24 Oct 2016 - NPWJ News Digest on Middle East and North Africa Democracy

NPWJ in the news

Christians and the impending crisis in Mosul
BarnabasAid, 20 Oct 2016


The situation in Iraq is now reaching crisis point as the Iraqi army, together with a loose coalition of forces, close in on Islamic State’s stronghold in the city of Mosul.
Barnabas Aid has in the last 24 hours spoken with one of the archbishops of Mosul. He stated that Christians who fled two years ago from the villages near Mosul, which have been liberated from Islamic State (IS) in the last few days, are unsure whether to return to their homes.   Their greatest concerns are the safety and security issues, but it is likely to be a month before the situation becomes clearer. The archbishop has specifically asked Barnabas Aid supporters to pray for these Christians to know God’s will.
As far as the situation in Mosul itself is concerned, he questions whether Christians will ever be allowed back in the city for reasons which we explain more fully in our editorial.
Those now fleeing the city of Mosul ahead of the impending battle are almost exclusively Sunni Muslims, as the Christians of Mosul were forced to leave in 2014 when IS took over. Although IS initially appeared willing to allow Christians in Mosul to have dhimmi status, shortly afterwards they gave them the choice of immediately converting to Islam, leaving or being executed. As a report by a coalition of well-respected human rights organisations stated: “After assuming control of Mosul, ISIS published a charter demanding that Christians pay a ‘jizya’ (a tax paid by non-Muslims) and imposing harsh punishments, such as public crucifixions. On 17 July, ISIS militants began to paint Christian homes with the Arabic letter ‘Nun’ (signifying Nasrani, a word used to refer to Christians) and with ‘property of the Islamic State’. On 18 July 2014, ISIS members announced in all of Mosul’s mosques that the Christian population had until noon of 19 July 2014 to leave the city or face execution.”
(Institute for International Law and Human Rights, Minority Rights Group International, No Peace without Justice and Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization Between the Millstones: The State of Iraq’s Minorities Since the Fall of Mosul (February 2015).

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Articles

Turkish and Kurdish soldiers join forces to gain advantage in Mosul push
by The Guardian, 23 Oct 2016

Kurdish troops backed by foreign special forces including a Turkish contingent advanced on a town near Mosul on Sunday, pushing to within five miles (nine kilometres) of the northern Iraqi city as Islamic State launched another diversionary attack on the western town of Rutba. Sunday’s offensive focused on encircling the strategic town of Bashiqa, known for both its religious diversity and production of the aniseed liquor arak, until Isis took over in August 2014. Its liberation was expected last week when Kurdish peshmerga forces swept into the area, only to be pinned down by a barrage of suicide attacks, buildings filled with homemade bombs, and militants using tunnel networks to reappear in “cleared areas” to launch fresh ambushes. “The suicide car bombs were very strong and we suffered many casualties,” said Jamal Bayaz, a 60-year-old peshmerga fighting to the east of Bashiqa again, after retreating last week. “We had anti-tank ammunition, but the area was hilly and we missed the Isis units. We were lucky at least once, when a suicide bomber attacked but his vehicle broke down before he reached us.”

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Sanaa air raids resume as Yemen truce expires, say residents
by Reuters, 23 Oct 2016

Warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition attacked targets in Sanaa at dawn on Sunday, hours after a three-day truce in Yemen's war expired, residents in the capital said. The ceasefire, agreed to allow for an increased flow of humanitarian aid, ended without renewal after a day of heavy fighting between the Saudi-led Arab coalition and the Iran-allied Houthi movement. Each side accused the other of repeatedly violating the truce and U.N. attempts to extend it before it lapsed appeared to have failed. "The (Houthi) coup militias deliberately thwarted the truce and that further convinced our military and political leadership of their unwillingness to accept a peace," the government's army chief of staff Mohammed Ali al-Miqdashi said on Saturday. Air strikes were reported over some military sites in Sanaa in the Hafa camp to the east and in the Nahdein area in the south. Radar positions were also targeted in the Houthi-controlled city of Hodeida and in the contested southwestern city of Taiz, residents reported. Houthi-run TV channel al-Masirah said that pro-Houthi fighters had launched an artillery attack on government forces near Taiz. A Saudi civil defense spokesman told state news agency SPA that missiles launched by the Houthis from inside Yemen destroyed two houses in the southern Saudi province of Jazan early on Sunday. The air strikes happened hours before the arrival in Sanaa of U.N. envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed on Sunday who told reporters at Sanaa airport he would discuss options for a political solution with Houthi representatives and try to secure another ceasefire.

