MOSUL, Iraq: When Ahmed Khalil ran out of work as a van driver in the Iraqi city of Mosul three years ago, he signed up with the Daesh group’s police force, believing the salary would help keep his struggling family afloat.
But what he wound up providing was a legacy that would outlast his job, and his life.
In Mosul and elsewhere across Iraq, thousands of families — including Khalil’s widow and children — face crushing discrimination because their male relatives were seen as affiliated with or supporting Daesh when the extremists held large swaths of the country.
The wives, widows and children have been disowned by their relatives and abandoned by the state. Registrars refuse to register births to women with suspected Daesh husbands, and schools will not enroll their children. Mothers are turned away from welfare, and mukhtars — community mayors — won’t let the families move into their neighborhoods.
The Daesh group’s “caliphate” that once spanned a third of both Iraq and Syria is now gone but as Iraq struggles to rebuilt after the militants’ final defeat and loss of their last sliver of territory in Syria earlier this year, the atrocities and the devastation they wreaked has left deep scars.
“They say my father was Daesh,” said Safa Ahmed, Khalil’s 11-year old daughter, referring to Daesh by its Arabic name. “It hurts me.”
Iraq has done little to probe the actions of the tens of thousands of men such as Khalil who, willingly or by force joined, worked and possibly fought for IS during its 2013-2017 rule. Instead, bureaucrats and communities punish families for the deeds of their relatives in a time of war.
Khalil was killed in an airstrike in Mosul, in February 2017, during the US-backed campaign to retake the city that Daesh seized in 2014. It was liberated in July 2017, at a tremendous cost — around 10,000 residents were believed to have been killed in the assault, and its historic districts now lie in ruins.
His widow, Um Yusuf, and their seven children were left to bear the stigma of his Daesh affiliation. She cannot get social assistance, and her teenage son Omar is being turned away from jobs.
They live in an abandoned schoolhouse, living on what they can make selling bread on the streets of the devastated city. Just three of the children are in school — the oldest two dropped out because of bullying about their father, and the youngest two cannot enroll because the civil registrar’s office won’t issue their IDs.
“It’s true their father made a mistake,” Um Yusuf said. “But why are these children being punished for his sin?“
Under Iraq’s patrimonial family laws, a child needs a named father to receive a birth certificate and an identity card, to enroll in school and to claim citizenship, welfare benefits and an inheritance.
But in post-Daesh Iraq, virtually every bureaucratic procedure now includes a security check on a woman’s male relatives, further frustrating mothers and children.
A UN report this year estimates there are 45,000 undocumented children in Iraq. Judges and human rights groups say an urgent resolution is needed or the country risks rearing a generation of children without papers or schooling.
“By punishing entire families, you marginalize them and you seriously undermine reconciliation efforts in Iraq,” said Tom Peyre-Costa, a spokesman for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which provides legal aid to Mosul mothers struggling to get their children ID papers.
At Al-Iraqiya school in western Mosul, one of the city’s first to reopen in 2017, principal Khalid Mohammad said he faces pressure from the community to deny enrollment to children whose fathers are in jail or missing — an absence many interpret as proof of Daesh affiliation.
“If anyone complains and someone is sent to investigate, I could lose my job,” he said.
At a legal office and clinic supported by the Norwegian Refugee Council, Nour Ahmed was looking for a way to claim legal custody of her undocumented younger son, in order to collect food and fuel aid for the family.
Her husband, she said, was abducted two years ago in Mosul by a group of pro-government militiamen who likely thought he was an Daesh member. Ahmed insists he wasn’t. He has been missing to this day.
Born in 2016 at a hospital run by Daesh, their son was given a birth certificate notarized by the Daesh group. As Iraq doesn’t recognize Daesh documents, the 3-year-old has no legal mother or father.
Ahmed was told she would need to find her husband to re-register her son’s birth. If she submitted a missing person’s report, it would raise questions about the child’s parentage, jeopardizing his right to citizenship.
“I just want to find him,” said Nour.
Adnan Chalabi, an appeals court judge, said he sees more than a dozen cases each day related to civilian documentation, brought largely by the wives, widows or divorcees of IS suspects. There is little he can do to help, he said, without a change to the law first.
“Daesh held the city for three years. Did people stop getting married, divorced, and having children during those three years?” he said. “We need a legislative solution.”
There is little appetite to change the country’s family and patrimony laws, said Iraq’s parliament speaker, Mohamad Halbousi, though there is a proposal to open civil registries for a limited period, to register undocumented children.
“These families need to be cared for. They cannot be left to melt away into society,” he said.
Outside a mosque in Mosul, where Um Yusuf was selling bread with her children, the widowed mother of seven said she was losing the strength to look after her family.
