With villages on the front lines endlessly changing hands between ISIS and the Kurdish Peshmerga in northern Iraq, the Kurds have at times seen these villages as a liability, forcing them to spread their forces thinner to defend, and widening the front lines.
A new report from Amnesty International, however, suggests the Peshmerga’s “solution” to this problem is increasingly to just burn Arab villages they capture to the ground, expelling the population, and accusing them of being “pro-ISIS.”
If they weren’t pro-ISIS before, burning their villages to ground certainly is going to do the trick, and the Amnesty report suggested thousands of homes have been destroyed to make sure that the displaced have no homes to return to.
Incredibly, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) doesn’t appear to be denying the report at all, insisting simply that in expelling the Arabs “we are taking back some of what was ours,” with officials openly talking about chasing enough Arabs out of the area around Sinjar to ensure that after the war it is dominated by Kurds and Yazidis exclusively.
Of course, the mass destruction of civilian homes and the forcible transfer of populations are both huge violations of international law, but the KRG appears to believe that, so long as they are at the fore of the ISIS war, they can get away with about anything.
The ISIS war has served as an opportunity for the KRG to dramatically expand its territory across Iraq. In the wake of the fall of Mosul to ISIS, the Peshmerga quickly moved in to oil-rich Tikrit, and KRG officials have ruled out ever returning the city to Iraq.
The expansion of the KRG’s territory seems to be setting the stage for the Kurds to secede outright from Iraq after the war, and with the US throwing an ever-growing array of weapons at the KRG “to fight ISIS,” they are also laying the foundation for an independent Kurdistan, and one which seems to be increasingly centered on the notion of ethnic cleansing.
Why should they not get away with this? The Americans have supported Israel acting like this for decades in Palestine, just as they acted against their own native people, as did Australia and other “democracies”.
The promise held out by United States of an “independent” Kurdistan began before Gulf/ Kuwait war and during 12years ofbIraq embargo spec forces of Israel, US and Brits trained armed and financed the Kurds so that by time of Gulf War II the Kurd Peshmurga was an autonimous region within Iraq and its units fought Saddams forces.
The Kurdistan flag has been flying since end of Gulf War I and US and Turkey have aided Kurds to steal Iraq oil and ship to Turkey to finance the civil and parislly their military.
Kurdistan will never truly be a sovereign nation but it will have all thebtrapings of such and hopefully even if under Euro and US military financial thumbs the Kurd people find at least some form of national identity and peace.
“if under Euro and US military financial thumbs the Kurd people find at least some form of national identity and peace.”
There is no peace through war. So you are advocating a Kurdish version of Zionism even though the Kurds are becoming sectarian against other Arabs? Even though Netanyahu is favorable of Kurdish statehood?
Seems like we haven’t learned the lesson from Zionism. Funding a certain sect or religion will only lead to ethnic cleansing. The same happened to Iraq when we had funded and armed the Iraqi Shiite government. It became genocidal against Sunni Muslims.
Get in power and make it permanent by establishing a fair and just society, the only way to go. So, why can’t Empire USA learn that simple lesson?
The US and their lacky euro and Arab collaborators have genocided Iraq but by allowing a semblence of Iraqi political establishments a very large remnent of Iraq survivors now work at beck and call of foreign financial interest.
The stability of those who do find employ is a great force of control whereby being an Iraqi is unimportant to their futures.
The ew educated by foreign schooling and tech training has made them part of a universal work force. Whose managers do not recognize borders or nationality except as tools for profits.
The new Iraqi just wants to be secure, and the Kurds have already sold their resources and management of them in order to give such security in at least the Kurdistan they stole from Iraq.
That secure economy is what the Kurds as a whole want and yes they have Nationalistic fanatics that US fund for now but once they are of no use they will be labled the new terrorist and be eliminated.
Just as in US and Euros give them a decent living where they have enough for small luxury and a good screw and they become domesticated chattel.
ONLY WAY TO END WAR
As wealth is the property we own above what is needed for a healthy life, as the greater your wealth the greater is your desire to go to war for wealth and greater your need to kill to protect wealth, if this world is to ever end wars, it must first outlaw the ownership of wealth.
Destroying homes and expelling Arabs will only convince the Arabs to join ISIS.
Yes and so self-evident is it that the Kurd working-class is destroying their future, my guess is that the Western powers are somehow running the show.
So-called Arab democratic alliance concocted by US consist of YPG and a bunch of Arab desert thieves and robbers. No wonder the same villages are robbed. The YPG is an armed wing of PYD, a Syrian/Iraqi affiliate of PKK.
The PYD numerous times said they will not occupy Arab villages even after they liberate them from ISIL, hence suppose victories of US supported Kurds in Iraq is just a propaganda and announced two months ago march on Raqqa will not materialize anytime soon. YPG take money from US or even ISIL for smuggling stolen Syrian oil, cooperate with Russians in Aleppo area, exploits the Syrian oil fields and smuggle it to Turkey through Iraq to buy weapons but they have no illusion that they are alone in their struggle to rebuild Kurdish state, carving 40% of Turkey and US will stab them in the back as soon as convenient.
Even this alleged US air base in Syrian Kurdistan under YPG is just a play to milk Americans for money, they also offered Russia to build their air-base there. They realize that neither US nor Russian want creation of independent Kurdish state while they disagree on everything else hence they have to pretend to be a friend to both.
More on the Syrian war can be found here:
https://syrianwarupdate.wordpress.com/