Someone Else's Problem

Here are two contrasting article from The Guardian - one from Lindsey German who seems to believe that the Yazidi people would be abandoned to their fate and another from Martin Chulov who is witnessing the medieval barbarism inflicted by ISIS in the front line of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Now if you ask me, the politics of people like Lindsey German draws its strength from a deep seated anti-American, anti-western, anti-capitalist stance that offers no real solutions to the complex problems of the Middle East which is why she can distinguish so easily between the terrible loss of life between two groups of people caught up in war and terrorism.

But this Pontius Pilate approach is quite despicable if you ask me, because there is no way to negotiate a peace with the murderers of ISIS who freely admit that they are killing and enslaving people because of their ethnic and religious background.

Yet that is someone else's problem according to these dreary old warhorses who have spent so much of their lives in dreary old political organisations like the SWP (Socialist Workers Party).


Why British people are protesting about Gaza, not Iraq

We have a deep movement in solidarity with Palestinians and our government is complicit in Israel’s oppression of them


By Lindsey German - The Guardian


Protestors in central London unite against military action in Gaza. 'We provide arms, we trade with Israel and we defend the actions of the government there, just as we did in 2008-09 and 2012 when Gaza was bombed.' Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

The hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets of Britain over the past month in support of and solidarity with the people of Gaza have seen their protests denounced by neocons and rightwingers because they aren’t about some other group of people, somewhere else.

The “why don’t they march against something else” crowd accuse us of silence on those atrocities. There are certainly many terrible humanitarian disasters in the world, most recently that of the Yazidis in Iraq, about which we must all feel anguish. Our argument is that our government and the US’s past intervention have not helped the people of the Middle East, but made things worse. The point of a mass demonstration is to put pressure on our government and to alter public opinion in this country. They have had an impact. Public opinion remains strongly anti-intervention and anti-war, and last year, mobilised public opinion was instrumental in stopping David Cameron’s attempt to bomb Syria.

Last Saturday’s demonstration was the biggest ever pro-Palestine protest at 150,000. There have been thousands of smaller actions around the country. There is widespread outrage at Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza and a determination to end the siege which is causing such misery to Gazans.

Why do people feel strongly enough to take to the streets over Gaza but not over other issues? Partly because there is a deep and longstanding movement in solidarity with the Palestinians that encompasses trade unions, community groups, faith groups and activists. But it is also partly because our government is seen as complicit in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. We provide arms, we trade with Israel and we defend the actions of the government there, just as we did in 2008-09 and 2012 when Gaza was bombed.

Our former prime minister and absurdly named envoy for peace in the Middle East, Tony Blair, supports Israel’s foreign policy. David Cameron, according to Sayeeda Warsi, instructed his ministers not to say Israel’s bombing might be disproportionate, and blames the conflict on Hamas although it long predates Hamas’s existence. While sanctions are applied to Russia over the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 disaster, no sanctions are imposed on Israel.

Contrast this with Cameron’s support for intervention elsewhere and look at the consequences of those interventions. Libya, hailed as a huge success by Cameron three years ago, is now so riven by war that embassies have closed and British nationals evacuated by the Royal Navy. The arming of the Syrian rebels by western and Middle East powers, especially Turkey and Saudi Arabia, has produced blowback on a spectacular scale as Islamic State (Isis) sets up its bloody caliphate across hundreds of miles of Iraq and Syria, with disastrous consequences.

The terrible plight of the Yazidis, trapped by Isis and fearing a terrible fate if captured, is heart-rending but will not be helped by further military intervention in Iraq. The occupation of Iraq broke the infrastructure of Iraqi society. Sectarian tensions were encouraged and exacerbated by the occupying forces, and some of those now supporting Isis formed the opposition to this occupation.

Many people know that UK government foreign policy, far from solving problems, causes more humanitarian disaster. In a democracy, anyone is of course entitled to demonstrate over a range of issues. So maybe those Tory bloggers, shock jocks and neocons who are such warriors on social media should head down to Hyde Park and see how many they get around them for more military intervention.