“We are deprived of everything,” she says. “The whole family is destroyed.”
Thousands of Iraqi families bear the burden of Daesh legacy
Thousands of Iraqi families bear the burden of Daesh legacy
- The wives, widows and children have been disowned by their relatives and abandoned by the state
- Registrars refuse to register births to women with suspected Daesh husbands
Turkiye’s Erdogan meets pro-Kurdish politicians as they seek to end a 40-year conflict
- Erdogan met Pervin Buldan and Sirri Sureyya Onder, parliamentary deputies for the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, at the presidential palace in Ankara
- Buldan and Onder have been among those to visit the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in a bid to build a framework to end fighting that has caused tens of thousands of deaths
ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday held a first meeting with pro-Kurdish politicians who are working to bring an end to the 40-year conflict between Turkiye and Kurdish militants.
Erdogan met Pervin Buldan and Sirri Sureyya Onder, parliamentary deputies for the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, or DEM Party, at the presidential palace in Ankara.
“It was a very positive meeting, it went well. We are much more hopeful,” Onder said.
In a statement after the meeting, the DEM Party said it was held “in an extremely positive, constructive, productive and hopeful atmosphere for the future,” emphasizing the “vital importance” of maintaining a ceasefire and strengthening political dialogue.
Also present at the 1½ hour meeting were intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin and Efkan Ala, deputy chairperson of Erdogan’s party.
Buldan and Onder have been among those to visit the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in a bid to build a framework to end fighting that has caused tens of thousands of deaths.
Abdullah Ocalan, whose PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkiye and most Western states, called for the group to disband and disarm in late February. Days later the PKK announced a ceasefire.
The PKK appealed for Ocalan to be released from the island prison where he has been held since 1999 to “personally direct and execute” a party congress that would lead to the group’s dissolution.
Erdogan at the time described developments as an “opportunity to take a historic step toward tearing down the wall of terror” between Turks and Kurds.
Since then little concrete progress has been seen, with the government not publicly offering any incentives or proposals to the PKK. Instead, the Turkish military has kept up its campaign against PKK insurgents in northern Iraq while Turkish-backed Syrian groups combat PKK-linked fighters in northeast Syria.
The PKK’s ceasefire came against the backdrop of fundamental changes in the region, including the reconfiguration of power in neighboring Syria after the toppling of President Bashar Assad, the weakening of the Hezbollah militant movement in Lebanon and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
It also followed judicial pressure on the DEM Party, with several of its mayors being removed from office in recent months and replaced by government appointees.
Some believe the main aim of the reconciliation effort is for Erdogan’s government to garner Kurdish support for a new constitution that would allow him to remain in power beyond 2028, when his term ends.
The ceasefire is the first sign of a breakthrough since peace talks between the PKK and Ankara broke down in the summer of 2015.
Israel military says air force to fire pilots who signed Gaza war petition
- Israeli reserve pilots publicly called for securing the release of hostages, even at the cost of ending the Gaza war
JERUSALEM: An Israeli military official said Thursday that reserve pilots who publicly called for securing the release of hostages, even at the cost of ending the Gaza war, would be dismissed from the air force.
“With the full backing of the chief of the General Staff, the commander of the IAF (Israeli air force) has decided that any active reservist who signed the letter will not be able to continue serving in the IDF (military),” the official told AFP in response to a letter signed by around 1,000 reserve and retired pilots.
The letter, which was published on a full page in multiple daily newspapers, directly challenges the policy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has insisted that increased military pressure on Gaza is the only way to get Palestinian militants to release hostages seized during Hamas’s October 2023 attack.
“We, the aircrew in the reserves and retired, demand the immediate return of the hostages even at the cost of an immediate cessation of hostilities,” the letter said.
“The war serves primarily political and personal interests, not security interests,” it said, adding that the resumed offensive “will result in the deaths of the hostages, IDF soldiers and innocent civilians, and the exhaustion of the reserve service.”
“Only an agreement can return the hostages safely, while military pressure mainly leads to the killing of hostages and the endangerment of our soldiers.”
The military official said most of the signatories of the letter were not active reservists.
“Our policy is clear — the IDF stands above all political dispute. There is no room for any body or individual, including reservists in active duty, to exploit their military status while simultaneously participating in the fighting and calling for its cessation,” the official said.
Netanyahu said he supported the move to dismiss any active pilots who had signed the letter.
“Refusal is refusal — even when it is implied and expressed in euphemistic language,” a statement released by his office said.
“Statements that weaken the IDF and strengthen our enemies during wartime are unforgivable.”
