On the streets of Mosul, jubilant celebrations of the long-awaited victory against the Islamic State in Iraq haven’t stopped for days. Civilians blast music from their cars and dance in the street, and Iraqi soldiers drive through the city in the humvees they once fought from, waving the Iraqi flag. Young couples snap selfies and picnic on the banks of the Tigris River at sunset, celebrating the gradual return to normal life after the Islamic State’s brutally oppressive three-year reign.
In a village 30 kilometers south of Mosul, the liberation has a darker side. Um Ali, a 50-year-old widow with kind but tired eyes, can’t get to sleep at night.
“There have been grenade attacks,” she said, sitting on the floor of her sparsely decorated sitting room. Two bouquets of plastic flowers adorn a TV stand. A copy of the Quran sits in a window, framed by shattered glass.
“It’s gotten to the point that I can’t leave my house,” she continued, looking out the front door of her home toward the locked wrought iron gate. “I know people want to hurt me — and I feel guilty.”
Um Ali’s late husband was an ISIS supporter. Over the past few weeks, attacks against so-called ISIS families have increased significantly across areas that the extremist group once controlled, including her village. Local vigilantes — many of them determined to avenge the death of a family member killed by ISIS — throw rocks, grenades, and improvised explosive devices at the homes of wives or siblings of known and suspected ISIS members. Last month, a group of vigilantes captured 15 suspected ISIS members and beat them to death, leaving their corpses on the side of the road to Mosul to rot in the desert sun.
“ISIS killed people,” Um Ali said. “We are an ISIS family — and now people will treat us the same way that we treated them.” (The Intercept is identifying Um Ali by a pseudonym to protect her identity.)
Three years ago, insurgent fighters from the Islamic State stormed Um Ali’s village, telling local men that if they didn’t join the cause they were cowards who would suffer the consequences. Her husband — a policeman, who Um Ali said was never particularly good at thinking for himself — was easily persuaded to join the growing insurgency.
“The ISIS fighters said if you don’t join ISIS, you’re afraid. You’re not a good man,” she recalled. “ Besides the pressure from the militants, her husband’s position as a policeman meant that if he didn’t acquiesce to the Islamic State when they first arrived, he would have become one of the first of their targets.
For the next 2 1/2 years, Um Ali’s husband worked as a judge in the local tribal court, settling disputes between family members and neighbors. Their three sons also joined the Islamic State’s insurgency. They were teenagers, excited to be a part of a movement and easily susceptible to extremist ideology.
“I never really accepted their work with ISIS, but we were also afraid. We knew if we didn’t work with ISIS, that we could have a lot of problems,” Um Ali said. Families who refused to join or associate with ISIS came under special scrutiny and harassment, and were often arrested for offenses as small as being caught with a packet of cigarettes or refusing to adhere to a strict Islamic dress code for both men and women.
In November of last year, Iraqi security forces advanced on their village, one of the first battles of a brutal offensive to demolish the Islamic State’s presence in Iraq once and for all. Um Ali’s husband fled deeper into ISIS-controlled territory, and was later killed in an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition. Her sons followed their father into the quickly shrinking caliphate only to later detonate themselves as suicide bombers on the front lines of the battle.
Now, Um Ali and her two youngest daughters live alone in the house they once shared as a family, bearing the consequences of their husband, father, and brothers’ actions.
“My worst fear is that I will be evicted,” she said, looking at her youngest daughter, who is only 10 years old. “I’m not afraid of death, personally. But I am afraid that if I do die, and we are in an unfamiliar place, there will be no one to take care of my girls.”
Along with revenge attacks, forced evictions are increasing as well. Earlier this month, a group of ISIS victims’ families in the nearby village of Qayyarah compiled a list of names and, with the backing of local tribal leaders, went door to door to the people on the list, demanding that they sign next to their names promising that they would leave, or face consequences. Iraqi security forces are also forcing the families of alleged ISIS members into “rehabilitation camps.” Hundreds of families, mostly women and children, are being held in the high-security, prison-like camps, forbidden from freely moving in and out until they are cleared of any ties to the extremist group.
This isn’t the first time that Iraq has seen retaliatory violence and collective punishment. When the country erupted into sectarian violence after the U.S. invasion in 2003, Shia militia death squads routinely abducted and brutally murdered Sunni men, who they saw as members of the Sunni insurgency threatening the power Shias had gained after the fall of Saddam Hussein, or as Al Qaeda. Since many of the militia members who carried out these killings were also in the security forces at the time, families of the murdered rarely saw justice for their loved ones.
