Iraq’s Religious, Ethnic Minorities on Verge of Disappearing: Report

[rug]

People from the minority Yazidi group fleeing forces loyal to ISIS in Sinjar town walk toward the Syrian border near the town of Elierbeh in August 2014. (Rodi Said/Reuters)

By Lucy Westcott
On 7/5/16 at 11:34 AM

After more than a decade of war in Iraq, the country's religious and ethnic minority groups are on the verge of disappearing, according to a new report.

The report documents how several thousand people belonging to minority communities in Iraq have been abducted, maimed or murdered since June 2014, when the Islamic State (ISIS) militant group took control of Mosul, Iraq.

Among them are unknown numbers of women and girls who have been raped or forced into marriage or sexual enslavement by ISIS fighters. Efforts to retake Mosul later this year could result in a total of a million people being displaced, warns the report published on Monday by Minority Rights Group International, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, Institute for International Law and Human Rights, and No Peace Without Justice.

The report is the latest in a string of documents examining the disappearance of minorities in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003. Multiple sides in the conflict—ISIS, Iraqi Security Forces, Popular Mobilization Units and Kurdish Peshmerga—have committed war crimes, the report claims, including the use of chemical weapons, rape, torture and the recruitment of children. Earlier this month, U.N. investigators said ISIS is guilty of carrying out genocide against the Yezidi people.

http://www.newsweek.com/iraq-ethnic-religious-minorities-disappering-isis-477788

[radicalliberal]

1. Isn't it true that --

-- none of this would be happening now if the U.S. had stayed out of Iraq?

[rug]

2. That's exactly correct.