Some 251 people were seized during Hamas’s attack, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
A truce that lasted from January 19 to March 17 saw the return of 33 Israeli hostages — eight of them in coffins — in exchange for the release of around 1,800 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Efforts to restore the truce and release more hostages have so far failed.
The army said it was continuing its ground operations in southern Gaza and that it had “dismantled dozens of terrorist infrastructure sites and several tunnel shafts leading to underground terror networks in the area.”
The army said that a Wednesday strike in Gaza City had “eliminated” a Hamas commander from the area it alleged had participated in the October 2023 attack.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said at least 23 people, including women and children, were killed in the strike which levelled a four-story residential building.
In an update Thursday, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said at least 1,522 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli offensive, taking the overall death toll since the start of the war to 50,886.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Lebanese foreign minister discusses reforms, weapons control with Saudi ambassador to Beirut
- Youssef Rajji and Waleed Al-Bukhari consider latest developments in Lebanon and the Middle East
- Al-Bukhari confirms the Kingdom’s full support for the reform process in Lebanon
BEIRUT: The Lebanese minister of foreign affairs reassured Saudi Ambassador Waleed Al-Bukhari that Beirut is committed to financial reforms and restricting the possession of weapons outside the state’s control.
Youssef Rajji met with Al-Bukhari in Beirut on Thursday to discuss the latest developments in Lebanon and the Middle East
Rajji said that Lebanon is committed to implementing the necessary economic, financial, and administrative reforms and ensure that weapons are held exclusively by the state. He said this policy will “put Lebanon on the trail of recovery and advancement,” the National News Agency reported.
He expressed gratitude to the Saudi leadership for supporting Lebanon and its people and said that relations between Riyadh and Beirut have reinstated Lebanon to its rightful place among its Arab neighbors.
Al-Bukhari reaffirmed the Kingdom’s full support for Lebanon’s reform process, which is led by President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, and the government formed in February.
Killed Gaza medic’s mother says he ‘loved helping people’
- Rifaat Radwan, a medic from the Palestine Red Crescent Society, was one of 15 killed in an attck by Israel that has sparked outrage
- His family describe their sorrow at losing their son said being a medic 'was his calling'
GAZA: Umm Rifaat Radwan, the mother of a Gaza medic killed alongside 14 colleagues by Israeli soldiers, had hoped her son’s body would not be among those retrieved after the attack.
Rifaat Radwan was part of a team of medics and rescuers from the Palestine Red Crescent Society and Gaza’s civil defense agency who were shot dead on March 23 near Rafah as they responded to calls for help after an Israeli air strike.
Their deaths sparked international condemnation and renewed scrutiny over the risks aid workers face in Gaza, where war has raged since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered Israel’s military campaign.
Israel’s army chief, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, has ordered an investigation into the March 23 incident.
The bodies of the 15 emergency personnel were discovered buried in the sand days later, and were recovered in two separate operations, the United Nations and the Red Crescent said.
“They began pulling them out two by two” from a hole, Umm Rifaat, 48, told AFP, describing how the bodies were retrieved from what rescuers called a “mass grave.”
“I thought maybe he wasn’t among them — perhaps he had been detained. I even prostrated after the afternoon prayer in gratitude.
“Then my husband told me that Rifaat had been found inside the hole,” she said.
The 23-year-old Rifaat and his family hailed from Rafah, but had been displaced during the war to the central Gazan city of Deir el-Balah.
On March 23, he and the 14 others were killed in the Tal Al-Sultan area near Rafah, in what the sole survivor of the attack, Mundhir Abed, described as a violent ambush by Israeli forces.
Abed told AFP earlier that the team was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the early morning.
Umm Rifaat, wearing a long black abaya and veil exposing only her eyes, spoke with quiet composure as she recalled the moment her worst fears were confirmed.
Some of the bodies recovered by rescuers had been handcuffed, according to the Red Crescent, but an Israeli military official denied this.
On Thursday, government spokesman David Mencer repeated Israel’s claim that “six Hamas terrorists” were among the dead.
“What were Hamas terrorists doing in ambulances?” he asked.
The Israeli attack appears to have occurred in two phases.
Rifaat himself partly captured video and audio of the second assault on his convoy of ambulances and a firetruck before he was killed.
The Israeli military official told journalists that soldiers who were in the area received a report about a convoy “moving in the dark in a suspicious way toward them” without headlights, prompting them to fire at the vehicles from a distance.
“They thought they had an encounter with terrorists,” the official said.
But Rifaat’s video, released by the Red Crescent, contradicted this account.
The footage from the phone found on Rifaat’s body shows ambulances moving with their headlights and emergency lights clearly switched on.
“He proved his innocence with his own hands, that he is innocent in the face of the (Israeli) army’s allegations,” Rifaat’s mother said.
