The Jim Bakker Show

Iraq seeks international help to investigate Islamic State crimes

FILE PHOTO: Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari speaks to reporters during a news conference in Baghdad, Iraq July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Khalid al Mousily

By Riham Alkousaa

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Iraq asked for international help on Wednesday to collect and preserve evidence of crimes by Islamic State militants and said it is working with Britain to draft a United Nations Security Council resolution to establish the investigation.

Britain, international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney and Nadia Murad, a woman from the Yazidi religious minority who was enslaved and raped by Islamic State fighters in Mosul, have been pushing Iraq to allow a U.N. inquiry.

The 15-member Security Council could have established an inquiry without Iraq’s consent, but Britain wanted Iraq’s approval in a letter formally making the request. Iraq sent the letter, seen by Reuters, on Monday.

“We request assistance of the international community to get benefited from international expertise to criminalize Daesh terrorist entity,” wrote Iraq’s foreign minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in the letter, which was translated from Arabic.

Daesh is another name for Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS.

Britain’s mission to the United Nations said on Twitter that it was working with Iraq on a draft resolution. It was not immediately clear when it could be put to a vote in the council.

Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate effectively collapsed last month, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces completed the recapture of Mosul, the militants’ capital in northern Iraq, after a nine-month campaign.

Parts of Iraq and Syria remain under Islamic State control, especially along the border.

“I hope that the Iraqi government’s letter will mark the beginning of the end of impunity for genocide and other crimes that ISIS is committing in Iraq and around the world,” Clooney said in a statement.

“Yazidis and other ISIS victims want justice in a court of law, and they deserve nothing less,” Clooney said.

The Yazidis beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions. Islamic State militants consider the Yazidis to be devil-worshippers.

U.N. experts said in June last year that Islamic State was committing genocide against the Yazidis in Syria and Iraq to destroy them through killings, sexual slavery and other crimes.

The Iraqi government said in the letter that it was important to bring Islamic State militants to justice in Iraqi courts.

(Reporting By Riham Alkousaa; editing by Grant McCool)

Iraq acknowledges abuses committed against civilians in Mosul campaign

A member of Iraqi federal police patrols in the destroyed Old City of Mosul, Iraq August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s office said on Thursday a unit of the security forces committed “abuses” against civilians during the offensive to oust Islamic State (IS) insurgents from the city of Mosul.

His government began an investigation in May into a report by German newsmagazine Der Spiegel that included images of apparent torture taken by a freelance photographer embedded with the Interior Ministry’s elite Emergency Response Division (ERD).

“The committee has concluded … that clear abuses and violations were committed by members of the ERD,” a statement from Abadi’s office said. It added that the perpetrators would be prosecuted.

Spiegel’s photos showed detainees accused of affiliation with Islamic State hanging from a ceiling with their arms bent behind them, and the journalist wrote of prisoners being tortured to death, raped and stabbed with knives.

The ERD was one of several government security forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition that drove IS out of Mosul, the northern city the jihadists seized in 2014 and proclaimed their “capital”, in a nine-month campaign that ended in July.

The ERD initially denied the Spiegel report and accused the German weekly of publishing “fabricated and unreal images”.

The photographer said he had initially intended to document the heroism of Iraqi forces fighting Islamic State but that a darker side of the war had gradually been revealed to him.

The soldiers with whom he was embedded allowed him to witness and photograph the alleged torture scenes, he said. He has now fled Iraq with his family, fearing for his safety

Islamic State’s self-proclaimed “caliphate” effectively collapsed with the fall of Mosul but parts of Iraq and Syria remain however under its control, especially in border areas.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; editing by Mark Heinrich)

With a wary eye on Iran, Saudi and Iraqi leaders draw closer

By Ahmed Rasheed and Sylvia Westall

BAGHDAD/DUBAI (Reuters) – It was an unusual meeting: An Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim cleric openly hostile to the United States sat in a palace sipping juice at the invitation of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, the Sunni kingdom that is Washington’s main ally in the Middle East.

For all the implausibility, the motivations for the July 30 gathering in Jeddah between Moqtada al-Sadr and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman run deep, and center on a shared interest in countering Iranian influence in Iraq.

For Sadr, who has a large following among the poor in Baghdad and southern Iraqi cities, it was part of efforts to bolster his Arab and nationalist image ahead of elections where he faces Shi’ite rivals close to Iran.

