Mosul - did the US deliberately target civilians?

“Mosul and Kirkuk bombed by US,” reported the Daily Mail on March 24th.
“The United States has been targeting Mosul and Kirkuk in recent days as Washington slowly moves troops into the region to open a new front in its ground war on Iraq, which has been waged mainly from the south via Kuwait.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-174902/Mosul-Kirkuk-bombed-US.html

So far so unremarkable. Of greater cause for concern was an Iraqi News report two days earlier which said, “A senior security source announced on Tuesday, that dozens of ISIS militants were killed, including Arabs and foreigners, in an aerial bombardment carried out by the international coalition aviation on the University of Mosul.”
http://www.iraqinews.com/iraq-war/dozens-isis-militants-killed-aerial-bombardment-targeted-mosul-university/

Mosul is a key stronghold of ISIS in Iraq, which the Iraqi army and their US allies have been aiming to retake for some months. But a different version of events is emerging. Reports suggest that Mosul University’s targeting by US warplanes inflicted significant civilian casualties. One source, whom I prefer to keep anonymous as she is still based in Iraq, said the University’s engineering college, science college, part of the agriculture college and vocational school had been struck, as well as the faculty members’ residential building.

Unlike the usual night-time bombardments, the air strike on Mosul University appears to have been carried out in broad daylight at a time when the campus was most crowded. Around 50 deaths, including women and children are reported, and more than double that number injured.

The bombing was carried out on the 13th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq and was evidently intended to be a spectacular reminder of US firepower. Two questions must be asked, however. Firstly, did the US deliberately intended to inflict largescale civilian casualties under the guise of its war on ISIS? And secondly, why has there been no western media coverage whatsoever of what may be a significant war crime?

Pink-Slipping Hillary: On Remembering the Victims of the Iraq War

Ahead of International Women's Day on March 8th, the following is an excerpt from False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Clinton , edited by Liza Featherstone and forthcoming June 14 of this year.

http://commondreams.org/views/2016/03/07/pink-slipping-hillary-remembering-victims-iraq-war

In March 2003, just before the US invasion of Iraq, about one hundred CODEPINK women dressed in pink slips weaved in and out of congressional offices demanding to meet with representatives. Those representatives who pledged to oppose going to war with Iraq were given hugs and pink badges of courage; those hell-bent on taking the US to war were given pink slips emblazoned with the words “YOU’RE FIRED.”

When we got to Hillary Clinton’s office, we sat down and refused to leave until we had a meeting with the Senator. Within an hour, Clinton appeared. “I like pink tulips around this time of the year; they kind of remind ya that there may be a spring,” she began, looking out at the rows of women in pink. “Well, you guys look like a big bunch of big tulips!”

It got even more awkward after that. Having just returned from Iraq, I relayed that the weapons inspectors in Baghdad told us there was no danger of weapons of mass destruction and that the Iraqi women we met were terrified about the pending war and desperate to stop it. “I admire your willingness to speak out on behalf of the women and children of Iraq,” Clinton replied, “but there is a very easy way to prevent anyone from being put into harm’s way and that is for Saddam Hussein to disarm and I have absolutely no belief that he will.”

We thought the easiest way to prevent harming women, children and other living things in Iraq was to stop a war of aggression, a war over weapons of mass destruction that UN inspectors on the ground couldn’t find — which were, in fact, never found because they didn’t exist. Clinton, however, was steadfast in her commitment to war: She said it was our responsibility to disarm Saddam Hussein and even defended George W. Bush’s unilateralism, citing her husband’s go-it-alone intervention in Kosovo.

Disgusted, CODEPINK cofounder Jodie Evans tore off her pink slip and handed it to Clinton, saying that her support for Bush’s invasion would lead to the death of many innocent people. Making the bogus connection between the September 11, 2001, attacks and Saddam Hussein, Clinton stormed out, saying, “I am the Senator from New York. I will never put my people’s security at risk.”

But that’s just what she did, by supporting the Iraq war, draining our nation of over a trillion dollars that could have been used for supporting women and children here at home, which could have instead been rerouted to the social programs that have been systematically defunded over the last few decades of Clinton’s own political career, and ultimately snuffing out the lives of thousands of US soldiers — for absolutely no just cause.

