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Report: Hundreds of Islamic State Sex Slaves Face Honor Killings if They Escape

November 25, 2017

Report: Hundreds of Islamic State Sex Slaves Face Honor Killings if They Escape, Breitbart, Edwin Mora, November 24, 2017

AFP/File DELIL SOULEIMAN

Akram reportedly indicated that Turkmen “families are so deeply ashamed that they often don’t want their abducted girls to come back for fear they were violated. If they do escape and return, they face being honor killed.”

The Iraqi Turkmen community, the third-largest ethnoreligious group in Iraq after Arabs and Kurds, identifies with either Shiite or Sunni Muslim traditions.

“Many girls won’t return,” Hasan Turan, an Iraqi lawmaker from the Turkmen Front Party, told Fox News. “Many girls were held as slaves. … I can only hope families accept them if they return. They are the victims.”

While the ISIS kidnapping of thousands of women and girls from Iraq’s ethnoreligious minority group known as Yazidis (or Yezidis) has been well-documented, the abduction of females from other ethnic minorities has been underreported by members of their community out of shame, reports Fox News.

According to the news outlet, an estimated 640 Turkmen girls and at least another 59 women and children from the Shabak minority group remain missing after ISIS swept them into sexual brutality.

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The estimated 640 young girls from Iraq’s Turkmen minority community who remain under the shackles of sexual slavery at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) face honor killings if they escape and return to their families, a former Iraqi lawmaker representing the ethnic group told Fox News.

“We are very conservative. If our wife or sister was raped, we cannot talk about it,” Fawzi Akram, the former Iraqi member of parliament (MP) who now serves as a prominent aid and community leader, told Fox News.

He revealed that “640 of our girls—some younger than 12—are missing by ISIS.”

Last year, the Knights of Columbus, the world’s largest Catholic fraternal organization, and the nonprofit In Defense of Christians unveiled a detailed store-like price list maintained by ISIS for selling sexual slaves as young as 1-year-old “in the name of Allah.”

Honor killings across the globe often involve Muslim males murdering or mutilating a female family member accused of bringing shame and dishonor to their families and Islam.

Akram reportedly indicated that Turkmen “families are so deeply ashamed that they often don’t want their abducted girls to come back for fear they were violated. If they do escape and return, they face being honor killed.”

The Iraqi Turkmen community, the third-largest ethnoreligious group in Iraq after Arabs and Kurds, identifies with either Shiite or Sunni Muslim traditions.

“Many girls won’t return,” Hasan Turan, an Iraqi lawmaker from the Turkmen Front Party, told Fox News. “Many girls were held as slaves. … I can only hope families accept them if they return. They are the victims.”

While the ISIS kidnapping of thousands of women and girls from Iraq’s ethnoreligious minority group known as Yazidis (or Yezidis) has been well-documented, the abduction of females from other ethnic minorities has been underreported by members of their community out of shame, reports Fox News.

According to the news outlet, an estimated 640 Turkmen girls and at least another 59 women and children from the Shabak minority group remain missing after ISIS swept them into sexual brutality.

About 2,900 Yazidi women and girls remain missing, Vian Dakhil, a female representative for Yazidis in the Iraqi Parliament, told Fox News, echoing testimony from Yazidi survivor and human rights activist Nadia Murad before a congressional panel in June 2016.

“The scale of the sexual violence extends far broader than many Iraqis previously documented,” notes Fox News. “The minority Shabak—who reside mostly in villages east of Mosul, their faith and rituals centered on Christian, Yazidi and Islamic adherences—are also suffering in silence.”

Hunien Kaddo, an Iraqi MP who represents the estimated 35,000-strong Shabak community, revealed that ISIS raped at least 28 Shabak women and subsequently poured gasoline on them in cages before setting them ablaze in Mosul.

As ISIS lost Mosul to the U.S.-led coalition and its allies late last year, the jihadist group abducted an additional “59 Shabak women and children” from the surrounding villages, revealed Kaddo.

“I have been visiting displaced and devastated families in recent weeks,” he told Fox News. “They’re daughters are missing. Sadly, there is a lot of shame.”

He pointed out that many Christian women and girls remain in captivity as ISIS sex slaves.

The Yazidis requested help in recovering their missing women and children, Fox News learned from northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Meanwhile, the other minority groups stayed silent.

The United Nations and the United States have determined that ISIS committed genocide against minority groups in Iraq and Syria, including Christians, Yazidis, Turkmen, and Shabak.

Categories: Honor killings, Islam -- the great "Feminist" religion, Islam and females, Islamic State, Turkmen, Yazidis
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Trump Directs State, USAID to Bypass United Nations, Deliver U.S. Aid More Directly to Christians, Yazidis In Iraq

October 26, 2017

Trump Directs State, USAID to Bypass United Nations, Deliver U.S. Aid More Directly to Christians, Yazidis In Iraq, Washington Free Beacon, , October 26, 2017

Yazidi refugees carry their belongings / Getty

“The United States will work hand in hand from this day forward with faith-based groups and private organizations to help those who are persecuted for their faith,” he said. “This is the moment, now is the time, and America will support these people in their hour of need.”

The White House decision is at least six months in the making and comes after several lawmakers and human rights activists have repeatedly argued their case to top officials at the State Department and USAID, which have resisted any change to their “religion-blind” policy of channeling most of the aid money to the United Nations.

That policy, the two U.S. agencies have argued, is “needs-based” and does not give priority to Christians and Yazidis and other religious minorities in Iraq, even though both the Obama and the Trump administrations have publicly declared that both groups, as well as Shiite Muslims and others, have suffered genocide at the hand of ISIS.

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President Trump has issued a White House directive forcing the State Department and USAID to bypass the United Nations and stop its “ineffective” relief efforts aimed at helping Iraqi Christians, Yazidis, and other persecuted religious minorities, and instead to provide the assistance either directly or through “faith-based groups.”

Vice President Mike Pence, in a speech at the In Defense of Christians annual Solidarity Dinner highlighting the plight of persecuted Christians in the Middle East and elsewhere, announced the directive and lambasted the United Nations, arguing the international body has “often failed to help the most vulnerable communities, especially religious minorities.”

“We will no longer rely on the United Nations alone to assist persecuted Christians and minorities in the wake of genocide and the atrocities of terrorist groups,” Pence said.

Vice President Pence ✔@VP

.@POTUS ordered @StateDept to stop funding ineffective relief efforts at @UN & will support persecuted communities thru USAID 

“The United States will work hand in hand from this day forward with faith-based groups and private organizations to help those who are persecuted for their faith,” he said. “This is the moment, now is the time, and America will support these people in their hour of need.”