For the newly elevated heir to the throne of conservative Saudi Arabia, the meeting – and talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in June – is an attempt to build alliances with Iraqi Shi’ite leaders in order to roll back Iranian influence.

“Sadr’s visit to Saudi Arabia is a bold shift of his policy to deliver a message to regional, influential Sunni states that not all Shi’ite groups carry the label ‘Made in Iran’,” said Baghdad-based analyst Ahmed Younis.

This policy has assumed greater prominence now that Islamic State has been driven back in northern Iraq, giving politicians time to focus on domestic issues ahead of provincial council elections in September and a parliamentary vote next year.

“This is both a tactical and strategic move by Sadr. He wants to play the Saudis off against the Iranians, shake down both sides for money and diplomatic cover,” said Ali Khedery, who was a special assistant to five U.S. ambassadors in Iraq.

“NECESSARY EVIL”

Ultimately, Sadr seeks a leadership role in Iraq that would allow him to shape events without becoming embroiled in daily administration, which could erode his popularity, diplomats and analysts say.

Such a role – religious guide and political kingmaker – would fit with the patriarchal status the Sadr religious dynasty has for many Shi’ite Arabs in Iraq, Lebanon, Kuwait and Bahrain.

Days after the Jeddah meeting, Sadr met Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, who has also taken an assertive line against Tehran, the dominant foreign power in Iraq since the 2003 U.S. invasion ended Sunni minority rule.

Iran has since increased its regional influence, with its forces and allied militias spearheading the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and holding sway in Baghdad.

For Saudi Arabia, which sees itself as the bastion of Sunni Islam, less Iranian influence in Iraq would be a big win in a rivalry that underpins conflict across the Middle East.

“There are plans to secure peace and reject sectarianism in the region,” Sadr told the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper last week, saying that it was “necessary to bring Iraq back into the Arab fold”.

When asked what Saudi Arabia hoped to achieve with Sadr’s recent visit to the Kingdom and the UAE, a Saudi official at the Saudi embassy in Washington said: “Saudi Arabia hopes to encourage Iraqis to work together to build a strong resilient and independent state. With that in mind, it will reach out to any party who could contribute to achieving that goal.”

Washington supports the Saudi-Iraq rapprochement, but the embracing of Sadr raises questions about whether it sees a man known for his anti-Americanism as a reliable figure.

“It is perhaps close to a necessary evil,” a U.S. official said of the visit, although he said it was a “very uncomfortable position for us to be in” due to Sadr’s anti-Americanism, which had led to the deaths of U.S. citizens.

“His visits to the region, and broadly the high-profile visits by Iraq, those things broadly are good, in that they get Iraq facing the Gulf nations and they help to turn their attention away from Iran,” the official said.

A second U.S. official said that Washington viewed the visits positively, “not because we’re Sadr fans but because we’ve been pushing Saudi Arabia to mend fences and open gates with Iraq”.

LIMITED INFLUENCE

A politician close to Sadr said the Jeddah meeting was aimed at building confidence and toning down sectarian rhetoric between the two countries.

The rapprochement is “a careful testing of the waters with the Abadi government and some of the Shia centers of influence like Sadr and the interior minister,” said Ali Shihabi, executive director of the Washington-based Arabia Foundation.

How far detente can go is unclear: Iran has huge political, military and economic influence in Iraq. Saudi Arabia is playing catch-up, having reopened an embassy in Baghdad only in 2015 after a 25-year break caused by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

Whatever the Saudis and Gulf states do, “Iran will stay the key player in Iraq for at least the next 10 years,” said Wathiq al-Hashimi, chairman of the Iraqi Group for Strategic Studies think-tank.

Khedery said Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states were not skilled at exerting external influence.

“They usually just throw money at issues and the beneficiaries of that largesse become very, very wealthy and that’s it,” he said. The Iranians in Iraq offered intelligence, diplomatic support and cash and wielded “big sticks” against anyone stepping out of line, he said.

Still, the Jeddah meeting has produced practical results.

Sadr’s office said there was an agreement to study investment in Shi’ite regions of southern Iraq. Riyadh will also consider opening a consulate in Iraq’s holy Shi’ite city of Najaf, Sadr’s base.

