UN Reports on "Staggering" ISIS Violence
Yes, this is no surprise. But the extent, the sheer volume, of the violence, and the "creativity" enlisted in committing it, is mind-blowing. Some 3,500 people are reported as being enslaved in Iraq alone. The UN has just released a report on the violence committed by ISIS, and one must remember that there are many, many places where UN monitors cannot access and have no fully accurate sense of what is going on. The Independent states:
The UN said it was able to verify reports that on 21 June last year, between 800 and 900 children were rounded up in Mosul and abducted for military training. It said it had also been informed that those who refused Isis commands were flogged, tortured or raped.
In August, the UN said, 18 child soldiers were murdered by Isis for running away from the front line in Anbar province and returning to their homes in Mosul. In a separate incident, child soldiers were made to execute 15 Isis fighters who had themselves fled the fighting or lost battles.
In a statement, the UN's human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said: "Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq.
"The figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but countless others have died from the lack of access to basic food, water or medical care."
Another Independent article states:
After prayers, the traders of Bab al-Tob market in Iraq’s second city, Mosul, formed a crowd around nine men lying on the street. Among the prostrate men was an Iraqi soldier and an alleged Kurdish spy. A bulldozer approached and slowly ran over the prisoners, crushing them utterly....
The nine men murdered by bulldozers were among 18,802 people killed by Isis over the last two years, according to a UN report released on Tuesday. Between May and October, 3,855 people were killed by Isis in Iraq alone, a 15 per cent increase on the numbers from December to April....
What is interesting is that the group is really starting to strike terror into its own members, using horrific scare tactics to control its own people. Perhaps this is why abduction of children on a massive scale is a possible reflection of their struggle to maintain numbers. Deaths from airstrikes and consistent warzone activity, together with potential desertion, mean that ISIS might be feeling the personnel pressure.
The true number of Isis fighters killed by their own group is difficult to determine. So too is the real number of civilian casualties which is likely to be far higher than UN estimates. “Isil [Isis] has also killed members of its own group for refusing to fight or acting against its interests...” said the UN report. “The murders were frequently conducted in public spaces. [Isis] displayed the bodies of its own members whom it had murdered as a deterrent to other members who might consider disobeying orders or otherwise acting against its interests.”
On 29 June, weeks after Iraqi security forces and Shia militias seized Tikrit from Isis, a member of the jihadist group’s “morality police”, al-Hisbah, was killed by a firing squad in Mosul. That came a day after Isis killed 32 of its own jihadists in Ramadi and Fallujah for “passing intelligence” to Iraqi forces. Ramadi was retaken by Iraqi forces in December.
Also in late June, a member of the Mosul administrative (Shura) committee, named as Abu Usman al-Hassan, who it was claimed was the representative in Mosul of the Isis “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was executed at al-Ghizlani military base in the city for “conspiring against the caliphate state”. Then, in August, Isis executed six of its members for fleeing a battle in Ramadi in Anbar province.
The UN said that by September, some 34 fighters from an insurgent group once classified as an Isis ally had been executed after being found guilty of “apostasy and betrayal”. On 16 September Isis killed seven women from its al-Khansa Battalion for “disobeying orders”. The victims were shot and their bodies were left at the entrance of the Battalion’s headquarters in central Mosul as an example of what happens to those who disobey its orders.
And this violence surely isn't constricted to ISIS alone; all sides will have been committing violence. That said, ISIS have a brand of violence that appears pretty terrible.
And we Europeans complain about immigration. Is it any wonder?