U.S. State Department officials said on July 28 they have not forgotten
the suffering in Iraq and Syria—where Islamic State (ISIS or Daesh) has
slaughtered, pillaged, and displaced entire minority communities.
“I want to be very clear, the protection of religious and ethnic
minorities in Iraq and Syria is a foreign policy priority of the United
States,” said Knox Thames, the State Department’s special adviser for
religious minorities in the near east and south and central Asia. “The
best way to defeat Daesh and its ideology of hate is by protecting what
they have tried to exterminate: religious and ethnic pluralism.”
Thames and David Saperstein, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large
for international religious freedom, said they will meet with
delegations of more than 25 countries in Washington today to discuss
ongoing strategies to protect vulnerable populations under ISIS control
and ensure religious freedom in the region.
Saperstein said the first step to restore stability in desecrated communities is to destroy ISIS.
The U.S. and its allies are making important gains in the fight against
ISIS, according to Saperstein. Terror groups in the region only retain
about 50 percent of the territory they once had. ISIS has lost 30
percent of its oil reserves, and airstrikes have killed thousands of
militants.
Just last month, the Iraqi army announced it had fully liberated
Fallujah, which ISIS has controlled for more than two years. And it
expects to free more territory soon.
Saperstein said the State Department is preparing for the aftermath of
liberating Mosul. Vacating the city of militants is crucial, but the
community’s devastation will not disappear along with the fighters. The
State Department wants to deploy strategic resources to restore the
city’s former infrastructure and stability.
Religious freedom is a core and basic universal right for all persons,
but according to Saperstein, supporting it abroad also protects both
U.S. and world interests.
“Respect for religious freedom is instrumental to peace, security, and
development around the world,” Saperstein said. “No nation can fulfill
its potential if its people are denied the right to exercise their
freedom.”
On March 17, Secretary of State John Kerry made the historic
determination that ISIS is committing genocide against Christians and
other minorities in Iraq and Syria. But highlighting the tragedy did not
solve the problem.
Religious and civic leaders from the region gathered at Georgetown
University on Thursday to detail their ongoing plight and give
recommendations for policy makers to support freedom of faith.
Throughout the onslaught of violence, ISIS has targeted minority
groups. Terrorists besieged their Assyrian Christian, Yazidi, and Shia
Muslim neighbors. ISIS gave many the option to either convert to radical
Islam or die. Others fled, creating a humanitarian crisis of 3.3
million internally displaced persons.
“There is no appreciation for human life, and that is the greatest loss
our people are suffering there,” said Mar Awa Royel, bishop of the
Assyrian Church of the East. “[During the Mosul invasion] what I
experienced was a people that were really broken. Not merely
spiritually, materially, but no longer had a future to look towards.”
Many Assyrian Christians are indigenous to the region, and have lived
in cities like Mosul for more than a thousand years. Royel said they
want to remain in their homeland, but right now that’s impossible. ISIS
attacks have left their communities in ruins, destroying both physical
and economic stability. He recommended creating an international
coalition where all persecuted minority groups can engage in an open
dialogue.
Royel said amid the current cacophony, little dialogue takes place. A
formal structure will help persecuted groups craft a common request of
international partners, he said.
But Christians are only a small portion of the persecuted. In 2014,
ISIS massacred the people of Sinjar, killing 5,000 Yazidi men and
capturing thousands of women for sex slaves.
Murad Ismael, the executive director of Yazda, a nonprofit established
to support Yazidi in the U.S., said his people have lived as
second-class citizens for a long time, creating fertile ground for
genocide.
“The Yazidis are suffering a holocaust,” Ismael said. “There are no gas
chambers to kill people and burn people, but there’s a system to
persecute the Yazidis.”
According to Ismael, 3,700 Yazidi women remain enslaved, facing rape by
ISIS fighters every day. Ismael said many Yazidi commit suicide, too
afraid to live any more with the fear of becoming a sex slave.
Breen Tahseen, a representative of the Yazidi community in Iraq, said
the country needs justice before it can ever pursue reconciliation. He
called on the International Criminal Court to prosecute ISIS for its
crimes against the Yazidis.
Courtesy: WORLD News Service
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