Amnesty International accuses Australia of ‘war crimes’ in fight against Islamic State, The New Daily, 12 July, 2017.

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2017/07/12/australia-war-crimes-iraq-islamic-state-iraq/


NEWS WORLD
9:42pm, Jul 12, 2017 Updated: 4h ago

Amnesty International accuses Australia of ‘war crimes’ in fight against Islamic State


Amnesty report says Australia, as part of the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State, has committed war crimes in Iraq. Photo: Getty
John Stapleton
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Australia has committed war crimes in Iraq as the second-largest contributor to the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State, according to an Amnesty International report.

While Iraq and the United States have claimed victory over IS in Mosul, thousands of bodies still lie in the pulverised ruins.

Almost one million people have fled. The Iraqi Army has lost up to 40 per cent of its attack force. Estimates of the number of civilians killed range over 13,000. The exact number will never be known.

Amnesty International spokesperson Diana Sayed told The New Daily the 225kg bombs dropped into the crowded streets of Mosul had a shock radius of 230 metres and resulted in needless casualties.

“Pro-government forces, including Australia, failed to take feasible precautions to protect civilians during the battle for west Mosul – through launching barrages of indiscriminate, disproportionate and otherwise unlawful attacks, and failing to provide adequate warnings prior to bombardments. The realities of living under the Islamic State often meant people were trapped and unable to leave their homes,” she said.

“Australia and its allies in Iraq should publicly acknowledge the massive loss of lives during the Mosul operation.”

The report, titled ‘At Any Cost: The Civilian Catastrophe in West Mosul, Iraq’, said Iraqi and US forces did not meet humanitarian law requirements.

“Iraqi government and US-led coalition forces failed to adequately adapt their tactics to these challenges – as required by international humanitarian law – with disastrous consequences for civilians. Pro-government forces relied heavily upon explosive weapons with wide area effects. These weapons wreaked havoc in densely populated west Mosul, where large groups of civilians were trapped.”

If military planners were unaware of the likely civilian toll, it quickly became evident.

“It was pro-government soldiers who assisted in countless front-line rescues, digging bodies out of collapsed buildings, separating the injured from the dead and arranging the transport of thousands to medical facilities,” the report said.

High Commissioner for the United Nations Human Rights Office, Zeid Al Hussein, said he urged the coalition to comply with humanitarian laws.

“I repeatedly called on coalition partners to ensure that military operations complied with international humanitarian law,” he said in a statement this week.

“Airstrikes were a significant factor in causing civilian casualties.”

An Iraqi woman and children flee the Old City of Mosul on July 3 as Iraqi-forces closed in on Islamic State fighters. Photo: Getty

The Amnesty International report came in the days after Human Rights Watch argued there had been major breaches of international law in its ‘Civilian Casualties Mount in West Mosul: Coalition’ report.

The group has also reported on mass graves in government-controlled areas, indicating war crimes.

A spokeswoman for the group Belkis Wille told The New Daily: “All of the families I speak to have a story about neighbours, loved ones or friends being killed in airstrikes. The people coming out of west Mosul are the most traumatised I have ever interviewed.”

Experts warn that Islamic State, far from being defeated, have created a major jihad spectacle which will drive recruitment.

Security expert Professor Clinton Fernandes told The New Daily: “While the public is generally unaware of most US military operations, since the media has largely been scrubbed clean of this kind of coverage, radical groups rely on satellite TV and the internet to get a different message out.”

Terror expert Dr Clarke Jones told The New Daily the deaths of so many civilians could drive extremism.

“Here is another case where the West has stepped in and caused the death of innocents. There are a lot of angry people. They see this injustice and want to take action,” he said.

Defence Minister Marise Payne was unavailable for comment.

Islamic State loses the battle for Mosul, The New Daily, 7 July, 2017.

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2017/07/05/after-mosul-war-will-go-on/

Islamic State loses the battle for Mosul, but don’t dare to believe the war is won


Iraqi forces have retaken all but a small, rubble-strewn strip of Mosul where Islamist fanatics are fighting to the death. Photo: Getty
John Stapleton
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Islamic State (IS) has released graphic footage of its final hours in war-ravaged Mosul in northern Iraq as experts around the world warn that America and Australia have fallen into a jihad trap.

While the West crows of victory and “liberation”, IS wants everyone to know what has happened there. Pictures of wounded and dying children, shell-shocked mothers and fleeing families are being widely disseminated.

The footage, released through their official media outlet Amaq, shows IS fighters, known as mujahedeen or holy warriors, firing rifles as they fight their way through the city’s severely bombed streets.

Horror stories abound, of children rounded up from orphanages and placed on the front line, of entire families killed by airstrikes.

With water and food supplies cut, more than 800,000 people have fled the city. Humanitarian workers report the civilian population the most traumatised they have ever seen.

There are only a few hundred IS fighters left in a thin strip estimated to run for 300 metres from the Tigris River. All are expected to die in the coming hours.

Thousands of their comrades have been killed in the battle to retake Mosul, which began in October last year. Hundreds more have blown themselves up in suicide attacks.

It was in Mosul that IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a Muslim caliphate in 2014.

Since then, IS has attracted followers around the world and changed the face of terror forever.

Fighters directed by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi are being pulverised in Iraq.

Speaking on the third anniversary of that day, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi praised his troops on “the big victory”.

“Praise be to God, we managed to liberate Mosul,” al-Abadi said.

Both the US-led Coalition forces and the Iraq military have been pounding the city all week. Australia has also been dropping more than $30 million worth of bombs on the city a month, 119 strikes in May alone.

Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation Charlie Winter warns that the destruction of Mosul will fuel jihadi propaganda worldwide.

“The truth is, IS has been planning for defeat in Mosul for months, if not years. Losing the city has long been part of its global plan,” he said.

“The caliphate has been doing all it can to make sure it could be seen to be putting up a fight.

“Although IS’s audacious ultraviolence ultimately set the scene for its material undoing, it also meant that it could work towards creating the world it wanted to inhabit – a polarised turbulent place that accommodated the jihadist ideology uncannily well.”

Senior analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute John Coyne told The New Daily he agreed: “Anyone who thinks the fall of Mosul is going to end all this is fooling themselves. We call the Australian political response ‘security theatre’. Kill them at the source, get tough on terror, but whether that is a strategy for victory over the jihadists is hotly contested.”IS fighters paraded through Raqqa when the rebel movement seemed unstoppable. Now their last sanctuary is also poised to fall.

While the Shia-dominated Iraq Army celebrates victory over the Sunni-majority town of Mosul, there are numerous questions over the military’s behaviour. Human Rights Watch says there are numerous reports of wanton killings.

The iman of the al-Nuri mosque, destroyed last week, said he longed for the return of the caliphate:

“The reason we supported Daesh is because of the abuses of the army. People started looking for salvation regardless of what the alternative was.”

At the same time as IS confronts certain defeat in Mosul, it is also facing losses in its de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria, with US Central Command claiming major advances through the Old City.