“What happened to them is beyond the mind’s comprehension. It is unacceptable by any measure — legal, religious or human.”
Speaking to AFP from the displaced family’s makeshift shelter in Deir el-Balah, Umm Rifaat scrolled through photos of her son on her phone.
Her husband recalled the passion with which Rifaat worked as a paramedic.
“Every day he came home from work with his clothes stained in blood,” Anwar Radwan said, adding that his son had volunteered to do the job after the Gaza war erupted in October 2023.
“He never sought a salary — this was rather a calling he loved with all his blood and soul. What drove him was simply his humanity,” Rifaat’s father said.
“He loved helping people,” added Umm Rifaat.
His father saw Rifaat’s body and told Umm Rifaat that their son’s face had been “deformed.”
She chose not to see the body, preferring instead to preserve her memory of him as he was in life.
“He was like the moon — handsome and fair-skinned,” Umm Rifaat said.
Kurds to push for federal system in post-Assad Syria
- Kurdish parties agree on federalism as common political vision, sources tell Reuters
QAMISHLI: Syrian Kurds are set to demand a federal system in post-Assad Syria that would allow regional autonomy and security forces, a senior Kurdish official told Reuters, doubling down on a decentralized vision opposed by the interim president.
The demand for federal rule has gathered momentum as alarm spread through Syria’s minorities over last month’s mass killings of Alawites, while Kurdish groups have accused interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa and his Islamist group of setting the wrong course for the new Syria and monopolising power.
Rival Syrian Kurdish parties, including the dominant faction in the Kurdish-run northeast, agreed on a common political vision — including federalism — last month, Kurdish sources said. They have yet to officially unveil it. Kurdish-led groups took control of roughly a quarter of Syrian territory during the 14-year civil war. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the US, last month signed a deal with Damascus on merging Kurdish-led governing bodies and security forces with the central government.
While committed to that deal, Kurdish officials have objected to the way Syria’s governing Islamists are shaping the transition from Bashar Assad’s rule, saying they are failing to respect Syria’s diversity despite promises of inclusivity.
Badran Jia Kurd, a senior official in the Kurdish-led administration, told Reuters that all Kurdish factions had agreed on a “common political vision” which emphasizes the need for “a federal, pluralistic, democratic parliamentary system.”
His written statements in response to questions from Reuters mark the first time an official from the Kurdish-led administration has confirmed the federalism goal since the Kurdish parties agreed on it last month.
The Kurdish-led administration has for years steered clear of the word “federalism” in describing its goals, instead calling for decentralization. Syria’s Kurds say their goal is autonomy within Syria — not independence.
Sharaa has declared his opposition to a federal system, telling The Economist in January that it does not have popular acceptance and is not in Syria’s best interests.
The Kurds, mainly Sunni Muslims, speak a language related to Farsi and live mostly in a mountainous region straddling the borders of Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkiye. In Iraq, they have their own parliament, government and security forces.
Jia Kurd said the fundamental issue for Syria was “to preserve the administrative, political, and cultural specificity of each region” which would require “local legislative councils within the region, executive bodies to manage the region’s affairs, and internal security forces affiliated with them.”
This should be set out in Syria’s constitutional framework, he added.
Neighbouring Turkiye, an ally of Sharaa, sees Syria’s main Kurdish group, the Democratic Union Party, and its affiliates as a security threat because of their links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which, until a recently declared ceasefire, fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.
Last month’s meeting brought the PYD together with the Kurdish National Council (ENKS), a rival Syrian Kurdish group established with backing from one of Iraq’s main Kurdish parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) led by the Barzani family. The KDP has good ties with Turkiye.
ENKS leader Suleiman Oso said he expected the joint Kurdish vision to be announced at a conference by the end of April. He said developments in Syria since Assad’s ouster in December had led many Syrians to see the federal system as the “optimal solution.” He cited attacks on Alawites, resistance to central rule within the Druze minority, and the new government’s constitutional declaration, which the Kurdish-led administration said was at odds with Syria’s diversity.
Hundreds of Alawites were killed in western Syria in March in revenge attacks which began after Islamist-led authorities said their security forces came under attack by militants loyal to Assad, an Alawite. Sharaa, an Al-Qaeda leader before he cut ties to the group in 2016, has said those responsible will be punished, including his own allies if necessary. The constitutional declaration gave him broad powers, enshrined Islamic law as the main source of legislation, and declared Arabic as Syria’s official language, with no mention of Kurdish.
“We believe that the optimal solution to preserve Syria’s unity is a federal system, as Syria is a country of multiple ethnicities, religions, and sects,” said Oso.
“When we go to Damascus, we will certainly present our views and demands.”