If Clinton supported the Iraq war because she thought it politically expedient, she came to regret her stance when the war turned sour and Senator Barack Obama surged forward as the candidate opposed to that war.

But Clinton didn’t learn the main lesson from Iraq — to seek non- violent ways to solve conflicts. Indeed, when the Arab Spring came to Libya in 2010, Clinton was the Obama administration’s most forceful advocate for toppling Muammar Gaddafi. She even out-hawked Robert Gates, the defense secretary first appointed by George W. Bush, who was less than enthusiastic about going to war. Gates was reluctant to get bogged down in another Arab country, insisting that vital US interests were not at stake, but Clinton nevertheless favored intervention. 

When Libyan rebels carried out an extrajudicial execution of their country’s former dictator, Clinton’s response was sociopathic: “We came, we saw, he died,” she laughed. at sent a message that the US would look the other way at crimes committed by allies against its official enemies.

In a weird bit of rough justice, the political grief Clinton has suffered over the September 11, 2012, attack on a US diplomatic outpost in Benghazi that killed four Americans might never have occurred had Clinton not supported the US intervention in Libya’s civil war. While republicans have focused relentlessly on the terrible deaths of the US diplomats, the larger disaster is the ensuing chaos that left Libya without a functioning government, overrun by feuding warlords and extremist militants. In 2015, the suffering of desperate refugees who flee civil unrest — many of whom drown in the Mediterranean Sea — is a direct consequence of that disastrous operation.

Libya was part of a pattern for Clinton. On Afghanistan, she advocated a repeat of the surge in Iraq. When the top US commander in Kabul, General Stanley McChrystal, asked Obama for 40,000 more troops to fight the Taliban in mid-2009, several top officials — including Vice President Joe Biden — objected, insisting that the public had lost patience with a conflict that had already dragged on too long. But Clinton backed McChrystal and wound up favoring even more surge troops than Defense Secretary Gates did. Obama ultimately sent another 30,000 American soldiers to Afghanistan.     

Clinton’s State Department also provided cover for the expansion of the not-so-covert drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen. Clinton’s top legal adviser, Harold Koh, exploited his pregovernment reputation as an advocate for human rights to declare in a 2010 speech that the government had the right not only to detain people without any charges at Guantanamo Bay but also to kill them with unmanned aerial vehicles anywhere in the world.

When it came to Syria, Obama’s top diplomat was a forceful advocate for military intervention in that nation’s civil war. When Obama threatened air strikes in 2013 to punish the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons, Clinton publicly supported him, ignoring polls showing that more than 70 percent of Americans opposed military action. She described the planned US attack on Syria as a “limited strike to uphold a crucial global norm,” although one of the clearest global norms under the UN Charter is that a country should not attack another country except in self-defense.

Clinton advocated arming Syrian rebels long before the Obama administration agreed to do so. In 2012, she allied with CIA Director David Petraeus to promote a US-supplied-and-trained proxy army in Syria. As a US Army general, Petraeus spent enormous amounts of money training Iraqi and Afghan soldiers with little success, but that did not deter him and Clinton from seeking a similar project in Syria. Together, they campaigned for more direct and aggressive US support for the rebels, a plan supported by leading republicans like John McCain and Lindsey Graham. But few in the White House agreed, arguing that it would be difficult to appropriately vet fighters and ensure that weapons didn’t fall into the hands of extremists.

Clinton was disappointed when Obama rejected the proposal, but a similar plan for the US to “vet and train moderate rebels” at a starting cost of $500 million was later approved. Some of the trained rebels were quickly routed and captured; others, more concerned with toppling Assad than fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIL), defected to the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra. In September 2015, Commander of US Central Command General Lloyd Austin told an incredulous Senate Armed Services Committee that the $500 million effort to train Syrian forces has resulted in a mere four or five fighters actively battling ISIL. Undeterred, Clinton said that as commander-in-chief, she would dramatically escalate the program.

In October 2015, Clinton broke with the Obama White House on Syria by calling for the creation of a no-fly zone “to try to stop the carnage on the ground and from the air, to try to provide some way to take stock of what’s happening, to try to stem the ow of refugees,” she said in a TV interview on the campaign trail.

