Iraq
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| Map is from The Guardian |
The latest ISIS campaign is against Kurdish minority Yazidis. UN groups say at least 40,000 members of the Yazidi sect, many of them women and children, have taken refuge in nine locations on Mount Sinjar, a craggy, mile-high ridge identified in local legend as the final resting place of Noah's ark. At least 130,000 more people, many from the Yazidi stronghold of Sinjar, have fled to Dohuk, in the Kurdish north, or to Irbil, where regional authorities have been struggling since June to deal with one of the biggest and most rapid refugee movements in decades. [The Guardian, August 6]
On Friday, US began airstrikes against the militant forces. U.S. warplanes bombed Islamist fighters marching on Iraq's Kurdish capital on Friday after President Barack Obama said Washington must act to prevent "genocide". Islamic State fighters...have advanced to within a half hour's drive of Arbil, capital of Iraq's Kurdish region and a hub for U.S. oil companies. [Reuters, August 8]
Related
Stephen Walt, "Do No (More) Harm" (Foreign Policy, August 7) - the case against bombing the Islamic State..."Every time the U.S. touches the Middle East, it makes things worse. It's time to walk away and not look back...This argument would not preclude limited U.S. action for purely humanitarian purposes -- such as humanitarian airdrops for the beleaguered religious minorities now threatened with starvation in Iraq."
The Nuclear Weapons Era
On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. It was the beginning of the nuclear weapons era. In his introduction to a Noam Chomsky article, Tom Englehardt at TomDispatch writes that the way for the bombing of Hiroshima had been paved by an evolution in warfare: the increasing targeting of civilian populations from the air (something that can be seen again today in the carnage of Gaza)....Targeted by the planet’s major nuclear arsenals would be the civilian inhabitants not just of single cities but of scores and scores of cities, even of the planet itself. On August 6th, 70 years ago, the possibility of the apocalypse passed out of the hands of God or the gods and into human hands, which meant a new kind of history had begun whose endpoint is unknowable. Noam Chomsky's article reviews the insane strategies of the nuclear weapons era (NWE) and the squandered opportunities to reduce the threat. He quotes General Lee Butler, former head of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which controls nuclear weapons and strategy. Twenty years ago, he wrote that we had so far survived the NWE “by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.” Chomsky concludes As General Butler observed, it is a near miracle that we have escaped destruction so far, and the longer we tempt fate, the less likely it is that we can hope for divine intervention to perpetuate the miracle. Nine countries currently possess at least 16,300 nuclear weapons - a significant drop from the 60-70,000 present at the peak but a long way from zero.
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| Table is from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and appeared in Business Insider |
Gaza
A three-day ceasefire ended Friday. Al Jazeera reports: Israel has hit the Gaza Strip with missiles and artillery for the first time in three days, while Palestinian fighters launched a barrage of rockets at Israel, just hours after a ceasefire between the two sides expired....The ceasefire expired as no progress was made in the Egyptian-mediated talks aimed at finding a durable solution to the month-long fighting. The Egyptian-brokered talks had not resumed as of Saturday night.
Preliminary UN estimates of the destruction to date in six areas of the Gaza Strip based on satellite images show a total of 3246 structures damaged or destroyed (1525 destroyed, 700 severely damaged, 1021 moderately damaged), 4900 acres of farmland destroyed, and 1288 road or rural area craters. A UN report on casualties (August 6) estimated that 1,843 Palestinians had been killed and 66 Israelis and one Thai national since Israel launched Operation Protective Edge on 8 July. Of those Palestinians, the status of 279 could not be identified, at least 1,354 were civilians, including 415 children and 214 women. Israel's 67 deaths include 3 civilians.
Meanwhile, pressure is mounting for an investigation into possible war crimes. The UN could launch an independent investigation into the conduct of the war: The U.S. has cast the sole vote against establishing an investigation by the United Nations into war crimes committed in Gaza. Yesterday [July 23], the United Nations Human Rights Council voted 29-1, with 17 abstentions, to establish an inquiry. The United States was the only no vote. The European nations on the council all abstained. [Mondo Weiss, July 24] Also, The Guardian reported on August 5: Palestinian political leaders are poised to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) with the aim of putting Israel in the dock on war crimes charges, officials said today. "Israel has left us with no other option," Riad Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister, told reporters after meeting ICC officials in The Hague to discuss the implications of signing the Rome Statute. It would make the Palestinian state a member of the court with the authority to call for an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The destruction of property and the death toll in Occupied Gaza now exceed those of the Israeli siege of Dec 2008-Jan 2009. Without accountability for the massive civilian casualties and damage inflicted by the IDF, what The Nation has called "the cycle of impunity" will continue. Impunity is what happens when an aggressor fractures the norms of international law and basic human rights yet is never held to account, and so is free to commit the same crimes again and again. That is what we’re seeing now, and that is exactly what the Goldstone Report—the findings of the UN investigation of Operation Cast Lead in 2008–09—so presciently warned against. It said then that bringing to justice those who committed war crimes—Israel as well as Hamas—was perhaps the only effective way to prevent another round of violence. [The Nation, posted July 16]
Related
"What the Gaza War Means for the Middle East" (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, July 27) - "Despite the horrifying human toll of the latest Israel offensive against Gaza, Palestinians are rallying in even greater numbers around Hamas. They have rejected any ceasefire proposal that does not end the crippling seven-year blockade of Gaza; a blockade that has been described as a form of collective punishment that keeps Palestinians trapped in the largest 'open-air prison camp' in the world."
Marjorie Cohn, "Israel Inflicts Illegal Collective Punishment on Gaza" (Huffington Post, July 14) - "Israel's overwhelming use of military force constitutes collective punishment, which is a war crime... Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a party, specifically forbids collective punishment. It says, 'No protected person [civilian] may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed ... Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited' "
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, 12 August 1949
Update Last Sunday's round-up noted that the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier was used as the Israeli justification for the increased violence on Friday August 1 that left around 100 Palestinians dead. Consistent with the Hamas' statement at the time, the kidnapping did not actually occur and Israel confirmed on Saturday August 2 that the soldier presumed captured had been killed in action.
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