GUEST column Fort
GUEST column Fort Report: Closure in Iraq U.S. REPRESENTATIVE JEFF FORTENBERRY SPECIAL TO THE CHALDEAN NEWS Decisions in government are not always about nice programs. Sometimes, it’s about life and death. The other night in my DC office, I stood in front of framed photos of young men and women from Nebraska who died in Iraq. Some of their families I know. Some I have never met. We have given so much, lost so much in Iraq, it’s hard to understand why further engagement is necessary. Here’s the hard reality: 400,000 Yazidis from Northern Iraq are still trapped in tent structures unable to safely return home. Iraq used to be home to over 1.5 million Christians. Now, around 250,000 hold on. Militias control large areas of Northern Iraq. Last week, I appeared on Nebraska Educational Television with Nibras Khudaida, one of Nebraska’s 3000 Yazidis, the largest such community in America. I first met Nibras over two years ago in Lincoln after she wrote me a passionate letter, in broken English. Subsequently serving as an intern in my office, Nibras quickly advanced. She became a high school debate champion and gave the class commencement address. She is now an honors student at Omaha’s Creighton University. Nibras is one of the beneficiaries of a program I helped introduce in Congress that enabled her father, and others who courageously served American forces in Iraq, to gain entry into the United States. It was for persons like the Khudaidas—facing imminent, diabolical death at the hands of a genocidal force—that our refugee and asylum programs were established. As an international community, we should seek to create secure conditions on the ground so that displaced persons can repatriate to their homelands. For Yazidi refugees receiving support from the International Rescue Committee Nebraska’s Yazidis––now patriotic Americans who remain closely tethered to their ancient faith and cultural traditions––that is also what they want for their friends and family back home in Iraq. The story of closure in Iraq involves several key dynamics. First, ISIS is largely defeated, but not extinct. With U.S. government leadership in support, and a coalition of international partners, the Iraq army has fought valiantly and is now a serviceable force. Second, we have transferred funds from multilateral institutions into targeted relief for the most besieged peoples. Third, the sustainability of this solvency depends upon security. That was my clear finding based on the evaluation I undertook on behalf of Vice President Pence last summer in Iraq. At this year’s State of the Union, my guest of honor was Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad, who had been sold into sexual slavery by ISIS and eventually escaped with the help of a Muslim family. Before Nadia arrived at my office, I told a Washington Post reporter that the most important need for Northern Iraq was a security settlement to protect religious minorities. Upon her arrival, and with no advance coordination from me, Nadia affirmed the same conclusion. In support of this goal, my friend Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and I recently introduced the bipartisan H. Res. 259, informally known as The Security Resolution for Northern Iraq, which: • Makes it a policy priority of the United States to support the safe return of the displaced indigenous people of the Nineveh Plain and Sinjar to their ancestral homeland; • Calls upon the Iraqi Government and Kurdistan Regional Government to better integrate religious minorities into the Iraqi Security Forces and Kurdish Peshmerga; • Stresses the importance of working with international partners to accomplish these goals. The Security Resolution for Northern Iraq represents a modest commitment with enormous implications. I am hopeful the United States Congress will agree. If this Iraqi-led security settlement does not come to fruition, Iranian-backed militias will continue to meddle in Northern Iraq, religious and ethnic minorities will continue their mass exodus to Europe, and permanent refugee camps will dot the landscape. Nothing will ever compensate for the tremendous loss of life and limb that Americans endured to ensure that Iraq could have a glimpse of normalcy, a glimmer of possibility, a chance for permanent peace. Performing this last act of duty is not going to fill the hole in their family’s hearts or our hearts. It will, however, help provide closure to America’s decades-long involvement in Iraq, while ensuring justice for the oppressed, stability for Iraq, and the preservation of Iraq’s rich tapestry of religious pluralism so essential for peace in the Middle East. Jeff Fortenberry is a U.S. Representative, representing Nebraska’s first congressional district since 2005. New York Life Congratulates Gabriel H. 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IRAQ today Iraq is pushing to build an isolation camp for 30,000 Iraqis who lived under ISIS in Syria BY LOUISA LOVELUCK AND MUSTAFA SALIM IRBIL, Iraq — Senior Iraqi officials are pressing to establish a special detention camp to isolate as many as 30,000 Iraqis who lived in the Islamic State’s final stronghold in Syria, captured in March by U.S.