Saudi Arabia would donate $10 million to help Iraqis displaced by the war on Islamic State in Iraq, Sadr said, while Iraq’s oil minister said Riyadh had discussed building hospitals in Basra and Baghdad.

After the Saudi trip, Sadr again urged the Iraqi government to dismantle the Tehran-backed Shi’ite paramilitary groups involved in the fight against Islamic State – a theme that is expected to become a top election issue.

A source from Sadr’s armed group told Reuters that after the visit orders were issued to remove anti-Saudi banners from its headquarters, vehicles and streets.

Sadr had called on the Saudis to “stop hostile speeches by fanatical hardline clerics who describe Shi’ites as infidels,” and Crown Prince Mohammed had promised efforts toward this, the politician close to Sadr said.

It remains to be seen how far Saudi Arabia can prevent anti-Shi’ite outbursts by its media or on social media, since Wahhabism, the kingdom’s official ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim school, regards Shi’ism as heretical.

But the Saudi minister of state for Gulf affairs, Thamer al-Subhan, called for tolerance after greeting Sadr, using Twitter to decry “Sunni extremism and Shi’ite extremism”.

Saudi Arabia this week cracked down on Twitter users, including a radical Sunni cleric who published insulting comments about Shi’ites.

WIDER RAPPROCHEMENT

As part of the wider detente, Iraq and Saudi Arabia announced last month they are setting up a council to upgrade strategic relations.

The Saudi cabinet has approved a joint trade commission to look at investment while a Saudi daily reported the countries planned to reopen a border crossing shut for more than 25 years – a point raised by Sadr on his visit.

Brett McGurk, U.S. special envoy for the coalition against Islamic State, tweeted earlier on Wednesday that he had visited the Iraq-Saudi border: “Closed since ’90. ISIS attacked in ’15. Today: secure, re-open, bustling w/1200 pilgrims per day.”

Another sign of rapprochement is an agreement to increase direct flights to a daily basis. Iraqi Airways hopes to reopen offices in Saudi airports to help Iraqis travel to the kingdom, especially for pilgrimages, Iraq’s transport ministry said.

Then there is coordination on energy policy.

As OPEC producers, the two cooperated in November to support oil prices. Their energy ministers discussed bilateral cooperation and investment last week.

Iranian reaction to the meetings has been minimal.

“Iraqi personalities and officials do not need our permission to travel outside of Iraq or to report to us,” foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said last week, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

(Additional reporting by Maher Chmaytelli in Erbil, William Maclean and Rania El Gamal in Dubai and Yara Bayoumy in Washington; Editing by Giles Elgood and Leslie Adler)

New life amid the ruins of Mosul’s maternity hospital

By Raya Jalabi

MOSUL (Reuters) – As yet unnamed twin babies lie in an incubator in a run-down room in Mosul’s main maternity hospital. Less than two weeks old, they are two of seven newborns crammed into a makeshift premature baby ward.

Born just three weeks after Iraqi forces declared that they had finally recaptured the last part of the city from Islamic State, the twins won’t know what it’s like to grow up under the jihadists’ draconian rule. But they are lucky in more ways than one – had they been born months earlier, their chances of survival would have been slim as the hospital’s neo-natal wings had been burned down by the militants.

Al-Khansa Hospital in East Mosul may be a shell of its former self but it is still the city’s main government-run maternity facility. Last month alone, despite severe shortages of medicines and equipment, it delivered nearly 1,400 babies.

When Islamic State took over Mosul in 2014, the hospital stayed open – but residents were only allowed to use a quarter of it.

“We had all these fighters and their wives coming in and giving birth here,” said hospital administrator Dr Aziz, adding that he had lost count of the number of militants’ babies delivered in his facility. “Mosul’s local residents always came second.”

As Iraqi Forces began their campaign to liberate the city from Islamic State control last year, the militants took over al-Khansa, kicking out patients and sometimes shooting at staff to make them leave.

“We kept it open as long as we could,” Aziz said.

Islamic State turned the hospital into a warehouse to store medical supplies – mainly glucose injections and cough syrup. As their defeat looked imminent, they started fires and detonated explosives throughout the hospital.

“They knew exactly what to blow up and how to do the most damage,” Aziz said, walking through the charred remains of the operating theaters.

SHORTAGES OF EVERYTHING

Al-Khansa reopened just weeks after East Mosul was cleared of militants in January. But its needs are still dire.