The White House decision is at least six months in the making and comes after several lawmakers and human rights activists have repeatedly argued their case to top officials at the State Department and USAID, which have resisted any change to their “religion-blind” policy of channeling most of the aid money to the United Nations.

That policy, the two U.S. agencies have argued, is “needs-based” and does not give priority to Christians and Yazidis and other religious minorities in Iraq, even though both the Obama and the Trump administrations have publicly declared that both groups, as well as Shiite Muslims and others, have suffered genocide at the hand of ISIS.

Pence said the United Nations has repeatedly denied funding requests from faith-based groups “with proven track records” working most directly with Christians in Iraq to help provide basic necessities.

“Those days are over,” he said. “Our fellow Christians and all who are persecuted in the Middle East should not have to rely on multinational institutions when America can help them directly.”

Pence said the plight of Christians in Iraq and the Middle East more broadly is dire, and that they are on the verge of extinction in northern Iraq, an area where Christian communities have thrived for thousands of years.

ISIS murders and kidnappings have decimated the Christian population in Iraq, which numbered between 800,000 and 1.4 million in 2002 and is below 250,000 now, according to human rights groups.

Pence also repeatedly referred to ISIS and other extremist Muslim terrorist groups as “radical Islamic terrorism” and held them responsible for the genocide against Christians and other religious minorities.

“Let me assure you tonight, President Trump and I see these crimes for what they are: vile acts of persecution animated by hatred for Christians and the gospel of Christ,” he said. “And so too does this president know who and what has perpetrated these crimes, and he calls them by name: radical Islamic terrorists.”

Catholic charities and activists who have spent years urging the Obama administration and now Trump administration to better assist Christians, Yazidis, and other minority communities in Iraq cheered the move and Pence’s strong words.

“A year ago the United States used the right word to describe what was happening to Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East. That word was genocide. Tonight, those words were put into action,” said Carl Anderson, CEO of the Knights of Columbus.

“For almost two years, the K of C has warned that Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East have been falling through the cracks in the aid system, and has been urging the United States government to provide aid directly to genocide-targeted communities. We are pleased that tonight, the administration has promised to do just that.”

Anderson added that the “real impact” the new Trump policy would have to help Christians in the Middle East and the survival of minority communities “cannot be underestimated.”

Other activists who helped chronicle the genocide against religious minority communities in Iraq also applauded the move.

Activists who have spent years chronicling the mass slaughter of Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities in Iraq cheered the move and Pence’s strong words.

“This is good news and we want to thank President Trump, Vice President Pence, and all those who have been working diligently on this issue,” said former representative Frank Wolf, (R., Va.), who spent decades as a human rights champion in Congress and is now serving as a senior fellow at the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative.

“This should impact humanitarian aid for those living as internally displaced persons and refugees and stabilization assistance for the Christians and Yazidis returning to areas seized from them by ISIS.”

Wolf recently returned from Iraq and testified earlier this month before both the House and Senate about the dire situation facing Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities in Iraq.

The Knights of Columbus, one of the largest Catholic charities, and Aid to the Church in Need, another global Catholic charity, have sent millions of dollars in donations to the Catholic archdiocese in northern Iraq, one of the few groups on the ground working to house and feed displaced Christians and Yazidis and help rebuild their homes.

Stephen Rasche, an attorney for the Catholic archdiocese in Erbil and the director of internal displaced people resettlement programs, in early October accused the U.N. of squandering U.S. taxpayer aid for reconstruction projects.

The aid programs are so mismanaged that some U.S. dollars are going to benefit Iraqis who took over areas that persecuted Christians fled even though the United Nations says the project is aimed at helping Christians, Rasche testified before a House Foreign Affairs panel Oct. 4.

The Washington Free Beacon obtained photos of United Nations Development Program projects in Christian and Yazidi towns in northern Iraq, showing “completed” school-rehabilitation projects that amounted to a thin coat of paint on exterior walls with freshly stenciled UNICEF logos every 30 feet.

Inside the building, the rooms remained untouched and unusable, without running water, power or any furniture, Rasche testified.

Several lawmakers and human rights activists for months have argued that U.S. agencies have a responsibility to intervene more directly and effectively.

Republican Reps. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska, Robert Aderholt of Alabama, and Chris Smith of New Jersey, along with Democrat Rep. Anna Eshoo of California, recently sent a letter to USAID Administrator Mark Green last week arguing that these communities now face “dire conditions where they desperately need assistance if they are to survive.”

“USAID has an immediate opportunity to partner with entities committee to the appropriate reconstruction of damaged homes and public buildings in several key towns in the Nineveh Plain of Iraq,” they wrote in the letter dated Oct. 12.

“Timely action would address provisions outlined in the genocide declarations and mirror the current administration’s desire to help the survivors,” they argued.

The State Department and USAID repeatedly stood by their religion-blind policy of dispensing aid without giving any priority to Christians, Yazidis, and other U.S.-genocide designated religious minorities in Iraq.

Late last week, a U.S. official told the Free Beacon that State Department and USAID plan to continue their policy of dispensing aid “based on need” and did not address criticism about U.N. corruption or the funds not appearing to help Christians, Yazidis and others on the ground.

“As the world’s humanitarian leader, the United States is committed to providing life-saving assistance to those in need,” the U.S. official said. “When providing the assistance, the United States does not discriminate based on race, religion or creed—we provide the assistance based on need.”

As ISIS is driven from Iraq, the lawmakers and activists argue that it is also critical to U.S. national security that that these indigenous communities are supported to prevent Iran from gaining influence in the region.

“Repatriation has a strategic advantage of heading off potential conflict between the KRG and Baghdad while barring an Iranian land bridge to the Mediterranean, which presently threats to fill the vacuum in the Nineveh Plain created by the removal of ISIS,” the lawmakers wrote. “This land bridge will be occupied by forces loyal to Tehran if security and rebuilding fails to come from other quarters.”

Thousands of Christians in the town of Teleskof who had successfully returned home and were trying to rebuild their community after the area was freed from Islamic forces were forced to flee Tuesdayafter Kurdish forces swarmed the town and engaged in a standoff with the Iraqi army.

Sources in touch with the community said late Wednesday the situation in Teleskof was improving as a direct result of U.S. intervention.

Over the last year, Congress has taken several steps to try to provide direct assistance to the minority populations in Iraq. Earlier this year, Congress allocated more than $1.4 billion in funds for refugee assistance and included specific language to ensure that part of the money would be used to assist Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims in Iraq.

