U.N. Warns Of 'Possible Massacre' In Northeastern Iraq

[bemildred]

The United Nations is calling for action to prevent what it's describing as a possible massacre in Iraq's northeastern city of Amerli, which has been under siege for two months by Islamic State militants.

The city's population is largely Turkmen Shia, seen as apostates by the hardline Sunni Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

, where people are reportedly without electricity or drinking water and said to be running low on food, bears a striking similarity to what occurred at Mount Sinjar earlier this month: The U.S. conducted airdrops of humanitarian aid to the trapped Yazidis at Sinjar and airstrikes against the Islamic State fighters besieging the mountain.

issued in Baghdad today, Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. special representative in Iraq, described "unspeakable suffering" in Amerli.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/08/23/342679314/u-n-warns-of-possible-massacre-in-northeastern-iraq

[The Magistrate]

1. A Serious Ethnic Complication Here, Too, Sir

Nobody nearby likes Turkmen; about the only group more widely despised are Assyrians.

[bemildred]

2. Nothing quite like a power vacuum to expose these little animosities. nt

[The Magistrate]

3. True, Sir

Rightly or wrongly, the Turkmen are viewed by Arabs and Kurds as remnants of Turkish overlordship.

Assyrians provided the English with loyal local troops from the late stages of the Great War on to final departure, and people do remember.

[bemildred]

4. I have noted elsewhere that Ankara on the other hand is most anxious to be seen protecting them.

And one supposes Turkmenistan takes an interest too. But this is not a new crisis, it's more the UN taking note of an existing crisis, since the Turkish press has been worrying about them for some time.

But it all goes back to the failure of the Iraqi state, and the various former Iraqi subject polities taking up arms to fend for themselves in the absence the protection the Iraqi state was supposed to provide.

Edit: and of course the new piratical insurgencies rising up to fill the vacuum. That black flag is very appropriate.

[The Magistrate]

5. We Kicked The Keystone Out Of An Arch, Sir

And profess amazement at the bouncing rubble at our feet....

[unhappycamper]

6. But... But....

said



The only keystone dubya knows about is the Keystone pipeline.