“We have shortages of everything,” said the hospital’s director, Dr Jamal Younis. “Beds, equipment, medicines.”

At present, the hospital can only handle births and deaths, Younis said. For anything in between, patients have to travel to facilities miles away – an impossible expense for most.

In a hot and crowded room, Um Mohammad sat with her grandson, only a few months old and barely able to move. She said she had been waiting there for 15 days, trying to find $25 to pay for blood tests.

She has been living in a camp since an air strike flattened her house in West Mosul, killing her daughter and five of her grandchildren.

“I can’t take him back to the camp without treatment or a diagnosis,” she said, “but I don’t have the money.”

Al-Khansa has yet to receive funds for reconstruction from the Health Ministry. Instead it had been relying on NGOs and donations from residents and staff – most of whom have not been paid for more than two years, since Baghdad cut salaries to choke off funding to Islamic State.

“When the city was under Isis control, we were forced to come into work every day or they would punish us – seize our houses, beat us, threaten our families,” said Aziz.

“But now, even though we’re still unpaid and the walls have fallen down, we’re happy to come in every day to help our community.”

(Reporting by Raya Jalabi; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum will fuel instability, Turkey says

A Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fighter walks near a wall, which activists said was put up by Turkish authorities, on the Syria-Turkish border in the western countryside of Ras al-Ain, Syria January 29, 2016. REUTERS/Rodi Said

ANKARA (Reuters) – Next month’s referendum on Iraqi Kurdish independence violates Iraq’s constitution and will further destabilize the region, a Turkish government spokesman said on Tuesday.

Iraq’s Kurds have said they will go ahead with the referendum on independence on Sept. 25 despite concerns from Iraq’s neighbors who have Kurdish minorities within their borders, and a U.S. request to postpone it.

“The referendum would contribute to instability in the region,” Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister and government spokesman Bekir Bozdag told a news conference after a cabinet meeting in Ankara, adding the decision to go ahead with the vote “violates the constitution of Iraq”.

Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), designated a terrorist organization by Ankara, the European Union and United States, has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.

In Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad’s government has lost control of large parts of the country, Kurdish YPG fighters hold territory along the border with Turkey and the Kurdish-led administration plans local elections next month – a move Damascus has rejected as a “joke”.

The U.S. State Department has said it is concerned that the referendum in northern Iraq will distract from “more urgent priorities” such as the defeat of Islamic State militants.

Turkish Energy Minister Berat Albayrak said last week the referendum would harm energy cooperation with northern Iraq’s Kurdish regional authority, which pumps hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day to Turkey’s Ceyhan export terminal.

(Reporting by Dirimcan Barut; Editing by Dominic Evans and Janet Lawrence)

Saudi Arabia and Iraq to re-open border crossing after 27 years

FILE PHOTO: A member from the Iraqi security forces stands guard at a checkpoint during a patrol at the border between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, February 17, 2016. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia and Iraq plan to open the Arar border crossing for trade for the first time since 1990, when it was closed after the countries cut ties following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, Saudi local media reported on Tuesday.

Saudi and Iraqi officials toured the site on Monday and spoke with Iraqi religious pilgrims, who for the past 27 years had access to the crossing only once annually during the haj season, the Mecca newspaper reported.

The governor of Iraq’s southwestern Anbar province, whose staff was on hand for the ceremonies, said the Iraqi government had deployed troops to protect the desert route leading to Arar and called its opening a “significant move” to boost ties.

“This is a great start for further future cooperation between Iraq and Saudia Arabia,” said Sohaib al-Rawi.

The announcement follows a decision by the Saudi cabinet on Monday to establish a joint trade commission with Iraq.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are both wooing their northern neighbor in an effort to halt the growing regional influence of arch-foe Iran.

The Sunni-led Arab Gulf countries have hosted influential Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr for talks with their crown princes in recent weeks, rare visits after years of troubled relations.

Sadr’s office said his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman resulted in an agreement for Saudi Arabia to donate $10 million in aid to the Iraqi government and study possible investments in Shi’ite regions of southern Iraq.

The opening of border crossings for trade was also on a list of goals for the talks published by Sadr’s office.

Sadr commands a large following among the urban poor of Baghdad and southern Iraq, and is one of few Iraqi Shi’ite leaders to keep some distance from Tehran.