The House passed legislation, cosponsored by Smith and Eshoo, that would explicitly authorize the State Department and USAID to direct aid to faith-based entities, such as the Archdiocese of Erbil following congressional delegations to the region.

More recently, the House and Senate have held hearings about the need for the Trump administration to act quickly to get the funds where they are needed.

“We implore you to review proposals from credible organizations on the ground in the region who are committed to these goals, and if deemed worthy, to move swiftly to empower the through available resources to rebuild the region,” they lawmakers wrote.

Update 9:29 a.m.: This post has been updated with comment from the Knights of Columbus.

Categories: Christians, Department of State, Iraq, United Nations, USAID, Yazidis
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Reps Push Trump Admin to Bypass U.N. and Help Iraqi Christians, Yazidis Directly

October 18, 2017

Reps Push Trump Admin to Bypass U.N. and Help Iraqi Christians, Yazidis Directly, Washington Free Beacon,  , October 18, 2017

Church of Mart Shmoni in Erbil / Getty Images

Four House members are pressing the top official of the U.S. Agency for International Development to bypass the United Nations and channel funds intended to help Christians and Yazidis in Iraq directly to Catholic charities and others helping them on the ground.

The urgent push comes amid dire warnings from lawmakers and human rights activists that Christians and Yazidis, already victims of genocide at the hands of the Islamic State, are on the verge of extinction in Northern Iraq, their home for thousands of years.

The lawmakers also point to new evidence of corruption in the United Nations’ process for stabilization projects in Iraq.

Republican Reps. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska, Robert Aderholt of Alabama, and Chris Smith of New Jersey, along with Democrat Rep. Anna Eshoo of California, sent a letter to USAID Administrator Mark Green last week arguing that these communities now face “dire conditions where they desperately need assistance if they are to survive.”

“Returning Christians, Yazidis, and others to their rightful place will reknit the once rich tapestry of pluralism and diversity that existed in the region—an effort that is essential to any hope of durable stability in Iraq and the region,” they wrote in a letter dated Oct. 12.

USAID did not immediately return an inquiry about the letter.

Fortenberry, Aderholt, and Smith are longtime human rights champions. Eshoo has a personal interest in the mission. She is a Chaldean Catholic and first-generation American. Her mother is Armenian and her father is an Assyrian Christian from Iraq.

The letter is the latest effort by a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House and Senate, along with human rights activists and Catholic groups, to persuade the State Department and USAID to change the Obama-era policy of directing most of its money to Iraq through the United Nations.

The lawmakers argue that Catholic charities most connected to the communities on the ground are the only groups that have a track record of helping persecuted minorities survive for the last several years and are best positioned to help them return and rebuild. The United Nations, they argue, has little to show for its assistance to these communities.

As the Washington Free Beacon reported earlier this month, photos of the few United Nations Development Program projects in Ninevah show the work being done is mostly cosmetic in nature. This contradicts claims for the United Nations, which has suggested far more substantial work has been done.

Steve Rasche, an attorney for the Catholic archdiocese of Northern Iraq testified before a House hearing that so-called “completed” school-rehabilitation projects in the towns of Teleskov and Batnaya “take the form of one think coat of painting of the exterior surface walls, with freshly stenciled UNICEF logos every 30 feet.”

Inside, he said, the rooms remain untouched and unusable.

U.S. agencies have a responsibility to intervene more directly and effectively, the lawmakers argue, especially after both the Obama and Trump administrations have declared that Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities in Iraq are the victims of ISIS genocide.

“USAID has an immediate opportunity to partner with entities committee to the appropriate reconstruction of damaged homes and public buildings in several key towns in the Ninevah Plan of Iraq,” they wrote.

“Timely action would address provisions outlined in the genocide declarations and mirror the current administration’s desire to help the survivors,” they argued.

As ISIS is driven from Iraq, it is also critical to U.S. national security that that these indigenous communities are supported to prevent Iran from gaining influence in the region.

“Repatriation has a strategic advantage of heading off potential conflict between the KRG and Baghdad while barring an Iranian land bridge to the Mediterranean, which presently threats to fill the vacuum in the Ninevah Plain created by the removal of ISIS,” the lawmakers wrote. “This land bridge will be occupied by forces loyal to Tehran if security and rebuilding fails to come from other quarters.”

Congress has taken a number of steps to try to provide direct assistance to the minority populations in Iraq. Earlier this year, Congress allocated more than $1.4 billion in funds for refugee assistance and included specific language to ensure that part of the money would be used to assist Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims in Iraq.

The House passed legislation, cosponsored by Smith and Eshoo, that would explicitly authorize the State Department and USAID to direct aid to faith-based entities, such as the Archdiocese of Erbil following congressional delegations to the region.

More recently, the House and Senate have held hearings about the need for the Trump administration to act quickly to get the funds where they are needed.

“We implore you to review proposals from credible organizations on the ground in the region who are committed to these goals, and if deemed worthy, to move swiftly to empower the through available resources to rebuild the region,” they lawmakers wrote.

Categories: Christian refugees, Iraq, U.S. Congress, UN and corruption, USAID, Yazidis
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State Department Lawyers Removing References to ISIS ‘Genocide’ Against Christians, Other Religious Minorities

July 25, 2017

State Department Lawyers Removing References to ISIS ‘Genocide’ Against Christians, Other Religious Minorities, Washington Free Beacon,  , July 25, 2017

(Please see also, Trump State Dept Unsure Why Palestinian Terrorists Kill Israelis. — DM)

Yazidi refugees carry their belongings in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey, as they change their refugee camp / Getty Imagesfood or water. / AFP / ILYAS AKENGIN (Photo credit should read ILYAS AKENGIN/AFP/Getty Images)

Obama holdovers in State Department’s legal office are responsible, critics say

The State Department’s top lawyers are systematically removing the word “genocide” to describe the Islamic State’s mass slaughter of Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria from speeches before they are delivered and other official documents, according to human rights activists and attorneys familiar with the policies.

Additionally, Democratic senators are delaying confirmation of Mark Green, Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Agency for International Development who has broad bipartisan support.

These efforts guarantee that Obama-era policies that worked to exclude Iraq’s Christian and other minority religious populations from key U.S. aid programs remain in place, the activists said.

Richard Visek, who was appointed by President Obama as head the State Department’s Office of Legal Adviser in October 2016, is behind the decision to remove the word “genocide” from official documents, according to Nina Shea, an international human rights lawyer who directs the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

“I don’t think for a minute it’s a bureaucratic decision—it’s ideological,” said Shea, who also spent 12 years as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, or CIRF, from 1999 to 2012.