These extrajudicial killings, coupled with the mass arrest and imprisonment of suspected Al Qaeda affiliates in notorious prisons like Abu Ghraib and Tajji, and later, the arrest and detention of some of the prisoners’ families, contributed to the marginalization of Iraqi Sunnis, a major factor in the rise of the Islamic State.
Belkis Wille, senior Iraq researcher with Human Rights Watch, told The Intercept that the current wave of retaliation could restart the cycle of violence. “Of course, there’s a human rights issue — which is the violations that are happening against these families,” she said. “But from a national security standpoint, it is extremely unstrategic as well. They are rounding up families and putting them into poorly serviced camps with no schools and tons of children. It’s the perfect breeding ground for extremism.”
While Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has given lip service to the importance of reconciliation in the wake of ISIS, the central government has remained silent on the issue of revenge attacks and the punishment of ISIS families. In neighborhoods like Um Ali’s, enforcing the rule of law is left to local tribal leaders and policemen — many of whom have deep-seated grudges of their own.
“I am affected — and there are a lot of people who are affected like me,” said Col. Yassin Ahmed Abbas, a senior police officer in Hammam al-Alil, a small town south of Mosul. In 2014, his brother was abducted by Islamic State militants. He hasn’t heard from him since.
“Don’t believe that anyone who lost a family member will forget this,” he continued. Abbas estimates that approximately 400 people were killed by ISIS in Hammam al-Alil alone, during the group’s two-and-a-half-year reign in the village and the brutal battle that eventually ousted them. While he neither confirmed nor denied taking part in any attacks himself, he repeatedly referred to people who were harmed by ISIS but don’t take action as “cowards.”
With so many in his district haunted by ISIS’s violence, right now Abbas is focused on arresting suspected ISIS members and cracking down on remaining sleeper cells in the area. He believes that revenge attacks against the suspects’ families are inevitable.
“I know our situation will stay like this. I know that no matter what we do, we will keep fighting, and killing each other,” he said, sitting back in his office chair. One of his subordinates brought in an ISIS suspect, his hands tightly bound in front of him, and his arms covered in bruises.
“I cannot stop a father who lost his son from taking his revenge,” he said.
Top photo: A billboard displays portraits of popular mobilisation units members who died fighting against the Islamic State as an Iraqi Shiite Muslim pilgrim passes by in Baghdads northern district of Kadhimiya on April 21, 2017.
This mom of ISIS terrorist could not bear his cries. What when he was cutting throats of others? Raping captive girls? Was deaf then to hear their cries? No wonder the entire families are killed. May be they deserve it.
“ While he neither confirmed nor denied taking part in any attacks himself, he repeatedly referred to people who were harmed by ISIS but don’t take action as “cowards.” ”
Nice try!!!!
‘Treated like cattle': Yazidi women sold, raped, enslaved by ISIS
“These women have been treated like cattle,” explained Nazand Begikhani, an adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government on gender issues.
“They have been subjected to physical and sexual violence, including systematic rape and sex slavery. They’ve been exposed in markets in Mosul and in Raqqa, Syria, carrying price tags.”……………“Begikhani said all of the 100 Yazidi women rescued from ISIS appeared to have been systematically raped, likely by more than one man.”
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/30/world/meast/isis-female-slaves/
—————-
“After their families were disappeared, tortured and murdered by Islamic State militants last year, young Yazidi women have armed themselves.”
“Though it’s a proactive decision to fight, it’s out of calamitous necessity – aid is hardly forthcoming. “Europe closes their eyes, because they have their own interests, mainly economic,” says Yaghobzadeh. Moreover, media coverage of the crisis has dwindled. The news cycle goes fast, and visibility fades quickly once the height of disaster has quieted. Yaghobzadeh laments, “the story is brought to the limit, publicized, but then nobody talks about it.” ”
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/11/women-taking-on-isis-iraq-yazidi-female-fighters
—————-
“Former Isis Yazidi sex slaves take up arms for revenge, to win back Mosul and ‘bring our women home’ ”
“Freed from slavery and daily rape, trained by the Kurds and now fighting to defend their homelands, the Force of the Sun Ladies has become “an elite force and a model for other women in the region”, Captain Khider said.”