The Saudi-Iraqi rapprochement extends back to 2015, when Saudi Arabia reopened its embassy in Baghdad following a 25-year break.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir visited Baghdad in February, and the two countries announced in June they would set up a coordination council to upgrade ties.

(Reporting by Katie Paul and Ahmed Rasheed, editing by Pritha Sarkar)

Islamic State still a threat as Mosul residents return to city in ruins

By Raya Jalabi

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Abu Ghazi stood smoking a cigarette outside what used to be his home in Mosul’s Old City, where only the sound of the footsteps of a few soldiers on patrol and twisted pieces of metal and fabric flapping in the wind disturb the eery silence.

“They should just bulldoze the whole thing and start over,” he said, gazing at the rows of collapsed buildings with their contents strewn across the upturned streets.

“There’s no saving it now, not like this.”

Hundreds of yards away on Wednesday Federal Police shot an Islamic State fighter as he emerged firing his gun from an underground tunnel on Makkawi Street.

Similar stories have been reported by aid workers and residents of West Mosul in the past few days.

“West Mosul is still a military zone as the search operations are ongoing for suspects, mines and explosive devices,” a military spokesman said.

“The area is still not safe for the population to return.”

However, in nearby Dawrat al Hammameel, with machines whirring in his workshop, Raad Abdelaziz said he has encouraged neighbors to return despite the still very real danger weeks after the government declared victory over the jihadists.

Just this week, his nephew, Ali, saw a militant emerge from under a house and try to injure some civilians before he was caught and handed over to the Federal Police.

But Abdelaziz, whose factory was up and running just two weeks after he returned to Mosul with his family, persists: We want people in the neighborhood to come back to their jobs.”

He is already filling orders for water and gas tanks from residents intent on rebuilding. “Life is already coming back gradually,” he said.

FLOCKING OVER THE PONTOON

Like Abu Ghazi and Raad Abdelaziz, dozens of those displaced by the fighting have returned to West Mosul, which saw some of the fiercest fighting in nine-month battle to rout the militants from their stronghold in Iraq’s second-largest city.

At the northern pontoon, one of two remaining access points between East and West Mosul, hundreds walked towards the western half of the city, carrying suitcases, household goods and livestock. Others drove across the makeshift bridge in overflowing coaches.

Ziad al Chaichi came back to reopen his tea shop in West Mosul a week ago, having fled his nearby home in March.

“Everything’s still a mess – we have nothing. No water, no electricity – we need the essentials,” he said in his shop where dainty porcelain tea pots hung from the walls. He was thankful that some people were buying his tea, including Abdelfattah, a neighbor who sat with a group of men outside.

“We want life to return here,” said Abdelfattah, 60, who came back to a partially collapsed home with his family about three weeks ago. “Not for us – the older generation – but for the children… Until then, we’re just sitting here patiently, drinking tea.”

PUNGENT REMINDER

Even in death, the militants haunt Mosul’s residents.

A handful of their bodies are lying around the Old City, a pungent reminder of the last ten months.

“We wish they would just take them away,” said Najm Abdelrazaq. But unlike with civilian bodies, the police and the military refuse to allow it, he said.

“Why should we dignify them and remove the bodies?” one soldier said, when asked why the bodies were being left to rot in the 47 degree Celsius (116 Fahrenheit) heat. “Let them rot in the streets of Mosul after what they did here.”

Returnees are concerned about the smell and the risk of disease, but they’d rather have the bodies of their neighbors recovered first.

Around the corner from Chaichi’s shop, scrawled across several collapsed houses in blue ink was: “The bodies of families lie here under the rubble.”

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

Three years since Islamic State attack, Yazidi wounds still open

Yazidis visit a cemetery during a commemoration of the third anniversary of the Yazidi genocide in Sinjar region, Iraq August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Maher Chmaytelli

SINJAR, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraq’s Yazidis marked three years since Islamic State launched what the United Nations said was a genocidal campaign against them on Thursday, but their ordeal is far from over despite the ouster of the jihadist fighters.

Militants were driven out of the last part of the Yazidi homeland in northern Iraq in May. However, most Yazidis have yet to return to villages they fled when Islamic State over-ran Sinjar in the summer of 2014, killing and capturing thousands because of their faith.