While the Obama White House approved limited air strikes against ISIL, it has resisted creating a no-fly zone on the grounds that effective enforcement to prevent Assad’s planes from flying would require large amounts of US resources and could pull the military further into an unpredictable conflict.

Clinton’s position is at odds not only with President Obama but also with the position of Bernie Sanders, who, at this writing, is her main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sanders has warned that a unilateral US no-fly zone in Syria could “get us more deeply involved in that horrible civil war and lead to a never-ending US entanglement in that region,” potentially making a complex and dangerous situation in Syria even worse.

Clinton did come out in support of President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, but even that position comes with a heavy load of bellicose baggage. Back in April 2008 she warned that the US could “totally obliterate” Iran in retaliation for a nuclear attack on Israel — prompting Obama to warn against “language that’s reflective of George Bush.” In 2009, as Secretary of State, she was adamant that the US keep open the option of attacking Iran over never-proven allegations it was seeking the nuclear weapons that Israel already has. She opposed talk of a “containment” policy that would be an alternative to military action should negotiations with Tehran fail.

Even after the agreement was sealed, she struck a bullying tone: “I don’t believe Iran is our partner in this agreement,” Clinton insisted. “Iran is the subject of the agreement,” adding that she would not hesitate to take military action if Iran attempts to obtain a nuclear weapon. “We should expect that Iran will want to test the next president. They will want to see how far they can bend the rules,” she said in a September 2015 speech at the Brookings Institution. “That won’t work if I’m in the White House.”

To bolster her tough stance, Clinton suggested deploying additional US forces to the Persian Gulf region and recommended that Congress close any gaps in the existing sanctions to punish Iran for any current or future instances of human rights abuses and support for terror.

It’s true that the Iran nuclear agreement allowed for additional possible sanctions unrelated to Iran’s nuclear program, but it also required parties to avoid action “inconsistent with the letter, spirit and intent” of the deal. Clinton’s call for new sanctions violates the deal’s intent.

On Israel, Clinton has positioned herself as more “pro-Israel” than President Obama. She vows to bring the two nations closer together, promising to invite the right-wing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit the White House within her first month in office. She has distanced herself from Obama’s feud with Netanyahu over the prime minister’s efforts to derail the Iran nuclear deal and his comments opposing the creation of a Palestinian state. referring to Obama’s policy toward Netanyahu, Clinton said that such “tough love” is counterproductive because it invites other countries to delegitimize Israel. Clinton promised the people of Israel that if she were president, “you’ll never have to question whether we’re with you. The United States will always be with you.”

Clinton has also voiced her opposition to the Palestinian-led nonviolent campaign against the Israeli government called BDS — boycott, divestment and sanctions. In a letter to Jewish mega donor Haim Saban, she said BDS seeks to punish Israel and asked Saban’s advice on “how leaders and communities across America can work together to counter BDS.”

As secretary of state, Clinton missed opportunity after opportunity to shine as the nation’s top diplomat. In July 2010 she visited the Korean Demilitarized Zone with Defense Secretary Robert Gates to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the start of the Korean War. Standing at the site of the most militarized border in the world at a time of great tension between North and South Korea, she could have publicly recognized that the 1953 Armistice Agreement that ended the fighting on the Korean peninsula was supposed to be followed up a few months later by a peace treaty that would move toward reconciliation but that never happened. Clinton could have used this occasion to call for a peace treaty and a process of reconciliation between the two Koreas. Instead she claimed that the US military presence in Korea for decades had led to the current successful result, a statement hard to reconcile with sixty years of continuous hostilities.

As Secretary of State, Clinton failed miserably in her attempt to “reset” the US relationship with Russia, and after leaving office, she has criticized the Obama administration for not doing more to contain Russia’s presence in Ukraine since the 2014 annexation of Crimea. She put herself “in the category of people who wanted to do more in reaction to the annexation of Crimea,” insisting that the Russian government’s objective is “to stymie, to confront, to undermine American power whenever and wherever they can.”

