OPINION:
Secretary of State John Kerry’s unannounced visit to Baghdad on Friday was notable for what he didn’t say as much as what he did.
More than three weeks after Mr. Kerry formally declared that the Islamic State, or ISIS, had committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis and other minorities, and after the House had passed the genocide resolution calling for this designation, the topic was not even mentioned in his meetings with Prime Minister Haider Abadi or with the officials representing the Kurdish Regional Government, according to Baghdad sources. Advocates for victims of the genocide in Mesopotamia were left to wonder,”Why not?”
Mr. Kerry’s trip was an effort to shore up the position of Mr. Abadi, who has been under fire for weeks with charges of corruption from the party of the radical Shia cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, and to report successes in reclaiming territory occupied by ISIS. Mr. Kerry announced $155 million of additional humanitarian aid would be coming to the U.N. agencies helping feed and house the millions of internally displaced people in Iraq. Nothing about the secretary’s visit at the State Department website mentions genocide, Christians, Yazidis or other genocide victims.
“I am concerned that the secretary went to Bagdad and apparently said nothing about the genocide. Of course, the State Department officials have said they need a couple of months to catch their breath and take action,” says Juliana Tamairoozy, president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council.
But more could be done, says Ms. Tamairoozy. “Aid should flow immediately to [nongovernmental organizations] directly helping the Assyrians, Yazidis, Turkomens and other victims of the genocide. However, feeding mouths is not a viable long-term solution. Therefore, the West should move now to economically develop the Nineveh Plain so that people from the region can move back to their land,” says Ms. Tamairoozy.
Mr. Kerry’s visit comes at a time when the Iraqi army is bogged down in its campaign to reclaim the northern city of Mosul from ISIS’ hands. Meanwhile, the ISIS military strategy for several weeks has been to distract Iraq’s elite troops away from the Mosul area by launching spectacular attacks in Baghdad and in the southern city of Basra, according to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
All hands agree that Baghdad needs more troops to prosecute the war. One option for helping the minorities most damaged by the genocide would be to train and equip ethnic militias to defend themselves in their homeland, according to David Lazar and Max Primorac of Restore Nineveh Now, a nonprofit advocating for Assyrians in Iraq and Syria.
Funds to support that effort are already available through the $1.6 billion National Defense Authorization Act passed last year and are being used in the Iraq Train and Equip Program (ITEP). Mr. Primorac, who served as a senior State Department official during the surge of 2007, says the ITEP is a win-win program both for the central government and for the minority groups in Iraq’s northernmost province of Nineveh.
True, there reportedly are thousands of Assyrians already serving with majority-Assyrian units of the Kurdish Regional Guards, known as the Peshmerga, but their equipment and support comes from the Kurdish Regional government which is almost bankrupt as a result of low oil prices.
Meanwhile, the Yazidi minority already has an armed militia fighting ISIS in the Sinjar mountains to the west of Mosul, and the Assyrians have trained and equipped a military force of 300 men known as the Nineveh Protection Units, with 2,000 more volunteers ready to be trained and given weapons, according to Restore Nineveh Now. The U.S. military has restored the use of Fire Base Bell, behind the Makhmour front, midway between Kirkuk and Mosul, as a command center and could train recruits there, Mr. Primorac says.
The manpower for new militia units is already nearby. More than 1.8 million internally displaced persons are living in camps in Kurdistan, including 300,000 Assyrians and close to 300,000 Yazidis. In addition to these, there are approximately 1.2 million Assyrian refugees taking shelter in neighboring Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, and many recruits could come from these countries, according to sources at Restore Nineveh Now.
“In terms of holding territory, you want people trained who will protect their own lands,” Mr. Primorac says, adding that “The ITEF is a military vehicle to leverage political reform.
“It will formalize these [militia] forces and bring them under the authority of the Iraqi Security Forces. Baghdad already pays the salaries of thousands of Sunni militia members, chiefly in Anbar Province, and this will allow it to train and support militias of the minorities most damaged by genocide,” he says.
• Douglas Burton is a former State Department official in Iraq and reports on the Middle East from Washington, D.C.
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