Nearly 3,000 Yazidi women and children remain in Islamic State captivity, and control over Sinjar is disputed by rival armed factions and their regional patrons. Justice for the crimes Yazidis suffered, including sexual enslavement, has also so far proved elusive.

“The Yazidis’ wound is still bleeding,” one man told Reuters at a ceremony attended by several thousand people including the mayor and other local dignitaries, held at a temple at the foot of the mountain that dominates Sinjar.

“The Kurds and the Iraqi government are fighting for Sinjar and we are paying the price,” said the man.

A U.N. human rights Commission of Inquiry, which declared the killings of thousands of Yazidis to be a genocide, said on Thursday that the atrocity had not ended and that the international community was not doing enough to stop it.

“The genocide is on-going and remains largely unaddressed, despite the obligation of States… to prevent and to punish the crime,” the commissioners said in a statement.

Islamic State fighters killed thousands of captured men during their attack on the Yazidis, a religious sect whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions. Islamic State considers Yazidis as devil-worshippers.

Images of desperate Yazidis fleeing up the mountain in the blazing summer heat were broadcast around the world and helped to galvanize the United States to conduct its first air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq.

At least 9,900 of Iraq’s Yazidis were killed or kidnapped in just days in the Islamic State attack in 2014, according to a study documenting the number of Yazidis affected which could be used as evidence in any trial for genocide.

About 3,100 Yazidis were killed – with more than half shot, beheaded or burned alive – and about 6,800 kidnapped to become sex slaves or fighters, according to the report published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.

Enslaved women and girls are now reportedly being sold by Islamic State fighters trying to escape the U.S.-led assault on their Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, the U.N. commission said.

DISPUTE OVER SINJAR

The array of forces that drove Islamic State out of Sinjar are now vying for control of the area near the borders of Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Kurdish peshmerga forces retook around half of Sinjar in late 2015, effectively annexing it to the autonomous region they hope to convert into an independent state. A referendum on independence is due to be held in September, which the government in Baghdad opposes.

Mainly Shi’ite paramilitary groups, some backed by Iran, retook the rest of the Yazidi homeland in May, bringing them within meters of the peshmerga.

Another group, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), also gained a foothold in Sinjar and clashed with the peshmerga earlier this year. Its presence has made the area a target for Turkey, which has fought a three-decade war against the PKK on its own soil.

“People are worried about returning,” said General Ashti Kojer, the local head of Kurdish police, known as Asayish. “The (Sinjar) region has become a conflict zone”.

Kojer and another local official said the political environment was preventing international organizations from working on reconstruction and rehabilitation in Sinjar, further discouraging Yazidis from returning.

Water has to be trucked in, electricity is supplied from private generators, schools are closed, and the closest hospital is Dohuk — around three hours’ drive away.

“The lack of services and political problems are preventing families from returning,” Jalal Khalaf, the director of the mayor’s office in Sinjar, told Reuters.

BLAME GAME

In a speech at the ceremony, the Yazidi mayor of Sinjar, Mahma Xelil, said former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was responsible for the tragedy because he was in charge when the militants overran Mosul, capturing billions of dollars of weapons they used in their attack on the minority.

Other Yazidis blame the Kurds, who were defending the area at the time, for failing to resist the IS onslaught.

At the ceremony, people carried signs saying “Stop Yazidi Genocide”. Families streamed into cemeteries to remember their loved ones. Women wore bandanas saying “Genocide”.

In the city of Sinjar, posters and banners hung up on roundabouts depict harrowing scenes from the attack three years ago: families fleeing and distressed women and children.

Large parts of the city, which was also home to Muslim Kurds and Arabs, remain empty. Around 1,000 Yazidi families have returned to Sinjar since the city was retaken in 2015, according to Khalaf. The city and the surrounding area had been home to around 400,000 Yazidis.

Farhan Lazgin brought his family back to Sinjar around one year ago because he was fed up with living in a camp.

His home was in relatively good shape, but his two children have missed out on a year of school, and may fall further behind because teachers are not returning to the city.

Zeido Shammo, one of the few shopowners to have returned to the city, said he no longer trusted local forces: “We ask for international protection,” he said, echoing the sentiment of many Yazidis.

Although Islamic State has been routed from the area, Shammo said he could not feel safe until their hardline ideology was eradicated too: “Daesh (Islamic State) is defeated but we are still worried because the mentality of Daesh still exists.”