It was only after Clinton resigned as secretary of state and was replaced by John Kerry that the agency moved away from being merely an appendage of the Pentagon to one that truly sought creative, diplomatic solutions to seemingly intractable conflicts. President Obama’s two signature foreign policy achievements — the Iran deal and the groundbreaking opening with Cuba — came after Clinton left. These historic wins serve to highlight Clinton’s miserable track record in the position.

When Clinton announced her second campaign for the presidency, she declared she was entering the race to be the champion for “everyday Americans.” As a lawmaker and diplomat, however, Clinton has long championed military campaigns that have killed scores of “everyday” people abroad. As commander-in-chief, there’s no reason to believe she’d be any less a warhawk than she was as the senator who backed George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, or the Secretary of State who encouraged Barack Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan.

Clinton may well have been the administration’s most vociferous advocate for military action. On at least three crucial issues — Afghanistan, Libya, and the bin Laden raid — she took a more aggressive line than Defense Secretary Gates, a Bush-appointed Republican.

Little wonder that Clinton has won the support of many pundits who continually agitate for war. “I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, told the New York Times. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he said, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”

Let’s call it what it is: more of the interventionist policies that destroyed Iraq, destabilized Libya, showered Yemen with cluster bombs and drones, and legitimized repressive regimes from Israel to Honduras.

A Hillary Clinton presidency would symbolically break the glass ceiling for women in the United States, but it would be unlikely to break through the military-industrial complex that has been keeping our nation in a perpetual state of war — killing people around the world, plenty of them women and children.  

Iraq - the killing continues

Mike Phipps finds no grounds for optimism in recent developments.

2016 began badly for human rights in Iraq. Here are some headlines from the first few weeks of the year, focusing on the crimes of ISIS.

ISIS executes 80 people by firing squad in central Nineveh - Iraqi News (January 9th).
ISIS executes 12 people for refusing to fight security forces in Mosul - Iraqi News (January 9th).
Islamic State holding estimated 3,500 slaves in Iraq, says UN - The Guardian (January 19th).
ISIS executes 9 who fled from the combat in Mosul - Iraqi News (January 20th).
Mass grave in Iraq's Ramadi holds at least 40 Islamic State victims: - Reuters (January 28th).

Buzzfeed reported on January 9th: “The United Nations released a report revealing the “staggering” levels of violence against civilians that occurred in the Iraq conflict between Jan. 1, 2014, and Oct. 31, 2015. The U.N.’s Assistance Mission to the country spoke to victims, survivors, and witnesses of violations of international human rights or humanitarian law, and concluded that the militant group ISIS continued to commit “systemic and widespread violence” that “may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide.”
http://www.buzzfeed.com/franciswhittaker/7-shocking-statistics-that-reveal-the-levels-of-violence-aga#.yhL2kkD37V

Among the figures quoted in the article, the following stand out:
A total of 18,802 civilians were killed in the conflict between January 1st, 2014, and October 31st, 2015.
Between January 1st, 2014, and October 31st, 2015, 36,235 civilians were wounded.
A total of 3,206,736 people were internally displaced between January 1st, 2014, and September 29th, 2015.
An estimated 439 civilians were killed in air strikes, and hundreds more were wounded.

The last statistic underlines that not all the carnage can be laid at the door of ISIS. US air strikes continue to inflict civilian casualties, as does the shelling of the Iraqi Army. But the activities of irregulars in areas freed from ISIS control is also a major concern. Al Jazeera reported on December 4th: “Sunni Muslims are facing forced evictions, abductions, and other serious human rights abuses in areas of Iraq freed from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) control, the United Nations said. Analysts have warned that Sunni Arabs are being discriminated against in Iraq by either the Shia-led government in Baghdad or Kurdish forces in the north, helping to radicalise communities and setting back efforts to defeat ISIL.”
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/12/iraq-sunnis-suffer-abuse-areas-isil-151204113537273.html

A few days later, Reuters reported: “Two unpublished investigations show that the United States has consistently overlooked killings and torture by Iraqi government-sponsored Shi'ite militias.” The report documented how a Shia militia organisation under the control of the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior ran secret prisons and carried out systematic kidnapping and assassinations. This was covered up by both the US and Iraqi Administrations. It concluded: “Washington’s policy of expediency has achieved some of its short-term aims. But in allowing the Shi’ite militias to run amok against their Sunni foes, Washington has fueled the Shia-Sunni sectarian divide that is tearing Iraq apart.” http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/mideast-crisis-iraq-militias/

