It's day 148 of The Mosul Slog.
Mar 13 #CJTFOIR conducted 20 strikes consisting of 104 engagements against ISIS in Syria & Iraq http://ow.ly/N45m309T05s @usairforce @CENTCOM
The bombing of Iraq started in August of 2014 and continues daily.
Possibly since Barack Obama no longer overseas it, we might be able to get honest about it now?
More civilians die from (US) airstrikes in Mosul than (Russian) airstrikes in Aleppo, says @airwars. Why no outrage? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOvV38VZuZk …
It would appear that a large number of people who should be speaking out can't because elected persons in the Democratic Party have yet to give them their marching orders.
That's the difference between ethics and partisanship -- you're witnessing it right now.
And the difference between courage and silence?
Look at 'leaders' like John Conyers and Barbara Lee who cower instead of speaking out as the suffering of the Iraqi people is set to hit the 14 year mark in mere days.
The Mosul Slog continues with little criticism while tiny steps are treated as huge progress. ALJAZEERA runs John Davison's REUTERS report, "Iraqi forces battling ISIS/ISIL faced tough resistance from snipers and mortar rounds on Monday as they tried to advance on Mosul's Old City and a bridge across the Tigris River in their campaign to retake it." XINHAU reports:
Iraqi forces on Monday liberated two neighborhoods from the Islamic State (IS) militants in the western side of Mosul, while the troops continued fighting fierce urban warfare in the old city center, the Iraqi military said.
The commandos of the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) completely freed the neighborhoods of Nafet and New Mosul in the western side of the city, locally known as the right bank of the Tigris River, which bisects Mosul, the Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.
The recapture of the two neighborhoods brought the CTS troops closer to the western edge of Mosul's densely populated old city center, where hundreds of thousands of civilians are believed to still be trapped under IS rule.
And here's some video of yesterday.
Brett McGurk is giddy about the operation, as FRANCE 24 explains:
IS "is trapped. Just last night, the 9th Iraqi army division... cut off the last road out of Mosul," said Brett McGurk, the US envoy to the anti-IS coalition.
"Any of the fighters who are left in Mosul, they're going to die there," he said. "We are very committed to not just defeating them in Mosul, but making sure these guys cannot escape."
Trapped?
Maybe that would be a term better used for the civilians still in Mosul, the ones the Iraqi government told not to leave.
Battle for Mosul:
Iraqi forces battling ISIL face tough resistance
600k civilians trapped
200k residents displaced
http://aje.io/69td
Why would you ever tell civilians not to flee an area you planned to attack?
Why would you ever do that?
And why would the world just sit there with a blank stare as you did?
The Mosul Slog has created a refugee crisis.
This is what it looks like to flee for your life from #Mosul.
And now it's time for house-to-house searches -- a time when even more abuses tend to take place. Meanwhile Human Rights Watch issues an alert which includes:
The Iraqi interior ministry is holding at least 1,269 detainees, including boys as young as 13, without charge in horrendous conditions and with limited access to medical care at three makeshift prisons, Human Rights Watch said today. At least four prisoners have died, in cases that appear to be linked to lack of proper medical care and poor conditions and two prisoners’ legs have been amputated, apparently because of lack of treatment for treatable wounds.
Two detention centers are in the town of Qayyarah, 60 kilometers south of Mosul, and the third at a local police station in Hammam al-Alil, 30 kilometers south of Mosul. At least one detainee has been held in Qayyarah for six months, with many others detained since November 2016. According to the Qayyarah prison staff, at least 80 of their detainees are children under 18, with the youngest being 13. Children are in Hammam al-Alil as well.
“The deplorable prison conditions in Qayyarah and Hammam al-Alil show that the Iraqi government is not providing the most basic detention standards or due process,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Iraqis should understand better than most the dangerous consequences of abusing detainees in cruel prison conditions.”
On March 3, 2017, Human Rights Watch visited two of three houses in Qayyarah the Iraqi government has been using since retaking the area in August to detain men and boys suspected of being affiliated with the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). On March 12, researchers visited the local police station at Hammam al-Alil, which is holding 225 people accused of varying crimes, including ISIS-affiliation, in four rooms. Human Rights Watch was unable to interview detainees, but spoke to prison staff.
The prisons are under the authority of the Interior Ministry’s intelligence service, which provides services there together with the Justice Ministry. Staff said that Iraqi security and military services combatting ISIS hand over people they detain to the intelligence service, which holds the detainees in the facilities while individually interrogating them.