Opposite his shop, Islamic State slogans have yet to be painted over. One reads: “The State of the Caliphate Remains”.

(Writing by Isabel Coles, additional reporting by Tom Miles, editing by Peter Millership and David Stamp)

Embassy attack fuels fears ISIS bringing Iraq war to Afghanistan

By Hamid Shalizi

KABUL (Reuters) – An attack on the Iraqi embassy in Kabul has reinforced fears that Islamic State militants are seeking to bring the group’s Middle East conflict to Afghanistan, though evidence of fighters relocating from Iraq and Syria remains elusive.

Islamic State said it carried out Monday’s attack, which began with a suicide bomber blowing himself up at the embassy’s main gate, allowing gunmen to enter the building and battle security forces.

The choice of target, three weeks after the fall of Mosul to Iraqi troops, appeared to back up repeated warnings from Afghan security officials that, as Islamic State fighters were pushed out of Syria and Iraq, they risked showing up in Afghanistan.

“This year we’re seeing more new weapons in the hands of the insurgents and an increase in numbers of foreign fighters,” said Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Gen. Dawlat Waziri. “They are used in front lines because they are war veterans.”

One senior security official put the number of foreigners fighting for both Islamic State and the Taliban in Afghanistan at roughly 7,000, most operating across the border from their home countries of Pakistan, Uzbekistan or Tajikistan, but also including others from countries such as India.

While such foreign fighters have long been present in Afghanistan, there has been growing concern that militants from Arab countries, who have left the fighting in Syria as pressure on Islamic State there has grown, have also been arriving in Afghanistan through Iran.

“We are not talking about a simple militant fighter, we are talking about battle-hardened, educated and professional fighters in the thousands,” another security official said.

“They are more dangerous because they can and will easily recruit fighters and foot soldiers here.”

The United States, which first came to Afghanistan in 2001 after Al Qaeda’s attacks on New York and Washington, is considering sending more troops to Afghanistan, in part to ensure the country does not become a haven for foreign militant groups.

But while Afghan and U.S. officials have long warned of the risk that foreign fighters from Syria could move over to Afghanistan, there has been considerable scepticism over how many have actually done so.

In April, during a visit to Kabul by U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, said that, while ISIS had an “aspiration” to bring in fighters from Syria, “we haven’t seen it happen”.

“NEW TACTICS, WEAPONS”

U.S. commanders say that, in partnership with Afghan security forces, they have severely reduced Islamic State’s strength over the past year with a combination of drone strikes and Special Forces operations.

But according to Afghan intelligence documents reviewed by Reuters, security officials believe Islamic State is present in nine provinces, from Nangarhar and Kunar in the east to Jawzjan, Faryab and Badakhshan in the north and Ghor in the central west.

“In recent operations, we have inflicted heavy losses on them but their focus is to recruit fighters from this area,” said Juma Gul Hemat, police chief of Kunar, an eastern province where Islamic State fighters pushed out of their base in neighboring Nangarhar have increasingly sought refuge.

“They are not only from Pakistan or former Taliban, there are fighters from other countries and other small groups have pledged their allegiance to them,” he said.

Afghan officials say newly arrived foreign fighters have been heavily involved in fighting in Nangarhar province, Islamic State’s main stronghold in Afghanistan, where they have repeatedly clashed with the Taliban.

Security officials say they are still investigating Monday’s embassy attack and it is too early to say whether there was any foreign influence or involvement.

Islamic State put out a statement identifying two of the attackers as Abu Julaybib Al-Kharasani and Abu Talha Al-Balkhi, Arabic names that nonetheless suggest Afghan origins. Khorasan is an old name for the Central Asian region that includes Afghanistan, while Balkh is a province in northern Afghanistan.

What little contact is possible with fighters loyal to Islamic State in Afghanistan suggests that the movement itself is keen to encourage the idea that foreign militants are joining its ranks.

“We have our brothers in hundreds from different countries,” said an Islamic State commander in Achin district of Nangarhar.

“Most of them have families and homes that were destroyed by the atrocity and brutality of the infidel forces in Arab countries, especially by the Americans,” he said. “They can greatly help us in terms of teaching our fighters new tactics, with weapons and other resources.”