“Now we are defending ourselves from the evil; we are defending all the minorities in the region,” she said. “We will do whatever is asked of us.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-yazidi-sex-slaves-take-up-arms-for-mosul-fight-to-bring-our-women-home-
———————-
These Yazidi sisters took up arms to take revenge against ISIS
“I asked the Yazidi girls, ‘Who would like to join me to defend our honor?’ And every day in displaced camps for Yazidi people, girls were signing up,” she says. “We spread through media that we are going to defend our honor and my call is not only for Yazidi girls, not for Sinjar alone, but to all women.”
https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-01-26/these-yazidi-sisters-took-arms-take-revenge-against-isis
Good, let’s get going and start at one end and clear out everything in sight until we get to the other end and then start all over in another location until we have all the muslims out of the way.
So strange, this country where everyone is a victim, and no-one is responsible.
This is not lack of sympathy for the people concerned. I’m just pointing out that this revenge killing is a cultural thing, and it’s on BOTH sides. So when people get painted as victims, and “not all Muslims”, to encourage western countries to shelter ever increasing numbers, there is some sophistry going on.
In what way is it cultural? You think if there were mass killings in america no one would seek revenge?
Vengeance belongeth to the Lord.
Just like with the baathists
Is there any oil left ? Can I cut a deal ?
Excellent article. Very well-written. She evoked the place and the emotion without surrendering the article to sentimentality, blaming, or partisanship. It was an unflinching look at a desolate and seemingly insoluble mess.
Sigh. Unlike some below, I do feel sympathy. Good people often make bad decisions, most often to “protect” the ones they love. Surely many who collaborated with ISIS fall in this category. That does not exonerate them, but it should give us pause.
How many of us supported Desert Storm in the wake of 9/11? How many of us look back on that with regret? Keep in mind that our fear and suffering in the US post 9/11 was abstract and distant compared to the Death knocking on the front door, day in, day out, as these Iraqis have experienced for years or decades.
Those of us sitting on the sofa, pecking merrily away at our glowing smartphones, our bellies full, children safe, thirst quenched, talking self-righteously about what we would have done… we have no idea what we would do if we faced such a desperate, terrifying situation as these war-weary Iraqis.
Excellent article. But it will take a Deus Ex Machina to solve this problem, sadly.
I love you guys, but would *please* stop writing ISIS. It’s ISIL, the acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. Or as its Muslim enemies call it, Daesh.
Usually these stories inspire me with a bit of sympathy, but not this.
Husband fighting for ISIS after retreating from Mosul, and 3 sons dying as suicide bombers. She made her bed, and she can sleep in it. If she lives in fear, it’s penitence, and more than she deserves.
Her family was cowardly for not standing up to ISIS and risking dying like hundreds of better and braver of her neighbors. Instead, they chose to pledge their lives to commit the very atrocities they were trying to escape for themselves. She was complacent to their crimes for not stopping her husband and sons or leaving.
If she is spared, regardless of how much she’s outcast, it’s a testament to goodness of the very people that her family terrorized. Life choices have consequences. If she does not survive, well, it’s just another casualty of war ISIS started and nothing to cry over. I’m more concerned about the healing the mental wounds of her would be lynch mob, than individuals such as this. This kind of blow-back though, is, unfortunately, necessary for a society to heal correctly.
So, 1) you condemn this lady for the behaviour of family members?
2) You support extra-judicial killing?
3) Extra-judicial killing is commendable as part of healing process for ISIS victims?
Bonus question: the husband is portrayed as an easily swayed, weak person. Are you certain that you, on pain of death, would do the brave thing and oppose ISIS?
Glad you asked.
1) I am not pleased she didn’t make sufficient effort to persuade her family to not sacrifice themselves fighting for the enemy, and failing that, to distance herself from them (divorce, etc). I condemn her for that.
2) No, but I wont cry over it, if it happens. The stories of the innocent people her husband and sons killed didn’t seem to interest anyone here, why should her death bother me? If she distanced herself from it, I’d be sympathetic, but as is, it’s just another reverberation of the war – one which has much more worthy victims to lament than her.
3) No, but purging the old guard from positions of power is. Former Nazis were barred from the new government of Germany after the war – and that was good (despite it sometimes needed to be circumvented for low level technical positions). The same was not done in many places in the former Eastern Europe, and the result was the same scumbags that were the oppressors one day played a little bit of musical chairs, labeled themselves the “opposition” to everything they’ve done previously, and resumed life as normal. The resulting absence of any people with morals in leadership, was devastating for many years. So if someone is a higher up in law enforcement or education in Iraq under ISIS, it’s a bad idea to keep by using the argument that they are the only ones with experience. Others will learn, and end up doing a much better job in the long run.
