Amnesty International Documents Potential War Crimes
The residents of Mosul say they are happy that Islamic State has been forced out of their city after nine months of fighting, but say the city that used to be Iraq’s second largest, has been completely destroyed.
“The city is like a wasteland – all you see is debris and rubble everywhere,” “Mohammed”, (not his real name) told The Media Line, on condition that his name not be mentioned. “There is also a stench from all of the dead bodies.”
Although Iraqi Prime Minister Heidar al-Abadi officially announced the “liberation” of Mosul this week, Islamic State still holds small pockets in the city and fighting is continuing. And even once the fighting does end, Islamic State, which first announced the establishment of a caliphate in Mosul in 2014, will still be a potent force.
“We are speaking about an ideology,” Mohammed, a local journalist, said. “Military-wise it’s over but they still have a lot of supporters. They managed to hold off US-backed coalition forces and that is good propaganda they can use for generations to come.”
Mohammed has had enough of the fighting. Years ago, he applied for asylum in the US for himself, his wife, and his four children, and had already had his first interview. He was preparing for a second interview, but now that plan is on hold after President Trump stopped issuing visas for certain countries, including Iraq.
It was in Mosul that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi announced the Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria in 2014. The group swept across a wide swath of both countries, although it lost ground in the past six months. About a month ago, Russian officials announced they had killed Baghdadi but US officials said they had no confirmation.
Now the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has become known for its accurate information on the Syrian conflict, said it had “confirmed information” that Baghdadi had been killed. The US, however, which has been one of the primary backers of Iraqi coalition forces, said it could not confirm it.
“Despite all the helpful reports to us from every source imaginable, I’m unable to confirm or deny either where he is, or whether he is alive or dead. Let me just say for the record, my fervent hope is it is the latter,” Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend told a news briefing.
Islamic State has not confirmed that Baghdadi has been killed. But according to Iraq News, a senior leader in Kirkuk’s Hawija has declared himself as the new supreme leader.
“Abu Haitham al-Obaidi, deputy to the (Islamic State’s) mayor of Hawija…named himself a new Caliph after Baghdadi’s death reports were confirmed, said Jaaber al-Maamour, a leader of the Popular Mobilization Forces, in a statement to Alsumaria News.
Analysts said that even if Baghdadi was killed, Islamic State still has control over parts of Iraq.
“There are still clashes in Mosul and Islamic State still has cities in Anbar near the border with Syria,” Nussaibah Younes, an Iraq expert at the London think tank Chatham House, told The Media Line. “It’s important that this victory is not celebrated prematurely. These are difficult areas to liberate and they are going to need to be approached with great sensitivity.”
For example, Hawija, where Baghdadi’s putative successor made his claim, is contested between Arabs and Kurds. In another city, Telefar, the Shi’ite Popular Mobilization Units want to take the lead in the fight against Islamic State. But Younes said, Turkey has said it will invade if the Shi’ites do this, fearful of a possible massacre there.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International has released a 50-page report charging that both Islamic State and the US-backed coalition forces violated international law during the fighting in Mosul. Amnesty said that both sides may have committed war crimes and called for an immediate investigation.
The report found that over 600,000 civilians were displaced from West Mosul, that up to 6,000 civilians were killed in attacks by Iraq, the US, and their allies, and that Islamic State committed war crimes against civilians.
“Deliberately using civilians as human shields, [Islamic State] fighters trapped civilians in their homes by welding their doors shut, rigging booby traps at exits, or summarily killing those who attempted to escape,” according to the report. “They also regularly denied civilians medical care and confiscated their food.”
The US-backed coalition forces, for their part, used airstrikes and heavy artillery weapons that killed many civilians. For example, if they identified an Islamic State sniper on a roof, they often bombarded the entire building, knowing that dozens of hundreds of civilians were trapped inside.
“We are calling first and foremost for public acknowledgment of the cost to civilians,” Nicoletta Waldman, one of the authors of the Amnesty report told The Media Line. “We are also calling for an urgent increase in funding for humanitarian aid by the whole international community. We spent weeks in the (refugee) camps there and there is not enough food or clean water and the temperature is skyrocketing.”