(Editing by Alex Richardson)

Iraqi general sees easy victory over exhausted IS fighters in Tal Afar

An Iraqi top army generals, Major General Najm Abdullah al-Jubbouri speaks during an interview with Reuters in Mosul, Iraq July 30, 2017. Picture taken July 30, 2017. REUTERS/Khalid al-Mousily

By Isabel Coles

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – A senior Iraqi general predicted a relatively easy victory for his forces in the upcoming battle for the Islamic State haven of Tal Afar as up 2,000 fighters and their families there are “worn out and demoralised”.

Less than one month after declaring victory in the city of Mosul, Iraqi forces are poised to attack Tal Afar, which is around 40 km to the west of Mosul, in what will be the next major battle against the militants.

“I don’t expect it will be a fierce battle even though the enemy is surrounded,” Major-General Najm al-Jabouri told Reuters in an interview.

Jabouri, a key battlefield commander, said the fight would be simple compared to the nine months of gruelling urban combat in Mosul, which took a heavy toll on Iraqi forces.

“The enemy is very worn out,” said Jabouri, who was mayor of Tal Afar when it was overrun by insurgents more than a decade ago. “I know from the intelligence reports that their morale is low,” the general added.

The city, with about 200,000 residents before falling to Islamic State, experienced cycles of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi’ites after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and produced some of Islamic State’s most senior commanders.

It has also become the focus of a wider regional struggle for influence. Turkey, which claims affinity with Tal Afar’s predominantly ethnic Turkmen population, opposes the involvement of Shi’ite paramilitary groups fighting with Iraqi forces, some of which are backed by Iran.

Jabouri estimated there were between 1,500 and 2,000 militants left in Tal Afar. The figure may include some family members who support them.

“It’s a large number, but the terrain is favourable (to Iraqi forces),” Jabouri said. Only one part of the city, Sarai, is comparable to Mosul’s Old City, where Iraqi troops were forced to advance on foot through narrow streets. The rest of Tal Afar can be navigated in tanks and armoured vehicles.

FOREIGN FIGHTERS

Unlike Mosul, where Islamic State effectively held hundreds of thousands of people hostage to slow the advances of Iraqi forces, Jabouri said few civilians remained in Tal Afar, except those related to the militants.

Iraqi forces expect to face bombs, snipers and booby-traps. Despite being surrounded, there is no sign the militants are running low on ammunition, Jabouri said.

Many local Turkmen members of Islamic State already managed to escape by mingling with displaced civilians and fled to Turkey, where they can blend in anonymously, Jabouri said.

Of the remaining militants, Jabouri believed many were foreigners — from Turkey, former Soviet Republics and Southeast Asia — who became trapped after Iraqi forces severed all routes between Mosul and Tal Afar earlier this year.

The city had already been sealed off by Kurdish forces to the north, and mainly Shi’ite paramilitaries to the south leading to shortages of food and water.

The U.S.-led coalition has conducted air strikes in and around Tel Afar, paving the way for Iraqi forces to storm the city after reorganising and recuperating from Mosul.

Jabouri said all that remained was to receive orders from Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi to launch the assault: “perhaps it will be in days, or a week, or two”.

Beyond Tal Afar, Islamic State still controls other pockets of territory in Iraq, including the town of Hawija and the surrounding area.

ECHOES OF THE PAST

The upcoming battle for Tal Afar carries echoes of the past.

As the United States reduced its troop presence in northern Iraq after the invasion, Sunni insurgents seized the opportunity to take over most of Tal Afar in 2005.

Jabouri, who was mayor at the time, held out in the 16th-century Ottoman citadel that used to dominate the city from a hilltop in the centre as Iraqi and American troops led by Colonel H.R. McMaster routed the insurgents.

The city stabilised, and McMaster’s approach was held up as a blueprint for successful counter-insurgency strategy, but in years to come Tal Afar lapsed back into communal violence and insurgents took root again.

Jabouri says he met with McMaster, who is now U.S. National Security Adviser, around one month ago and they discussed Tal Afar. “It was different,” said Jabouri, comparing the past battle with the future one.

Islamic State is more formidable an enemy than al Qaeda was, he said, but Iraqi forces have also gained experience over three years of fighting the group.

The U.S. role is less conspicuous this time, and the historic citadel is no longer standing because Islamic State blew it up.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles, editing by Peter Millership)

Sign up for Jim Bakker Show