On January 28th, Niqash reported that Diyala province was undergoing “ethnic and sectarian ‘cleansing’” at the hands of Shia militias and Kurdish troops, with Sunnis not being allowed to return to their homes following the expulsion of ISIS.
http://www.niqash.org/en/articles/security/5202/Diyala-Province-Undergoing-Violent-Ethnic-and-Sectarian-Cleansing.htm

Al Jazeera also reported the mass destruction of Arab homes in northern Iraq by Kurdish forces. In what may amount to war crimes, “Kurdish forces bulldozed, blew up and burned down thousands of homes in Arab villages to avenge perceived support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group after capturing the areas,” according to a report produced by Amnesty International.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/kurds-accused-razing-arab-villages-northern-iraq-160120041948445.html

A few days earlier a report by Human Rights Watch also highlighted the targeting of civilians by militias: “Kurdish and Shia Turkmen armed groups have repeatedly harmed and endangered civilians in clashes in Iraq’s Tuz Khurmatu district, in Salah al-Din province, since October 2015. The armed groups have killed, wounded, and abducted civilians and destroyed scores, if not hundreds, of homes and shops.”
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/01/13/iraq-ethnic-fighting-endangers-civilians

And on January 31st, Reuters reported, “The abduction and killing of scores of Sunni civilians in eastern Iraq this month and attacks on their property by Iranian-backed Shi'ite militiamen could constitute a war crime, Human Rights Watch said.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-abuses-idUSKCN0V90DA

Meanwhile Germany is sending more troops to Iraq, the US admit they actually concealed the real numbers of its troops stationed in the country, the Czechs are sending more materiel and Turkey is still fighting Kurdish rebels on Iraqi soil. And as War on Want’s recent report “Mercenaries Unleashed” highlighted, large numbers of unregulated private military security contractors continue to operate in the country.
http://media.waronwant.org/sites/default/files/Mercenaries%20Unleashed%2C%202016.pdf?_ga=1.131372043.5011735.1454701351

Britain too plans to continue its bombing campaign this year. Whether the start of 2017 will look any better for ordinary Iraqis is anyone’s guess.

Iraq Occupation Focus Newsletter No 295

Iraq Occupation Focus
www.justiceforiraq.blogspot.co.uk

Newsletter No. 295
February 4th, 2016

Diyala Province Undergoing Violent Ethnic and Sectarian Cleansing

Niqash reports (January 28th): Locals in Diyala province say the area is undergoing ethnic and sectarian “cleansing”. Sunnis are not being allowed back into the multi-ethnic province, post the Islamic State.

U.S. military changes how it discloses civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria

Washington Post reports (January 26th): As the U.S. military prepares to expand its operations against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria, it has altered how and when it discloses sensitive information about when it kills civilians with airstrikes.

In recent days, U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East from its headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., announced the results of investigations into 10 airstrikes “alleged to have resulted in civilian casualties and determined to be credible.” The first five were announced Jan. 15, and the second five were disclosed a week later.

Czechs to send guns, ammunition to Iraq and Jordan to fight Islamic State

Reuters report (January 25th): The Czech government voted to send guns and ammunition to Iraq and Jordan to support the fight against Islamic State, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said.

U.S. to Put 'Boots on the Ground' in Iraq to Combat ISIL

Alternet reports (January 22nd): Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced the U.S. will deploy "boots on the ground" in Iraq to help local forces fight the so-called Islamic State. The policy shift is a turnaround from the Obama's White House's previous stance of not deploying combat troops in Iraq and one sure to shape the foreign policy debate in the 2016 election.

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Iraq Occupation Focus Newsletter No 294

  Ethnic Fighting endangers Civilians; now it’s Kurds and Shiites

  HRW reports (January 17th): Kurdish and Shia Turkmen armed groups have repeatedly harmed and   endangered civilians in clashes in Iraq’s Tuz Khurmatu district, in Salah al-Din province, since October  22015. The armed groups have killed, wounded, and abducted civilians and destroyed scores, if not   hundreds, of homes and shops.