A State Department spokesman on Monday said he would look into the matter and respond.

The latest moves from the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser appear aimed at rolling back then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s March 2016 genocide determination. Kerry’s much-anticipated genocide designation came after months of equivocation and detailed documentation by interested parties that the Islamic State is responsible for genocide against Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims.

It was one of the few times in history that the United States designated ongoing mass murders against ethnic or religious minorities as meeting the legal definition of genocide laid out in a 1948 treaty. That agreement requires signatories, including the United States, to take steps to “prevent and punish” genocide.

A bipartisan group of Capitol Hill lawmakers and activists, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Rep. Robert Aderholt (R., Ala.) were hoping the designation would help direct millions of dollars in U.S. relief funds to Christian, Yazidi, and other persecuted religious minority communities.

ISIS murders and kidnappings have decimated the Christian population in Iraq, which numbered between 800,000 and 1.4 million in 2002, reducing it to fewer than 250,000 now. Without action, activists and charities say, Christians could disappear completely from Iraq in the near future.

After meeting with Pope Francis in May, President Trump vowed to do everything in his power to defend and protect the “historic Christian communities of the Middle East.”

Activists and Catholic leaders are now calling on Trump to turn the rhetoric into action on the ground and help get U.S. aid to these persecuted communities trying to rebuild their homes and their lives in Iraq.

These advocates want the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the United Nations to allow church groups and other religious-affiliated relief organizations to receive government aid, a practice prohibited during the Obama administration.

In early May, Congress allocated more than $1.3 billion in funds for refugee assistance and included specific language to try to ensure that at least some of the money is used to assist persecuted religious minorities, including Christians, Yazidis, and Shia Muslims—all groups the State Department deemed victims of genocide in 2016.

Nevertheless, only $10 million is specifically earmarked for Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities. The Trump administration has until the end of September, when the stop-gap funding bill runs out, to ensure it distributes the funds in the most effective way.

“There is congressional legislation … that calls for the U.S. government to stop excluding the genocide-targeted minorities in Iraq,” Shea said. “This has been a pervasive problem that this aid has not been getting to them.”

“Iraq is home to one of the four largest remaining Christian communities in the Middle East that are about to become extinct,” she said. “Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama made catastrophic mistakes that left these communities on the brink of extinction, but it’s going to be on President Trump’s watch as to whether they survive or become extinct—it’s going to be his policies that make or break the situation.”

Instead of going through Iraqi government agencies or other internationally recognized groups, activists say the best way to get the aid to Christians and other persecuted minorities is through local Iraqi Catholic dioceses and parishes and other religious organizations, such as the Knights of Columbus, which have spent years on the ground working with these communities.

The money would be specifically designated for relief efforts for these persecuted communities and could not be used for other purposes, such as church-building or more general church operations.

Groups say the special allocation is needed because Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities often do not go to Muslim-dominated refugee camps out of fear they will be targeted, killed, or kidnapped.

After the Iraqi army retook Mosul from the Islamic State with the help of U.S. forces, much international attention has focused on helping rebuild the Sunni community so that ISIS cannot regain its influence there through sleeper cells or other supportive Islamic terrorist groups.

Shea said Christians will also play a key role in stabilizing the area in and around Mosul if they have enough aid to rebuild their homes in the area and other parts of Northern Iraq.

They could also combat Iran’s colonization of northern Iraq, where pro-Iranian militias are buying up Christian land in the area to try to broaden their influence.

“Christians and Yazidis need to be able to go back to their towns just to hold them—it’s a big national security priority for the U.S.,” she said.

In late June, Rubio, along with GOP Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, James Lankford of Oklahoma, and Ben Sasse of Nebraska, sent a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urging him to ensure that the 2017 omnibus appropriations are distributed to “vulnerable and persecuted religious minorities, including victims of genocide designated” by former Secretary of State Kerry.

“It would be a deathblow to pluralism and the prospect of religious freedom and diversity in any future Iraq,” the senators wrote, if these victims of genocide don’t receive the humanitarian aid Congress tried to direct to them.

In responding to the senators’ letter on July 10, the State Department avoided the question of whether it would allow Catholic or other charitable organizations to receive the appropriations in order to help the Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities.

Instead, Charles Faulkner of State’s Bureau of Legislative Affairs cited a list of U.S. efforts to help the “plight of religious minorities in Iraq” and said the department “shares your grave concern about the situation facing Iraq’s religious and ethnic minorities.”

The letter also restates the State Department’s policy and that of the United Nation’s of distributing U.S. relief based on means-tested need, instead of the genocide designation providing some priority for targeted communities on the verge of extinction.

“The U.S. government has also provided more than $1.3 billion in humanitarian assistance since 2014 for vulnerable Iraqis in Iraq and in the region,” the letter stated. “This assistance is distributed according to individual need, and many members of minority groups have benefited from it because of their unique vulnerabilities.”

Faulkner said the State Department “makes efforts” to ensure that the needs of “minority community members” are “taken into consideration,” when there are concerns that these communities don’t have access to assistance.

In addition to U.N. stabilization projects in Iraq, he said State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor is managing 22 grants and “interagency agreements” in Iraq, and “since 2004 has been the lead U.S. government entity programming directly to support inclusion of religious and ethnic minorities and other marginalized populations in Iraq.”

Categories: Christian persecution, Department of State, Iraq war, Obama hold-overs, Persecution of minorities, Syria war, Yazidis
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Yazidi Activist: Islamic State Cut Open My Friend, Raped Her Baby, Then Raped Her

April 15, 2017

Yazidi Activist: Islamic State Cut Open My Friend, Raped Her Baby, Then Raped Her, Breitbart, John Hayward, April 14, 2017

(What are feminists doing about these atrocities? What more can be done? — DM)

YouTube

Women for Women International has posted an astonishing interview conducted by its founder,Zainab Salbi, of two eyewitnesses to the horrors of the Islamic State.The tale was not easy to tell, as you can see from the video below, and it is not easy to hear.

The interviewees are Shireen Ibrahim, a Yazidi woman who escaped Islamic State slavery, and activist Feryal Pirali, who handles translation duties.

Ibrahim was captured by ISIS in 2014 while attempting to flee their assault on Iraqi Kurdistan. The Yazidis are a religious minority despised by the Islamic State and considered “devil worshipers” by some other Muslims because they pray to an archangel who is often misidentified as Satan. More details about them can be found here.

