorists run the show.
Singapore? Research a group called Jemaah Islamiah. Their big blowout was in Bali in 2002 - killed over 200 people. They're still around, occasionally blowing something and someone up...
Russia? Were you around for the Belsan school hostage crisis? 385 people killed, most by gas employed by the Russian forces as they burst in. Horrible thing. Lots and lots of additional acts of terrorism committed by Chechen groups - still going strong.
Of course, there are also the Russian gangs that film themselves violently accosting gay males. Have you seen any of those videos? They are terrorist acts - plain and simple. Putin's Russia doesn't much care about those...
Terrorism was virtually unheard of in Iraq before 2003, by the way. Pretty much none there. The Baath regime was pretty vicious against political opponents, but nowhere near North Korea levels, where you can grow up in a labor camp because your grandfather was somehow determined to be an enemy of the state once upon a time...
So - probably not such a great idea for the United States, which is on almost precisely the opposite side of the globe, to go around bombing people in the area we call the 'Middle East.' We create 'terrorists' when we do that.
Turborama
(22,109 posts)
freshwest
(53,661 posts)For an example of what she may have endured, read this:
UN: Islamic State may have committed genocide against Yazidis in Iraq
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/19/un-islamic-state-genocide-yazidis-iraq-human-rights-war-crimes
Just the tip of the iceberg there.
Thanks for posting this little bit of good news, Steve.
WhoWoodaKnew
(847 posts)If you were actually there to see some of the worst stuff that ISIS is doing to people (raping, murdering, mowing down all the young men and taking their wives, beheadings, etc), would your opinion change regarding the world rescuing these people? It would be a very hard decision for me if I actual SAW the worst of it.