  Offensive against Islamic State in Mosul unlikely in 2016: Iraqi Kurdish   deputy PM

  Reuters report (January 16th): A much anticipated campaign to recapture Iraq's northern city of   Mosul from Islamic State is unlikely to happen this year, the Kurdistan region's deputy prime minister    said, dampening hopes the militants could be driven from the country in 2016. 

 Iraqi force enters southern oil city to disarm tribal fighters

Reuters report (January 15th): Iraq has sent an armored army division and a police strike force into        southern oil city of Basra to disarm residents amid intensified feuding among rival Shi'ite Muslim       t tribes,  local officials and security sources said.

  Pentagon Admits to 8 More Civilians Killed in Iraq

Antiwar.com reports (January 15th): In a significant shift from Centcom’s long-standing policy of blanket refusals to admit to civilian deaths in airstrikes against ISIS targets, the Pentagon today issued a statement admitting to eight civilians killed in the second quarter of 2015 in 3 separate incidents.   

   Ambassador denies U.S. conducting helicopter raids in northern Iraq

Reuters report (January 10th): The U.S. ambassador to Iraq has denied reports that the United States has been carrying out helicopter raids against Islamic State militants in northern Iraq.

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Iraq occupation Focus Newsletter No 293

 Iraq Occupation Focus
www.justiceforiraq.blogspot.co.uk Newsletter No. 293 January 13th, 2016

Over 52,000 Killed in Iraq during 2015

Antiwar.com reports (January 1st): Antiwar.com has found that at least 52,045 people were killed across Iraq during 2015, while at least 19,651 were wounded. The number of fatalities reported was slightly higher than in 2014, but the number of wounded was substantially lower. These figures should be taken as very rough estimates and probably low estimates at that.

Terrified families emerge from rubble after battle of Ramadi

Reuters report (January 1st): Terrified families waved white flags as they emerged from homes reduced to rubble in the Iraqi city of Ramadi, where government troops were still battling Islamic State fighters holed up, five days after the army recaptured the city center.

80% of Ramadi destroyed

Al-Araby reports (December 30th): Islamic State group retreated from Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's Anbar province, after eight days of fierce battles that left nearly 80 percent of the city's infrastructure destroyed.

Neighbourhoods, homes, businesses, bridges, sewers, almost everything has been either destroyed by booby-traps and explosive devices that IS had set up everywhere around the city, or by Iraqi and US-led coalition forces airstrikes and artillery bombardment, as they sought to minimise casualties in their ranks.

Iraqi PM says Turkey not respecting agreement to withdraw troops

Reuters report (December 30th): Iraq's prime minister accused Turkey of failing to respect an agreement to withdraw its troops from the country's north and its foreign minister said if forced, Iraq could resort to military action to defend its sovereignty.

Exclusive: Iraqi army needs Kurds' help to retake Mosul – Zebari

Reuters report (December 29th): The Iraqi army will need the Kurds' help to retake Mosul, the largest city under the control of Islamic State with the planned offensive expected to be very challenging in a region home to rival religious and ethnic groups, an Iraqi minister said.

Ethnic cleansing by Sunni and Shia jihadis is leading to a partition of the Middle East

The independent reports (December 27th): Sectarian and ethnic cleansing by all sides in Syria and Iraq is becoming more intense, ensuring that there are few mixed areas left in the two countries and, even if the war ends, many refugees will find it too dangerous to return to their homes.

Communities which once lived together in peace are today so frightened of each other after years of savage warfare that the more powerful sect or ethnic group is forcing out the weaker one. This pattern is repeating itself everywhere from the Sunni towns captured by Shia militiamen in provinces around Baghdad to Christian enclaves in central Syria under threat from Isis, and in Turkmen villages just south of the Syrian-Turkish border being bombed by Russian aircraft.

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Of interest to readers

Al Jazeera English TV have recently aired an episode on the situation in Iraq, featuring Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the former Iraqi National Security Advisor, freely available online here http://aje.me/1uAyTM4

The publicising of this programme by Justice for Iraq does not imply support for its editorial content.