Ibrahim became one of many Yazidis held as slaves by the Islamic State, with women and even very young girls often used as sex slaves. She was taken to Sinjar and separated from some forty family members taken with her. She said in her interview with Salbi that half of her family is now missing or dead.

Ibrahim avoided rape at the hands of her ISIS captors for a while by pretending to be married to her cousin and claiming her nephew was her son. She was taken to Syria and tormented in various ways, including ISIS fighters shooting guns into the ground around her, while she was wrapped in a blanket while telling her she would be killed, and pouring some unknown substance down her throat. After she was recaptured during an escape attempt, they tortured her with electric shocks.

“They did everything to me,” Ibrahim said. “They did every bad thing you can think of to me because I ran away.”

She said she was sold as a slave five times during her Islamic State captivity. “The first time I got sold was by a doctor, a guy who came to Syria to buy me,” she recalled. “The last time I got sold it was to the same guy, the same doctor.”

Ibrahim said the price of her first sale was just one dollar. The buyer told her she was a cheap purchase.

The last time she was sold, the ISIS militant hired to transport her helped her escape for reasons she does not know. She currently lives in a camp in northern Iraq for Yazidis who have been rescued from the Islamic State. Ibrahim said she is too traumatized and fearful of ISIS to ever return to her family home in Sinjar.

“It’s hard for us,” Ibrahim said of the other women at the camp who escaped from the Islamic State. “Every minute is like a year.”

The most horrifying story in the interview came from Pirali, who is herself a Yazidi from the Sinjar region. She said she left Iraq in 2010, leaving behind a high school friend who got married and was pregnant with a baby girl when ISIS arrived.

“When ISIS took over our town, when they were trying to run away, because she was heavy, she was pregnant, she couldn’t run a lot,” Pirali said. “So she told her family to leave her behind, ‘save yourself, go.’ She was going to walk slowly until she gets to where they are.”

“Unfortunately, she didn’t make it, The ISIS people got her. What they did to her, they opened up her stomach, like from here to here” — Pirali pantomimed a cut horizontally across her entire stomach — “they opened her up, and they got her baby girl out. They raped the baby, and they also raped her. And she survived.”

“The baby did not make it,” she added. “They thought she was dead. They left her behind. The ISIS fighters, they left her. Her family came back, saw her just like that, in that situation.”

Pirali said this was the atrocity that prompted her to become an activist. In 2015, she circulated a petition asking then-President Barack Obama to help women and girls in ISIS captivity. The petition attracted 100,000 supporters.

“The message I want to send to ISIS people is that we are Yazidis, and we are going to be Yazidis. We are not going to change our religion, no matter what,” Ibrahim said defiantly, with Pirali translating her words.

She wept as she passed along her message to the civilized world: “Save our people that is in ISIS captivity. They’re killing kids in front of our eyes, and they’re bombing them.”

On Tuesday, a Kurdish official told CNN that the bodies of between 1,300 and 1,500 Yazidis have been found in the area around Sinjar, interred in 35 mass graves plus over 100 individual graves. The Kurds believe they will find more mass graves as more territory is recaptured from the Islamic State. The official who spoke to CNN believed there are up to a dozen mass graves in a single village still controlled by ISIS and identified as a site of mass killings by the United Nations.

The United Nations has formally accused the Islamic State of committing genocide against the Yazidis.

Unfortunately, Yazidis in northern Iraq who only recently returned to their homes have been displaced again, as Kurdish and Yazidi militia battle ISIS fighters in the region. The Kurdish Regional Government is seeking to persuade armed Yazidis to break away from the PKK — a militant group engaged in separatist violence in Turkey, which recruited and trained many Yazidis to fight ISIS in the Sinjar region — and join the Kurdish Peshmerga instead.

The world’s largest Yazidi temple, seen by many as a sign of renewal for their religion, is currently under construction in Armenia. Yazidis are a large and respected minority in Armenia, but many of them have relocated to Europe, Russia, and the U.S. in search of jobs, due to a slow economy.

Categories: Assad, Female fighters, Feminists, Genocide, Iraq, Islamic State, Rape, Rape jihad, Rapefugees, Sex slaves, Syria, Yazidis
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Yazidis to Anti-Trumpers: Where Were You During Islamic State Genocide Against Us?

February 9, 2017

Yazidis to Anti-Trumpers: Where Were You During Islamic State Genocide Against Us? Breitbart, Edwin Mora, February 8, 2017

(But, but . . . since the Islamists are doing the persecuting, they should get the first chance to come to America. Giving priority — or even allowing entry —  to those whom they persecute would just make matters worse: they might be persecuted where we can see it, which would cause Islamophobia, a far worse evil than persecution of weird people like Yazidis, Christians and the few remaining Jews. At least that seems to be the logic — if any —  behind the complaints. — DM)  

yazidi-women-reutersrodi-said-640x480REUTERS/Rodi Said

Outrage over President Donald Trump’s executive order prioritizing refugee claims by persecuted religious minorities has puzzled activists from Iraq’s Yazidi community, who note the lack of major protests against the brutal massacre of thousands of Yazidis and Christians by the Islamic State.

Former President Barack Obama’s administration and the United Nations recognized that Yazidis, Christians, and other ethnoreligious minorities in the Middle East have been victims of genocide at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).

Nevertheless, opponents of the executive order (EO) have lambasted the religious minority exception, denouncing President Trump for giving preferential treatment to persecuted minority groups. The order bars the entry into the United States of visa travelers from seven terrorism-linked countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen) for at least 90 days and orders the U.S. government to prioritize refugee claims by persecuted religious minorities.

The order, which has sparked protests and outcry across the nation, does not identify religious minority groups by name. However, Michael Short, a White House spokesman, told Breitbart News,“Yazidis would be covered under the EO as they are a persecuted religious minority.”

U.S. District Court Judge James Robart in Seattle has issued a ruling that temporarily blocks Trump’s order, which the Trump administration argues is primarily intended to strengthen U.S. national security.

Breitbart News spoke to several Yazidi activists who expressed support for the executive order and argued that it does not amount to a Muslim ban, as critics argue.

Echoing Iraqi Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda, Mizra Ismail — a Yazidi activist with the Yazidi Human Rights Organization-International — told Breitbart News, referring to opponents of Trump’s executive order:

My first question for those protesters is: where were they when ISIS was committing genocide against the Yezidis and Christians in Iraq and Syria? ISIS killed and kidnapped thousands of Yezidis, mostly young women, girls and children. The ISIS jihadists also beheaded many Yezidis and Christians openly in the most brutal way and posted their videos on social media.

What were those protesters doing then? I believe when ISIS committed all those crimes against the Yezidis and Christians, those protesters were blind.