Yazidis tormented by fears for women and girls kidnapped by Isis jihadis

Despair for one Yazidi father as he is told that his daughter will be sold as a slave by Islamists who rampaged through Sinjar

• Who are the Yazidis?

By Martin Chulov in Dohuk, Iraqi Kurdistan - The Guardian

A Yazidi Iraqi refugee carries his daughter over the Syrian border. Up to 20,000 people may still be trapped on Mount Sinjar. Photograph: Ahmad al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty

For the past week, Khandhar Kaliph's hands have trembled whenever his phone has rung.

He nervously greeted his daughter, who had been kidnapped when the Islamic State (Isis) overran the Yazidi city of Sinjar. There was a minute of silence, before he broke down sobbing.

"She said she is going to be sold as a slave this afternoon, for $10," Kaliph said, his tears dropping into the brown dust. "What can a father say to that. How can I help? We all feel so useless."

Kaliph's daughter, who he did not want to name, had access to a group phone passed around between other girls imprisoned by the Islamic State in Bardoush prison in central Mosul.

All face the imminent prospect of being married off. Or worse, being used by the jihadis as a sex slave.

"The world needs to know that is where our women are, where they are being enslaved, young and old alike," he said, sitting in the dirt outside a building site near the Iraqi Kurdish city of Dohuk that he and some 70 other Yazidis are now using as shelter.

Dohuk and the strip of land to the Fishkhabour crossing into Syria are now teeming with Yazidis, who have escaped in the past 48 hours from Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq, where they had been besieged by Isis. Nearly all the Yazidis the Guardian met offered stories of women and girls being kidnapped, or of men being killed in the brutal rampage that has shattered centuries of coexistence in Iraq's north-west.

"We didn't know what hit us," said a man who joined the conversation. "We were asleep one minute, and running for our lives the next."

Some Yazidi men say they had phoned their daughter or wife's phone number only to be told tersely by strange male voices not to call again.

"It's more than our heritage," said Wadhah Jowla, another father squatting helplessly in the soil. "It's our heart and soul. My daughter means more than anything to me. She is not in Bardoush prison, but we are sure she is in Tel Afar [a nearby town]."

Of all the minorities ousted by the Isis advance, the Yazidis continue to pay the biggest price. Their self-contained existence on the Ninevah plains, where they had long been in the cross-hairs of jihadis, has been shattered in a bloodlust that has also sent the area's Christians, Shabbak Shias and Turkmen fleeing to Irbil. A large number of those who fled Sinjar climbed the nearby mountain range, where many remain trapped.

The jihadis regard the Yazidis, who practice a Zoroastrarian religion, as devil worshippers and have been more ruthless in their pursuit of them than they have against other minorities.

Those who have reached the Kurdish north to tell their stories say they are never going back. "It is finished," said Kaliph. "There is no Iraq. There is no past either. It is a scorched earth.

"But don't forget about those who have been left behind."

In a hospital in Dohuk, five elderly Yazidi men were recovering from their arduous journey down the mountain's northern face, escorted by Kurdish rebels first across the Syrian border, then into Iraqi Kurdistan.

"I've never done anything more difficult," said Salam Hadid, from his hospital bed. "They were trying to kill us the whole way," he said of the jihadis.

"People were so exhausted that they were gradually shedding their belongings as they walked, clothes, valuables – anything to make their load easier."

A second Yazidi man, Issa Mouallem, said the sound of jet planes and blasts roared through the air throughout their escape. "We were lucky," he said. "We could get out. But some of those trapped have no way out at all. And many of them are incapacitated. They are old, or they are vulnerable."

In Dohuk, and in the border town of Zakho, Yazidi families appear to have taken refuge in every public space and unfinished building. Families were hanging out washing in half-completed homes, or setting up plastic tents outside petrol stations and on grass verges.

"Some of the kind-hearted people gave us food," said Kaliph. "We are depending on their goodwill to survive."

Kurdish and US officials suggest as many as 20,000 people may still be on the southern side of the mountain, all in desperate need of aid. Many are too incapacitated to make it to points where food and water has been air-dropped, the main site being a disused airfield at the top of the mountain range.