Interrupting genocide, step by step

By Roxana Popescu (/staff/roxana-popescu/)
FILE – This file image posted on a militant website on Saturday, June 14, 2014, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, appears to show militants from the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) taking aim at captured Iraqi soldiers wearing plain clothes after taking over a base in Tikrit, Iraq. Human Rights Watch, a leading international watchdog, said Wednesday, Sept 3, 2014, new evidence indicates the Islamic State fighters killed between 560 and 770 men captured at Camp Speicher, near the city of Tikrit — a figure several times higher than what was initially reported. The Human Rights Watch statement said the revised figure for the slain soldiers was based on analysis of new satellite imagery, militant videos and a survivor’s account that confirmed the existence of three more “mass execution sites.” (AP Photo via militant website, File)
FILE – This file image posted on a militant website on Saturday, June 14, 2014, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, appears to show militants from the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) taking aim at captured Iraqi soldiers wearing plain clothes after taking over a base in Tikrit, Iraq. Human Rights Watch, a leading international watchdog, said Wednesday, Sept 3, 2014, new evidence indicates the Islamic State fighters killed between 560 and 770 men captured at Camp Speicher, near the city of Tikrit — a figure several times higher than what was initially reported. The Human Rights Watch statement said the revised figure for the slain soldiers was based on analysis of new satellite imagery, militant videos and a survivor’s account that confirmed the existence of three more “mass execution sites.” (AP Photo via militant website, File) The Associated Press

They went to Washington with high hopes: Persuade lawmakers to help save the persecuted minorities who have been turned out of their homes or suffered far worse fates at the hands of ISIS insurgents.

Now an interfaith delegation, led by San Diego’s Chaldean bishop Sarhad Jammo, Chaldean refugee advocate Mark Arabo, and a New York rabbi, is regrouping after the House failed to pass legislation this session to provide assistance.

The bill would have helped relocate tens of thousands of Iraqis displaced by ISIS, the stateless jihadist group that has seized control of parts of Iraq and Syria.

Juan Vargas, who co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla., said it got broad support but ran out of time.

“I’m going to work as hard as I can” to help it pass in the next session, Vargas said. Congress reconvenes in November.

The bill’s stall, and the next moves, offer a window into Washington deal-making. Having the drafted bill earn support from lawmakers, even without passing, serves as leverage for getting other kinds of results, Vargas said.

Arabo said the bill is one of several tactics his team is pursuing. Other avenues include possible executive orders, efforts by the State Department to speed up refugee processing, and cooperation from other countries through the U.N. to accept a portion of the displaced populations.

In San Diego, Chaldeans said they were frustrated by the bill’s failure to pass, because people’s lives are at stake. Chaldeans are a Christian community that was once large in Iraq. Many now live in San Diego, after an exodus in the last decade. They have spent the past several years, and especially this summer, watching as their population was driven from its ancestral homeland in northern Iraq.

Since June, ISIS has instituted a reign of terror for people who do not join its cause, taking women as slaves, beheading resistors, and driving people out of their homes.

Other groups also have been brutalized by ISIS, and the bill and other aid and resettlement efforts include them, as well.

While the bill’s failure stings, the United States’ apparent intention to wage a military campaign against ISIS is encouraging, said John Daiza, a Chaldean energy executive who lives in Carlsbad, who served on Iraq’s transitional government shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

“The U.S. (as the leader of the free world) is finally showing some backbone and planning to conduct a military campaign (that I hope will be intensive and decisive), but according to the president and other senior (Defense Department) and State Department officials, it appears that the military campaign will take several years before ISIS is degraded,” Daiza wrote in an email. “The persecuted and displaced Christians in northern Iraq need asylum now.”

To provide that immediate relief, Arabo met with Obama administration officials Thursday and U.N. delegates Friday to outline his recommendations for protecting the Chaldeans and other minorities. Arabo said he’s been gathering a list of names and harrowing stories of displaced Iraqis who have contacted him, asking to be evacuated.

“We made the case for 70,000 names,” Arabo said.

Arabo said it would be within President Barack Obama’s purview to authorize airstrikes, to issue visas, to collaborate with other nations to implement solutions, and to generally “make resettlement (for potential refugees) a priority” when dealing with ISIS.

A separate goal is to increase the processing of refugees within Iraq. That was interrupted this summer, when the State Department deemed the country too unsafe for its workers.

Last week, the House voted 273-156 to train Syrians in the fight against ISIS. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, voted no, saying it would not help defeat ISIS but would instead “train more Islamic radicals.” The other four members of Congress from San Diego County voted yes.

Sohaib Alagha, who lives in San Diego and is vice president of a pro-Syrian democracy organization, said the Syrians who would be trained have been vetted and the United States must be confident in these fighters’ allegiance if it’s moving forward with training them. He said the idea is “way overdue,” and it will be helpful “to the Middle East, to Syria and to U.S. interests.”

“The U.S. has been vetting moderate Syrian opposition sources for more than three years,” he said, in part through covert CIA operations, which he called “a well-known secret.”

Asked who the so-called moderate fighters are, Alagha said it’s a diverse group of people who are united against dictator Bashar al-Assad. He said the next test for the United States will be how this country responds if al-Assad’s forces attack them, instead of letting them fight against ISIS.

Daiza, the Chaldean energy executive, called training Syrians a “strategic and tactical mistake … in light of the fact that we do not know exactly who these rebels are and arming them would only result in the transfer of American high value weapons into the hands of ISIS.”

He proposed a solution that includes airstrikes, 30,000 to 40,000 American troops on the ground, the arming of Kurds (a population in and around the north of Iraq), and forming an alliance with Sunni Muslims. That group, he said, is at bitter odds with ISIS.

Wael Al-Delaimy, an Iraqi who is a UC San Diego professor of family and preventive medicine, said many people besides Christians have been persecuted by ISIS, including families of refugees in San Diego.

He added that there’s an inconsistency in the U.S. strategy to arm the Syrian rebels, even though the move overall is a good one.

“On one hand, we are helping the enemies of Bashar in Syria, but on the other hand helping his allies in Iraq who will funnel weapons and personnel they get from the U.S. to him when needed,” he said.

Noori Barka, president of the Chaldean American Institute, an El Cajon community development nonprofit, said arming Syrians or making any moves to remove al-Assad follows bad precedents in Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Iraq, which all led to instability, power voids and a rise in extremism.

“If our goal is stability in the Middle East, we should do whatever it takes to find a political solution for Syria through the United Nations and we should not get involved in destroying another country,” he said. He said a coalition of Arabic and Islamic countries to all fight ISIS would be a better solution.

He said regardless of the Syrian training move and the bill’s status, it’s important to remember the plight of those waiting for escape from danger.

“It’s obvious that Iraqi Christians cannot survive in Iraq anymore. They have no future there. There used to be 1.5 million Christians in 2003 before the invasion of Iraq. Now, there is less than 400,000 in the whole Iraq, with over 200,000 facing a genocide by ISIS.”

Statistics like these make helping extract people from harm’s way a moral imperative, he said.

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