Another Yazidi activist expressed support for Trump’s order, saying it is necessary to keep the U.S. safe.

“As a Yezidi, I am supportive of any genuine effort and precaution meant to keep this country safe and prosperous,” Gulie Khalaf from Yezidis International, told Breitbart News. “If a 90-day ban on all refugees, including Yezidis, is what it will take to ensure that this country does not become full of residents who neither care for the values of this society nor its constitution, then let us have the 90-day ban. Hopefully, that time will be spent to figure out who is deserving of the opportunities and the rights this country offers.”

The activist argued that the persecuted minority exception is necessary and does not subject Muslims to “discrimination” as many opponents of the order have claimed.

“It is not breaking laws or going against any kind of values if Trump and his administration decide that endangered groups should be an exception to the ban,” declared Khalaf.

A different Yazidi activist, Haji Hameka, stressed that the executive order is not a Muslim ban but rather an effort to keep America safe.

“It is not a ban against bringing Muslim refugees to the United States. It is a security check to avoid the entry of terrorists from groups such as al-Qaeda, and ISIS,” he told Breitbart News.

“Trump is a real American Patriot who is putting America and Americans first,” noted the activist. “He has to protect, support, and save the United States. He was elected by Americans to put America first.”

Trump’s measure dictates that once refugee admissions resume after a 120-day suspension aimed at improving the vetting process, the U.S. government, “to the extent permitted by law,” is expected to “prioritize claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.”

In other words, persecuted minorities in Iraq in Syria, such as the Christians and Yazidis, may go to the front of the line after the refugee program suspension is over.

During the 120-day suspension, the Secretaries of the State and Homeland Security have the discretion “on a case-by-case basis” to allow the entry of members of persecuted religious minority groups.

“Identifying specific countries with Muslim majorities and carving out exceptions for minority religions flies in the face of the constitutional principle that bans the government from either favoring or discriminating against particular religions,” argued American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero in a statement.

The Trump administration and Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), have defended the religious minority exception.

Meanwhile, Democrats like Sen. Diane Feinstein from California have denounced the directive, arguing that granting priority to persecuted minorities is unfair to Muslims.

Categories: Christian refugees, Christians, Refugees, Trump and refugees, Yazidi refugees, Yazidis
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Islamic State sex slaves auctioned off in UK/US ally Saudi Arabia

September 25, 2016

Islamic State sex slaves auctioned off in UK/US ally Saudi Arabia, Jihad Watch, , September 25, 2016

It isn’t news that the Islamic State has long been abusing and trafficking sex slaves – especially Yazidi girls – but it has been now discovered that the sex slaves of IS are being “sold in horrifying auctions to UK ally Saudi Arabia.”

An eyewitness reported:

Dozens of women were being held in a large room, and it was not only Iraqis and Syrians trading women but also Saudis and Westerners, whose actual nationality was not clear.

Western women have also been reported to be among the victims in keeping with the Islamic State’s practice of enslaving kafir women:

The Islamic State’s human trafficking operation includes enslaving women who they consider to be ‘kafir’, non-Muslim people like Yazidis and Christians, before selling them for money.  The depraved thugs are also involved in the radicalisation of young women all over the world and try to tempt them to come to their caliphate with false promises of wealth, marriage and forgiveness of sin.

The misdeeds and human rights violations by Saudi Arabia are astonishing, but do not stop Britain and the Obama Administration from supporting this hardline Islamic state.

 Wealthy Saudis have been accused of sponsoring the terror group [IS] for years…..

The kingdom has also faced numerous accusations of human rights abuses, including torture, degrading punishments and savage executions [in Yemen].

Britain has been selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, despite concerns about the kingdom’s war crimes in Yemen, and it seemed “inevitable” that those war crimes involved UK weapons, “according to a report leaked earlier this month.”

Beyond providing weapons, Britain has stunned human rights groups by blocking efforts by the EU to establish an independent international inquiry into the alleged war crimes in Yemen.

Yemen has been so brutalized by Saudi Arabia that teams of Doctors Without Borders (DWB) have been forced to evacuate, leaving citizens without care.

In April a hospital run by DWB – which included a maternity ward — was bombed.  According to the New York Times:

American officials have publicly condemned the hospital bombing — and the bombing of a school two days earlier — but the Pentagon has given steady support to the coalition led by Saudi Arabia, with targeting intelligence and fuel for the Saudi planes involved in the air campaign.

So it isn’t just the UK that is supporting the cause of jihadists and their atrocious human rights abuses; so is the Obama Administration. Over $100 billion in arms sales to the kingdom have already been approved by the Obama administration.

Now, adding to all that this latest news about sex slaves captured by the Islamic State and “being sold at sickening auctions in Saudi Arabia,” how can the current leadership of these countries be trusted to protect their own citizens from jihadists and defeat the global scourge of jihad terror?

sex-slave

“ON SALE TO RAPISTS ISIS is trafficking dozens of sex slaves ‘to be sold in horrifying auctions to UK ally Saudi Arabia’”, by Sam Webb, UK Sun, September 20, 2016:

SEX slaves captured by ISIS terrorists are being sold at sickening auctions in Saudi Arabia – a key UK ally – Sun Online has been told.

The horrifying discovery was unveiled when a jihadi was killed in fighting at the town of Al-Shirqat, which was taken over by the terror group in 2014.

Members of the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Units, a state-sponsored militia fighting to liberate the town, recovered his mobile phone and claimed to have found horrifying images of the sickening trade.

The Arab nation is part of the international coalition fighting Islamic State alongside the UK and US but wealthy Saudis have been accused of sponsoring the terror group for years.

Britain also sells weapons to Saudi Arabia, despite concerns the hardline Muslim nation is committing war crimes in Yemen  – and it “seems inevitable” they involve UK weapons according to a report leaked earlier this month.

The kingdom has also faced numerous accusations of human rights abuses, including torture, degrading punishments and savage executions.

A spokesman for the PMU told Sun Online: “Our investigation officer was appalled at the set of images involving what we believe to be an Iraqi Yazidi (an ethnic minority in the region) woman taken as sex slave.

“Images were of the auction in Saudi Arabia of the woman and sexually explicit materials of the fighter and the woman in a hotel.

“Location data was observed on the image file as enabled by default on many smart phones.

“Further images involved ISIS members in Iraqi areas occupied by ISIS including Mosul and Baiji which indicates this fighter has been with ISIS for a long period of time as Baiji was liberated by us months ago.”

The fighters are now desperately trying to track down the woman’s family and launch a rescue attempt.