The intelligence service then takes the detainees before an investigative judge to assess whether there is enough evidence to bring charges for supporting ISIS under Provision 4 of the Federal Iraqi Counterterrorism Law (no. 13/2005). The judge then either orders their release or transfers the detainees to Baghdad to face charges.
Prison staff in Qayyarah said they had released about 80 detainees and transferred another 775 to Baghdad by early March 2017. Iraq’s Criminal Procedural Code (no. 23/1971) requires detaining authorities to bring detainees before an investigative judge within 24 hours. But Qayyarah prison staff said they had held some detainees for as long as four months, while Human Rights Watch learned of the case of the man held without charge for six months.
Prison staff in Qayyarah said that the investigative judge had cleared at least 300 men for release who are now being held unlawfully after the National Security Service, a security body under the prime minister with a mandate to screen people fleeing ISIS-controlled areas, intervened. Security forces’ failure to comply with a judicial order for release is a crime under Iraqi law. If the security forces are failing to comply with judicial orders in a systematic manner as part of a state policy to ignore such orders and detain people arbitrarily, this could represent a crime against humanity.
Prison staff in Hammam al-Alil said they had released 115 detainees and transferred another 135 to Baghdad. They said they have been holding at least 60 men since the detention site opened in November, 2016.
The prison staff and Justice Minister, Haidar al-Zamili, who met with Human Rights Watch on February 2, 2017, said that detainees held on terrorism charges have no right under the counterterrorism law (no. 13/2005) to communicate with their family during the investigation period, and that the Qayyarah detainees have not been allowed to communicate with their families. A local judge overseeing the cases told Human Rights Watch that once a detainee has been brought before the investigative judge, they have the right to contact their families, but that family visits are being delayed because of the delays in bringing detainees before the judge.
They also said that despite the Iraqi constitution and Criminal Procedure Code (no.23/1971) guaranteeing detainees the right to a lawyer during interrogations and hearings, none had been provided with a lawyer present during their interrogations and many did not have a lawyer during their hearings before the investigative judge.
Human Rights Watch observed that the facilities are all extremely overcrowded, so that no detainee can lie down to sleep. Because of the overcrowding and lack of proper ventilation, the makeshift prison cells are overheated, with an incredible stench. Detainees at the Hammam al-Alil prison called out to the visiting Human Rights Watch researchers, begging them to crack open the door because they said they could not breathe. The detainees have either no time or minimal time outside their cells, eat inside their cells, and have no access to showers and limited access to bathrooms. The facilities have no medical support, contributing to the deaths and amputations, prison staff said.
While the staff said they were trying to improve conditions, they could not reduce the overcrowding. The overcrowding may have been exacerbated due to a temporary freeze, in early 2015, on transfers of prisoners to Baghdad due to the cost of such transfers, a Qayyarah court official told Human Rights Watch on March 11, 2017. He said that the transfers had resumed in mid-January. Prison staff in Hammam al-Alil said that on March 11, they were asked to accept another 11 prisoners but refused, saying there was simply no more room.
One interrogator in Hammam al-Alil said that he sometimes beats ISIS suspects, and an observer who visited the prison in February 2017 said he witnessed the ill-treatment of three detainees.
Detainees charged and convicted may still be entitled to release under the General Amnesty Law passed in August 2016 (no.27/2016), staff said. The law offered amnesty to anyone who joined ISIS or another extremist group against their will, and did not commit any serious offense, like torture or killing. The head of the Iraqi parliament’s legal committee, Mohsen al-Karkari, told Human Rights Watch during a meeting on February 7, 2017, that it was a roundabout way to limit the scope of the wide-reaching Iraqi counterterrorism law and release of thousands of terror suspects. According to the Justice Ministry, authorities have released 756 prisoners since the law was passed.
Human Rights Watch learned from a reliable source that the Iraqi government had sent a committee to review conditions in the facility a few weeks before the Human Rights Watch visit. The committee promised to send up to 20 more interrogators from Baghdad, to speed up investigations. On March 2, 2017, 10 interrogators had arrived at the Qayyarah prisons.
The evidence documented by Human Rights Watch strongly suggests that conditions at the Qayyarah and Hammam al-Alil facilities are hazardous, unfit to hold detainees for extended periods of time, and do not meet basic international standards. As a result, holding detainees there probably amounts to ill-treatment. The state of the facilities and severe understaffing pose severe risks to the prisoners, the prison administration, and the local community.