Ostracizing people associate with people who behead your father, rape and kill your mother, and torture people to death is natural. The list of atrocities committed by ISIS is too long and stomach turning to list. They deserve no sympathy – unlike their victims.
As for your bonus question, it would be “EX-husband”. I cannot believe you think most people would be insane enough to let a crazy husband turn your sons into suicide bombers, and NOT get a divorce! That’s the point. There is no sympathy because the story says late-husband, not late-ex-husband.
1) She failed to persuade her family, but we don’t know if she had any say in these matters. Divorce in ISIS-territory, isn’t that suicide?
2 and 3) It still seems you do support extra-judicial killing, but I will take your word for it.
2) “The stories of the innocent people her husband and sons killed didn’t seem to interest anyone here, …”
That is a baseless remark/accusation.
“…, why should her death bother me?”
Is that supposed to follow from the first part of your sentence?
4) The bonus question was about: who can be sure that they would be braver than the (weak) husband?
1) Leaving is always an option. But seriously ask yourself, if your spouse decided to take your children and turn them into suicide bombers, would you not lift a finger to stop it? For me personally, ALL options would be on the table at that point – including murder-suicide. The fact that the only condemnation that this woman could muster for her husband in this article was that he was “never particularly good at thinking for himself” is telling. We are not dealing with someone who is unsympathetic to the ISIS cause here.
2&3) You can either believe what I say I mean (i.e. the exact opposite), or you can build up your strawmen and smite them, but the later is a bit unproductive. As for whether “…, why should her death bother me?” follows, then yes. ISIS is responsible for atrocities like have been rarely seen before – beheadings, torturing to death, drowning people to death, mass crucifixions, burning alive, and as many other sick and twisted methods designed to illicit revulsion. Heck – even the American bombs that occasionally go astray kill perfectly innocent civilians just going about their business. The victims in this war were innocent just going about their business one day and dead soon afterwards. Give me a reason why I should expend my emotional sympathies on a woman who gave every male relative she had to bring about this disaster, over the innumerable real innocent victims we rarely hear about. I grieve for them, not her.
Though not really a Christian myself, I’ve always admired the teaching to “turn the other cheek” and “vengeance is for God alone” as a social instrument. It’s probably the only way to deal with people like her, but it’s a difficult doctrine to follow, and she doesn’t live in a society which embraces that belief (but rather an eye for an eye philosophy) – sucks for her. But wars don’t really fully stop until the hatred goes away, which is always well after victory is declared or peace signed.
4) Just because no one can be sure until they are actually put into that position, doesn’t make his actions any less reprehensible. But consider that: a) he had the option to not volunteer, b) he had the option to flee, c) resist [and probably die] or d) he had the option to enlist for a short period to find a possibility to defect/surrender. None are particularly appealing, but all are better than killing innocents and fleeing with ISIS when they were driven out. Better options were available.
Both our positions are clear now, I suppose.
I think it is right time to pack up all the refugees who have comfortably settled down here and in Europe and send them right back home to rebuild it. All this nonsense killings will continue among the Muslim types of people, so we need not worry about what they do with each other. If they kill a few people whose relatives have chopped off heads or drowned others then it’s better than killing other innocent people whose relatives haven’t killed other people. All these good things are happening because President Trump has commanded all the Muslims to stop this useless killing and keep their terrorists at home instead of sending them over.
Perpetual war is the bi-partisan face of Washington. Democratic or Republican … makes no difference. It is the biggest reason I have quit voting for any candidate for national office.
.
That said, it is simply egotistical to believe the US is solely responsible for the wars in the middle east. The people most responsible for conditions in the middle east are the people who live there.
It’s not egoism it’s just a fact
The US has a long and sordid history in the Middle East.it goes back well before we top of the first democratically elected president and around and stalled the Shah. We Fund and arm the very people who created Isis and wahabbi terrorism around the world .
There’s a little, but important factor missing from the article. But as someone who reads the Independent, I know it, and will pass it along.
Not even the Iraqi military (trained by the US) trusts the Iraqi government (installed by the US) to hold on to anyone arrested, even active, high ranking ISIS fighters captured on the battlefield. If you read the articles over there, you’ll find that they can even put a figure to how much an ISIS commander would have to pay to walk away a free man.
