20 January 2016•Update: 20 January 2016
LONDON
Kurdish forces in Iraq have destroyed Arab villages in “revenge” for their perceived support for Daesh, Amnesty International said Wednesday.
The human rights group said the destruction could amount to a war crime.
Peshmerga fighters of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq have “bulldozed, blown up and burned down thousands of homes in an apparent effort to uproot Arab communities in revenge for their perceived support for the so-called Islamic State (IS),” the report said, using an alternative name for Daesh.
The report - Banished and Dispossessed: Forced displacement and deliberate destruction in northern Iraq - is based on field investigations in 13 villages and towns and testimony from more than 100 eyewitnesses and alleged victims of forced displacement.
Researcher Donatella Rovera said tens of thousands of Arab civilians forced to flee their homes because of fighting were now living in “desperate conditions” in makeshift camps.
The report also implicated Yezidi fighters and Kurdish militias from Syria and Turkey in destroying villages around Sinjar last year.
“KRG forces appear to be spearheading a concerted campaign to forcibly displace Arab communities by destroying entire villages in areas they have recaptured from IS in northern Iraq,” Rovera said in a statement.
“The forced displacement of civilians and the deliberate destruction of homes and property without military justification, may amount to war crimes.”
The 45-page report, which is backed up with satellite evidence, detailed the destruction of homes in Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala governorates, which Peshmerga forces recaptured from Daesh between September 2014 and March 2015.
The report claimed the destruction appeared to be a punishment “perceived sympathies with IS and to consolidate territorial gains in ‘disputed areas’ which the KRG authorities have long claimed as rightfully theirs”.
Maher Nubul told Amnesty his village - Tabaj Hamid in eastern Diyala governorate - was “flattened” after it was retaken by the Peshmerga in October 2014.
“All I know is that when the Peshmerga retook the village the houses were standing,” he said. “We could not go back but could see it clearly from the distance. And later they bulldozed the village, I don’t know why. There is nothing left. They destroyed everything for no reason.”
Rovera called on the international community, including Western powers supporting the Peshmerga such as the U.K. and Germany, to publicly condemn violations of international humanitarian law.
“They must also ensure that any assistance they are providing to the KRG is not fuelling such abuses,” she said.