“We are engaging with our Yazidi members to find the family of the woman, location and health status,” the spokesman added.

“We hope to liberate her and all Iraqi women taken as sexual slaves by ISIS within Iraq or outside of Iraq as their basic human rights are being denied.

“We cannot allow this, as the force dedicated to the defence of Iraqi citizens.”

Sadly, it is not the first time the accusation that ISIS sells rape victims to Saudi Arabians has emerged.

An 18-year-old Yazidi sex slave who escaped ISIS claims she was sold in an international auction.

The teenager, Jinan, was abducted from her village in Northern Iraq last year when ISIS troops stormed her village and took her prisoner before torturing and sexually abusing her and the other captives in the terror group’s stronghold of Mosul.

She said said dozens of women were being held in a large room, and it was not only Iraqis and Syrians trading women but also Saudis and Westerners, whose actual nationality was not clear.

Potential buyers, she wrote in her book ‘Daesh’s Slave’ would inspect the women “like livestock”….

Categories: Islam and females, Islamic State, Saudi Arabia - Human rights, Sex slaves, Yazidis
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5 Things You Should Know About ISIS-Tortured Yazidi Women

August 28, 2016

5 Things You Should Know About ISIS-Tortured Yazidi Women, Clarion Project, Codi Robertson. August 28, 2016

Mauritania-Slave-Girl-HP(Illustrative photo: Video screenshot)

1. The violence against the Yazidi people stem from ISIS members’ view that they are infidels. “My own community has been subject to more than 74 genocides by radical Muslim groups, not just now but throughout the history such as the Ottomans and others. These radical groups, whenever given the chance, will commit their crimes. What happened in Iraq and Syria was that the world remained silent as ISIS expanded,” said Nadia Murad, a young Yazidi sex slave survivor.

2. ISIS keeps a price list for the young women to be sold as sex slaves.  The list includes a price for girls ages 1-9 years of age – $169.21, the highest-priced group.  Once abducted, the Yazidi (and Christian) women and girls are forced to undergo “virginity tests” and then are sent to be traded in “slave bazaars.”

3. Women who try to make themselves less desirable to their captors, by either rubbing dirt on their faces or telling lies that their younger brothers are their sons results in them being beaten nearly to death. One Yazidi teenager who had been repeatedly raped set herself on fire to make her less desirable to her captors.  If the women refuse to have sex with their captors, they are killed as were 19 Yazidi women back in July.  The 19 women were placed inside an iron cage and burned alive.

4. In Germany where a large number of Yazidi refugees are, there now exists a special program to assist Yazidi women who were raped and tortured by ISIS members.  The program is run by trauma psychologist, university professor and Mideast expert, Jan Ilhan Kizilhan, and currently assists 1,100 women who were selected by Kizilhan.

5. As of August 17th, government officials in Toronto are being urged to resettle 400 Yazidi women and their families, who escaped the clutches of ISIS, in Canada.  This follows Canada’s acceptance of some 25,000 refugees. Of the more than 6,500 women and children who were taken into captivity two years ago in Iraq, more than 3,500 remain in captivity.

Categories: Islam and females, Islamic State, Slavery, Yazidis
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The Case for Kurdish Statehood

July 11, 2016

The Case for Kurdish Statehood, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Noah Beck, July 11, 2016

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Why has the West been so supportive of Palestinian nationalism, yet so reluctant to support the Kurds, the largest nation in the world without a state?

The Kurds have been instrumental in fighting the Islamic State (ISIS); have generously accepted millions of refugees fleeing ISIS to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG); and embrace Western values such as gender equality, religious freedom, and human rights. They are also an ancient people with an ethnic and linguistic identity stretching back millennia and have faced decades of brutal oppression as a minority. Yet they cannot seem to get sufficient support from the West for their political aspirations.

The Palestinians, by contrast, claimed a distinct national identity relatively recently, are less than one-third fewer in number (in 2013, the global Palestinian population was estimated by the Palestinian Authority to reach 11.6 million), control land that is less than 1/15th the size of the KRG territory, and have not developed their civil society or economy with nearly as much success as the Kurds. Yet the United Nations, the European Union, the Arab League, and other international bodies have all but ignored Kurdish statehood dreams while regularly prioritizing Palestinian ambitions over countless other global crises.

Indeed, in 2014 the UK and Sweden joined much of the rest of the world in recognizing a Palestinian state. There has been no similar global support for a Kurdish homeland. Moreover, Kurdish statehood has been hobbled by U.S. reluctance to see the Iraqi state dismantled and by regional powers like Turkey, which worries that a Kurdish state will stir up separatist feelings among Turkish Kurds.

With an estimated worldwide population of about 35 million (including about 28 million in the KRG or adjacent areas), the Kurds are the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East (after the Arabs, Persians, and Turks), and have faced decades of persecution as a minority in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq.

The 1988 “Anfal” attacks, which included the use of chemical weapons, destroyed about 2,000 villages and killed at least 50,000 Kurds, according to human rights groups (Kurds put the number at nearly 200,000). Several international bodies have recognized those atrocities as a genocide.

The Kurds in Turkey have also suffered oppression dating back to Ottoman times, when the Turkish army killed tens of thousands of Kurds in the Dersim and Zilan massacres. By the mid-1990s, more than 3,000 villages had been destroyed and 378,335 Kurdish villagers had been displaced and left homeless, according to Human Rights Watch.

The drive for Kurdish rights and separatism in Iran extends back to 1918, and – during its most violent chapter – cost the lives of over 30,000 Kurds, starting with the 1979 rebellion and the consequent KDPI insurgency.

A 2007 study notes that 300,000 Kurdish lives were lost just in the 1980s and 1990s. The same study states that 51,000 Jews and Arabs were killed in the Arab-Israeli conflict from 1950 until 2007 (and, because that total includes wars with Israel’s Arab neighbors, Palestinians are a small fraction of the Arab death toll).

Perhaps because of the Kurds’ own painful history, the KRG is exceptionally tolerant towards religious minorities and refugees. The KRG has embraced its tiny community of Jews, and in 2014, the Kurds rescued about 5,000 Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar after fleeing attempted genocide by ISIS. Last November, the Kurds recaptured the Sinjar area from ISIS, liberating hundreds more Yazidis from vicious oppression.

The KRG absorbed 1.8 million refugees as of December, representing a population increase of about 30 percent. The KRG reportedly needs $1.4 to 2.4 billion to stabilize the internally displaced people in its territory.