Is there going to be a ‘new’ conflict rooted in the present bloodshed in Iraq? Almost certainly with the corrupt, undemocratic, US backed regime in power, even if the US obsession with starting a war with Iran, and overthrowing the broadly supported, multireligious, multiethnic coalition government of Syria doesn’t turn the Iraqi farce of a government into a despotic regime like the one that the US (et alia) used as a front in its previous war with Iran. And this bit of rough revenge, while not helping things, won’t be the cause.
The enduring beauty of the islelam.
The enduring ignorance of Islamophobia.
‘Islamophobia’ = secular fatwa.
Yes, no “Buddhist phobia”– Islam is never accountable for bad behavior? These guys kill their own brother Yemenis!
From the first video of second-line Shia militias lining up and summarily executing “suspected” ISIS fighters, it was clear that Iraq is headed for yet another civil war. The Sunni areas threw open the doors for ISIS because they were sick and tired of being stepped on by the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad. Iraq’s Shias blame the Sunnis for the entire ISIS situation, and are chomping at the bit to get in there and take some revenge.
Repression and revenge. Same old story. That’s what you get when you force rival ethic groups into the same country. The violence won’t stop until Iraq is broken up.
2nd, this along its natural lines. Brits thought nothing of breaking Afghanistan in two with the DurandLine, again the tribes are in charge there, with same results for opposing reasons.
Even if iraq was broken up the killings would never stop. To put a blame on the US, Iran or anyone may be currently popular but these type of secular feuds and mass killings have been going on centuries before the US or most other places were even nation. It has always been that way, whatever group has the power the weaker gets slaughtered in some way. It really makes no difference who supports whom, they are nothing more than the latest pawn to be brought into a never ending conflict and systematic hatred between religious sects. you can put 1,000,000 world troops there and dump billions of dollars into trying to fix the nation or there can be no outsiders at all involved or supporting any side or position and you know what? They are still are going to kill each other.
Here is an article that looks at the role that the United States played in the creation of ISIS:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2017/03/the-creation-of-isis.html
The creation of ISIS is yet another fine example of an unintended consequence of a poor understanding of the geopolitics and religion of the Middle East by those who “lead” us.
Thank you George W. Bush.
You mean thank you Barack Hussein Obama.
Bush didn’t leave a vacuum or the military hardware for ISIS to come to power!
bush had no plan to stabilize Iraq once he decided to pull out. bush and his buddies should be in prison for lying to get us into that war. To bad he is still alive.
ISIS came to power because of the disbanding of the Iraqi Army, which happened under Bush. As to hardware left behind? I leave it to the GAO to enlighten you as to where ammo came from for all those IED’s.
a href=https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GAO-07-444/html/GAOREPORTS-GAO-07-444.htm>Unsecured munitions under Bush
You are being unfair to the congress. Bush was the most visible
cheerleader, but he was hardly alone. It is actually the democrats
who, approximately 14 years ago, did the most to push the opposition
to war out of hearing range.
No one did more than did senators Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and
John Kerry to make this horror happen.
That is why they were so highly rewarded with power positions by Obama.
People who try to make the horror of the war of aggression in Iraq
all “Bush’s war” are only helping cover up the truth.
Iraq is the horror show that it is because of almost unanimous
congressional approval and support. If someone wants to believe that
the poor little minds of congress couldn’t help but fall under the sway
of someone as brilliant (NOT!) as GWB, then I think they are,
at this late date,
at least as sick as Bush and Co.
Check the votes for the AUMF again, it was a Republican war, started by a Republic president and his Republic warmonger – i mean, VP.
So, you prefer to see no participation by democrats.
You get a reaction to your comment “No one did more than did senators Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry …”
Then you pretend the reaction is to something else, namely: “you prefer to see no participation by democrats”.
Bush jr. said he wanted a war to distract people so he could other legislature through. Bush Jr. said he he thinks that war is good for the economy. PNAC had developed plans for before 9/11. They needed another “Pearl Harbor” in order to to topple a long list of middle east countries.
What a transparent attempt to shift blame on the Democrats. Can’t you do better?
How many Dems voted against the war? The few brave souls that did appeared non patriotic at the time. After 911 the mood of the American people was, fight anybody and believe anything. The mood of the gov., don’t let a good war go to waste. Oil! Still today citizens believe Iraq had something to do with 911. Rep and Dem hold blame for the Iraq war and the continued mess we are in. We the people, we keep battling against each other. If the American people ever really unite and hold ALL gov accountable, we may have a chance.