-backed forces. But as Iraq prepares to repatriate citizens now held in Syria, humanitarian groups have been resisting efforts to move them to a single detention facility, fearing this could create prison camp conditions that would prevent them from reintegrating into society and further radicalize them. Objections from humanitarian groups have already scuttled a proposal to set up a new camp near Tal Afar in the northern province of Nineveh. Senior Iraqi officials, however, remain opposed to the idea of scattering the Islamic State returnees among existing displacement camps around the area. “The goal is to select a special place to contain those people,” said one Iraqi official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue. “It’s for security reasons, but also to keep them alive.” The Islamic State committed atrocities in Iraq and Syria during the nearly five years it controlled territory there. But its rise to power was made possible, in part, by its success in selling itself as a protector and liberator of disaffected Sunni Muslim communities, which felt marginalized by the governments and security forces of those countries. How the Iraqi government proceeds in the coming weeks could have far-reaching consequences. Officials in Baghdad have spent months negotiating a deal to repatriate just more than 30,000 civilians who are now under the control of Syrian Kurds who have neither the means nor desire to continue holding them. The Iraqi families had spent years living under the Islamic State’s selfdeclared caliphate, moving to Syria as the militants lost their Iraqi foothold and then leaving the protostate only as it crumbled. Now, they are packed into the teeming al-Hol displacement camp in northern Syria as Iraqi officials decide their fate and aid groups look on with alarm. The Khazir camp near Irbil, Iraq, already holds thousands of internally displaced Iraqis. About 20,000 Iraqis have voluntarily returned to Iraq since the start of the fight against the Islamic State, humanitarian officials say. More than 1,700 families at al-Hol have also registered with the United Nations for voluntary repatriation, according to humanitarian agencies. Humanitarian groups are urging that the returnees be placed in four existing camps, where the U.N. provides food, medical care, and other services. Fear and resentment The challenge is how to map out a future for the returnees that does not involve indefinite confinement. In existing camps in northern Iraq, families displaced by previous waves of fighting already fret that they cannot go home, citing fears of violent retribution by militias or neighbors the Islamic State had displaced. Tens of thousands of Iraqis with alleged links to the Islamic State have been languishing in those camps for several years. Their experience underscores the dangers of a prolonged stay in the camps. It also highlights the barriers to leaving or reintegrating into Iraqi society. “The biggest concern for us now is that some of our camps are fostering the best environment for a new extremism,” said an Iraqi aid worker. “Even if a family is innocent, it is now being looked at with hatred by [Iraqi] society accusing them of being ISIS families. The government achieves the same by not issuing them papers or giving them proper schools. . . . Organizations will recruit them selling the idea of revenge.” In the sprawling Khazir camp near Irbil, families with ties to the militant group see no good options. They say that staying in the camp would leave them permanently displaced and vulnerable to exploitation by armed groups and predatory camp officials. Inside the camps, women who lost their husbands to airstrikes or prison say they are targeted for sexual violence, by militiamen and camp guards, or forced marriage. Kawakip, 40, who now lives in the Khazir camp, said that two of her daughters had recently been coerced into short-lived marriages with camp outsiders after guards let them in to choose a wife. “These marriages are just sex marriages, but you can’t say no,” said Muntahar, a girl who looked younger than her 16 years. “Then they take you for a week, or for a few months, before throwing you back into the camp.” After visits to the camps last year, researchers from Amnesty International said they had witnessed a deepening sense of resentment among families accused of links to the Islamic State. Dangers of going home But leaving the camps can be daunting and expose families to violence PHOTO BY MOHAMED EL-SHAHED/AFP/GETTY IMAGES by mostly Shiite militias that had battled the Islamic State, a radical Sunni group. “We were told that the Hashd would rape our daughters if we tried to go home,” Kawakip said. “I tried to cross a checkpoint to get to the documentation office so I could get permission to return home, but they stopped me at a checkpoint. They told me they’d kill me if I came back and tried again.” A variety of armed groups, including Sunni tribal and Shiite militias, control territory that many of the returnees would have to traverse to get home. Many of these militias have escalated their threats to block people with a “first degree” connection to the Islamic State from going back to their areas of origin. Moreover, babies born in the time of the caliphate lack official Iraqi birth certificates, meaning the children have no government recognition and could be shut out of Iraq’s education system forever. During visits to four displacement camps, members of every Islamic State-connected family interviewed said they had been threatened by Iraqi officials when trying to procure documentation for children born in areas controlled by the group or to replace documents that had been damaged or stolen. A senior aid official at al-Hol said Iraqi officials are becoming increasingly suspicious that returnees from Syria pose a hostile threat. For their part, many Iraqis at al-Hol, after years of Islamic State indoctrination and menacing statements by Iraqi militias, fear they could be killed if they go back across the border. Human rights activists and Western diplomats say that returnees who remained with the Islamic State until its final stand are those most likely to be treated as social outcasts by other Iraqis. Any camp built explicitly for repatriated families, risks fueling the same grievances that aided the group’s rise in the first place. Erin Cunningham in al-Hol, Syria, contributed to this report. Erin Cunningham in al-Hol, Syria, contributed to this report. JUNE 2019 CHALDEAN NEWS 11