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Syria: heavy clashes mark end of Aleppo ceasefire
by The Guardian, 23 Oct 2016

Heavy clashes have erupted between regime and rebel forces in Syria’s divided city of Aleppo after a three-day “humanitarian” ceasefire expired before the UN could evacuate wounded civilians from rebel-held areas. Neither rebels nor residents of opposition-held districts heeded calls from Syria’s army and Moscow to leave during the ceasefire, after weeks of devastating bombardment and a three-month government siege. Syrian state media and Russian authorities have accused rebel forces of preventing civilians from leaving and of using them as human shields. Almost 500 people have been killed and more than 2,000 civilians wounded since the army launched its offensive to drive the rebels out of the eastern districts they have held since 2012. The UN had hoped to use the ceasefire to evacuate seriously wounded people and possibly deliver aid. But a UN official said on Saturday the requisite security guarantees had not been received. “You have various parties to the conflict and those with influence and they all have to be on the same page on this and they are not,” said David Swanson, a spokesman for the UN humanitarian office. No additional aid was delivered, leaving the beleaguered rebel-held eastern part of the city without any immediate sign of western help. No aid has entered Aleppo since 7 July and food rations will run out by the end of the month, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has warned.

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Source: ISIS executes hundreds of Mosul area residents
by CNN , 22 Oct 2016

ISIS executed 284 men and boys as coalition forces closed in on Mosul, an Iraqi intelligence source told CNN. Those killed on Thursday and Friday had been rounded up near and in the city for use as human shields against attacks that are forcing ISIS out of the southern sections of Mosul, the source explained. ISIS used a bulldozer to dump the corpses in a mass grave at the scene of the executions -- Mosul's defunct College of Agriculture in the north of the city, the intelligence source said. The victims were all shot and some were children, said the source, who wanted anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. CNN could not independently confirm the claim. The United Nations earlier said it is "gravely worried" that ISIS has taken 550 families from villages around Mosul and is using them as human shields as Iraqi and Kurdish forces battle the terror group for control of Iraq's second-largest city. Two hundred families from Samalia village and 350 families from Najafia were forced out Monday and taken to Mosul in what appears to be "an apparent policy by ISIS to prevent civilians escaping," Ravina Shamdasani, deputy spokeswoman for the UN Human Rights Office, told CNN.
 

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Turkey proposes international plan on post-ISIL Mosul status
by Hurriyet Daily News, 19 Oct 2016

Turkey has called on the international community to start drafting an international plan for Mosul to ensure the city is governed by mainly local groups, a senior government official has said, underlining that Ankara was ready to take all measures to avoid any attempted ethnic cleansing after the region is cleared of jihadists. “Mosul should be governed by the people of Mosul. Works to shape an international plan on Mosul’s status should begin now. Leaving the control of the city to groups from different regions would create worse problems,” Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş told Ankara bureau chiefs of newspapers at a meeting on Oct. 19. “We hope very much to see that the Mosul operation will end in such a way that the region will no longer face the risk of any divisions. The operation is being run in accordance with the sensitivities we have made already clear.” Turkey is greatly concerned by the possibility of Shiite militias’ active participation in the Mosul operation, fearing that they could attempt to change the demography of the overwhelmingly Sunni city by force.

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