“Most of the refugees [in the KRG] are Arab Sunnis and Shia, Iranians, Christians, and others,” Nahro Zagros, Soran University vice president and adviser to the KRG’s Ministry of Higher Education, told the  IPT. “Yet there is no public backlash from the Kurds. And of course, we have been helping the Yazidi, who are fellow Kurds.”

The Kurdish commitment to gender equality is yet another reason that Kurdish statehood merits Western support. There is no gender discrimination in the Kurdish army: their women fight (and get beheaded) alongside the men. Last December, Kurdistan hosted the International Conference on Women and Human Rights.

The Kurds are also the only credible ground force fighting ISIS, as has been clear since the ISIS threat first emerged in 2014. ISIS “would have totally controlled the Baji oil field and all of Kirkuk had the [Kurdish] Peshmerga not defended it,” said Jay Garner, a retired Army three-star general and former Army assistant vice chief of staff who served during “Operation Provide Comfort” in northern Iraq. “Losing Kirkuk would have changed the entire war [against ISIS], because there are billions of dollars [per] week in oil flowing through there. The Iraqi army abandoned their equipment [while the Kurds defended Kirkuk, which has historically been theirs].”

Masrour Barzani, who heads the KRG’s intelligence services, says that Kurdish independence would empower the Kurds to purchase the type of weapons they need without the delays that currently hobble their military effort against ISIS. Under the present arrangement, Kurdish weapons procurement must go through Iraq’s Shia-led central government, which is also under heavy Iranian influence.

Besides bolstering the fight against ISIS, there are other geopolitical reasons for the West to support Kurdish statehood: promoting a stable partition of Syria, containing Iran, balancing extremist forces in the Middle East, and giving the West another reliable ally in a volatile region.

Now that Syria is no longer a viable state, it could partition into more sustainable governing blocs along traditional ethnic/sectarian lines with Sunni Arabs in the heartland, Alawites in the northwest, Druze in the south, and Kurds in the northeast. KRG leader Masrour Barzani recently argued that political divisions within Iraq have become so deep that the country must transform into “either confederation or full separation.”

Southeast Turkey and northwest Iran also have sizeable Kurdish areas that are contiguous with the KRG, but those states are far from disintegrating, and would aggressively resist any attempts to connect their Kurdish areas to the future Kurdish state. However, the Kurdish areas of former Syria should be joined to Iraqi Kurdistan as a way to strengthen the fledgling Kurdish state and thereby weaken ISIS.

In a recent article, Ernie Audino, the only U.S. Army general to have previously served a year as a combat adviser embedded inside a Kurdish Peshmerga brigade in Iraq, notes that Iran currently controls the Iraqi government and Iran-backed fighters will eventually try to control Kurdistan. He also makes the point that Western support for the Kurdish opposition groups active in Iran would force the Iranian regime to concentrate more on domestic concerns, effectively weakening Iran’s ability to pursue terrorism, expansionism, and other destabilizing activities abroad.

Because the Kurds are religiously diverse moderates who prioritize their ethno-linguistic identity over religion, a Kurdish state would help to balance out the radical Mideast forces in both the Shiite and Sunni camps. The Kurds are already very pro-American, thanks to their Western-leaning values, the U.S.-backed-no-fly zone, and the 2003 toppling of Saddam Husssein that made the KRG possible.

A Kurdish state would also have excellent relations with Israel, another moderate, non-Arab, pro-Western democracy in the region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed Kurdish independence in 2014, and Syrian Kurds – after recently declaring their autonomy – expressed an interest in developing relations with Israel.

By contrast, the Palestinian Authority slanders Israel at every opportunity: Abbas recently claimed in front of the EU parliament that Israel’s rabbis are trying to poison Palestinian drinking water. The Authority raises Palestinian children to hate and kill Jews with endless anti-Israel incitement coming from schools, media, and mosques. Palestinians have also shown little economic progress in the territories that they do control, particularly in Gaza, where Palestinians destroyed the greenhouses that donors bought for them in 2006 and instead, have focused their resources on attacking Israel with tunnels and rockets.

By almost any measure, a Kurdish state deserves far more support from the West. After absorbing millions of Syrian refugees while fighting ISIS on shrinking oil revenue, the KRG is battling a deepening financial crisis. Aggravating the situation, Iraq’s central government has refused – since April 2015 – to send the KRG its share of Iraqi oil revenue. The economic crisis has cost the KRG an estimated $10 billion since 2014.

U.S. Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced House Resolution 1654 “to authorize the direct provision of defense articles, defense services, and related training to” the KRG. Fifteen months later, the bill is still stuck in Congress.

Helping the Kurds should be an even bigger priority for the European Union, which absorbs countless new refugees every day that ISIS is not defeated. If the EU were to fund the KRG’s refugee relief efforts and support their military operations against ISIS, far fewer refugees would end up on their shores.

 

Categories: Iraq, Islamic State, Israel, Kurdish fighters, Kurdish refugees, Kurdish state, Palestinian terrorists, Palestinians, Religion, Syria, Turkey, Yazidis
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Yazidis Ambushed by Muslim Migrants in Germany: Report

May 24, 2016

Yazidis Ambushed by Muslim Migrants in Germany: Report, Clarion Project, May 24, 2016

(Please see also, The Plight of the Yazidis, considered “devil worshipers” by Islamists. — DM)

Germany-Injured-Yazidis-HPYazidis injured in Germany after being reportedly attacked by Chechens (Photo: Twitter)

A group of Muslims migrants from Chechnya allegedly ambushed a group of Yazidi refugees in Germany, leaving many injured Yazidis, a number needing hospitalization. Although initial reports from Germany called the incident, which involved more than 100 people, a random fight, an organization named Yazidis International says that the fight was a setup, with the Chechens lying in wait for the Yazidis with knives and baseball bats.

Only Yazidis were injured. One Yazidi suffered a skull fracture, another a head injury and at least one other a serious stab wound.

Although there were threats of revenge, police kept the two groups apart and are considering ways to continue to do so in the future.

Reports out of Germany show that many non-Muslim refugees have been subjected to violence and other abuse from Muslim migrants.

In other news, a recent report from Germany’s investigative police agency showed a sharp increase in the number of potential violent Islamists being tracked by the agency.

The numbers rose from 270 in January of 2015 to 497 today.

In addition, the agency is also following 339 additional Islamists who the police feel are sympathetic to or capable of assisting terrorists.

In Austria, intelligence officials are also warning of a rise in suspected Islamists in the country, particularly with individuals associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Categories: Germany, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic jihad, Islamic supremacy, Islamic tolerance, Islamisation, Islamism, Yazidis
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