The authorities should transfer all detainees from these facilities to official prisons built to accommodate detainees, and equipped to meet basic international standards. Until that happens, the Interior and Justice Ministries should, as an urgent priority, improve the conditions, and speed up the investigative process so that it can transfer the prisoners out of the facility as quickly as possible. The ministries should provide all detainees a medical screening upon arrival, and ensure access to medical care.
The authorities should also ensure that there is a clear legal basis for detentions, that all detainees have access to legal counsel, including during interrogation, and that detainees are moved to facilities accessible to government inspection, independent monitors, relatives, and lawyers, with regular and unimpeded access. They should immediately notify families of the detention of their loved ones and under which authority, promptly take detainees before a judge to rule on the legality of their detention, and immediately comply with any judicial order for release.
Judges should order the release of detainees or prisoners being held in inhuman or degrading conditions.
When prosecuting children alleged to have committed illegal acts, they should be treated in accordance with international juvenile justice standards. International law allows for authorities to detain children pretrial in limited situations, but only if formally charged with committing a crime, not merely as suspects. The authorities should release all children not yet formally charged.
“The Iraqi authorities should immediately release the children it is holding in these hellholes unless they promptly charge them with a crime,” Whitson said. “Iraq should recognize and treat children accused of ISIS affiliation as the victims of illegal and unconscionable recruitment and exploitation by the group.”
Brett McGurk's ignoring that as well. But he did make time to meet with the President of the KRG.
Reviewed #Mosul campaign, praised #Peshmerga performance, & offered condolences for losses, in #Erbil meeting today w/President Barzani.
Hopefully, he addressed politics since elections in Iraq are not far off.
Mustafa Habib (NIQASH) reports:
For some time now it has been clear that Iraq’s Shiite Muslim militias have political ambitions. The militias were formed by volunteers in 2014 in order to fight the extremist group known as the Islamic State, but have since become a semi-official part of the Iraqi military.
Comments made by influential leaders of the various Shiite Muslim militias often have the same impact as statements made by senior politicians and military, and it’s been clear for some time that they plan to use their popularity and importance to enter politics.
As the fight to push the Islamic State, or IS, group out of the country proceeds, and looks likely to end in success sometime in the next few months, the militias are looking toward their political futures.
“The militias will be present in politics in the same way they were present on the battlefield,” Qais al-Khazali, leader of one of the most feared and respected militias, the League of the Righteous, said last week. “In the same way that we win the battle against the IS group, we will win the fight against corruption and unemployment. Because the militias exist thanks to God’s will.”
Sources say that most recently the various militias had been negotiating alliances between themselves that they could capitalize on in upcoming Iraqi elections.
“Over the past few days there have been closed door meetings held to discuss the future of the militias and how they will participate in the elections,” said one source, who had to remain anonymous due to the secretive nature of the meetings. The militias discussed participating in Iraq’s upcoming provincial elections, currently due to be held in September 2017, and then federal elections, due to be held in April 2018. The idea of putting them all together on one electoral list was floated by Iranian advisers.
However, there are a lot of obstacles to getting the various militias, which are far from a homogenous group, to cooperate. Political tactics are very different from those on the battlefield.
The US government is in bed with the League of Righteous -- Barack made sure of that in his first year when he released their leaders as a deal to get 4 British corpses and 1 surviving British hostage released.
The US government has done so much to destroy in Iraq (but last week's award given to Queen Raina of Jordan is supposed to wipe away all of that?).
Certainly, the rights of women were among the things the US government destroyed.
I got to meet the great Iraqi pioneer Suad Al Attar today. She was the first Iraqi artist to hold a solo exhibition in Baghdad in the 1960s.
New content at THIRD:
- Truest statement of the week
- Truest statement of the week II
- A note to our readers
- Editorial: US using chemical weapons
- TV: The viewers get TAKEN
- Jim's World
- Tweet of the week
- Video of the week
- This edition's playlist
- Highlights
And the following community sites -- plus BLACK AGENDA REPORT and Jody Watley -- updated:
Oh, Maxine
11 hours ago
Thursday mag to pick up
11 hours ago
Still WikiLeaks
11 hours ago
Nutcase Ashley Judd
12 hours ago
TV: The viewers get TAKEN
12 hours ago
A little honesty would go a long way
12 hours ago
Don't hit snooze
13 hours ago
Trump and Obama
13 hours ago
hideous
13 hours ago
TCM needs to fire Ben Mankiewicz
13 hours ago
Hepburn and other things
13 hours ago
Preet served who?
14 hours ago
