Iraq

Recognition grows for Yazidi genocide

The Swiss parliament officially recognized the atrocities committed by the Islamic State (ISIS) against Iraq’s Yazidi community as constituting genocide. The motion condemns the systematic expulsion, rape and murder of Yazidis, and the destruction of their cultural sites. The majority of the Swiss National Council voted in favor of the bill, with 105 lawmakers supporting recognition of the genocide and 61 opposing it. The parliament’s statement emphasized the need for reparations and justice for survivors. Switzerland joins several other countries and bodies, including the European Parliament and a UN Commission of Inquiry, in recognizing the ISIS crimes against Yazidis as genocide. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Syria
Maariyah

Israeli troops fire on Syrian protesters

One was wounded as Israeli troops opened fire on Syrian protesters near the village of Maariyah, in southern Daraa province. Local residents gathered at a position the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had established in the area, chanting “Free, free Syria; Israel get out!” One protester was shot in the leg. The IDF said its soldiers had fired in response to “a threat.” The incident came after villagers said that the troops, stationed in an abandoned Syrian army outpost, were preventing local farmers from accessing their fields. Maariya is near the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, but outside the demilitarized “buffer zone” established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Syria. The news appears to confirm reports that IDF troops have advanced beyond the “buffer zone.” (Image via Twitter)

Africa
Sahel

Human rights crisis deepens under Sahel juntas

Two attacks on “defenseless civilian populations” along Niger’s border with Burkina Faso left some 40 dead, authorities said. Niamey’s defense ministry said 21 were killed in Libiri village and 18 in Kokorou, both in Tillabéri region. The statement blamed “criminals,” but the borderlands are a stronghold of jihadist insurgents. An even worse attack was reported days earlier, but is being denied by Niger’s ruling junta. Authorities suspended the operations of the BBC in Niger after it reported that jihadists had killed 90 soldiers and upwards of 40 civilians at Chatoumane, also in Tillabéri. According to the monitor Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), at least 1,500 have been killed in jihadist attacks in Niger in the past year—more than double the 650 killed from July 2022 to July 2023. Human Rights Watch meanwhile released a report detailing killings of civilians and other serious abuses committed by Mali’s armed forces in collaboration with Russian mercenaries of the Africa Corps following the withdrawal of a UN peacekeeping mission last year. (Map: Wikivoyage)

Syria
B-52

Syrian revolution met with US, Israeli air-strikes

The same day the Assad regime fell and rebel forces took Damascus, the US military carried out a series of air-strikes against Islamic State positions across central Syria. The Pentagon’s Central Command announced that it “struck over 75 targets using multiple US Air Force assets, including B-52s, F-15s, and A-10s.” The targets included “ISIS leaders, operatives, and camps.” Also that day, Israeli warplanes conducted dozens of raids across Syria, including in Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) counted more than 100 Israeli strikes on military and industrial targets, including a research center believed to be linked to chemical weapon production. Israel said it was acting to stop weapons from falling “into the hands of extremists.” Israel has additionally seized control of a demilitarized “buffer zone” in the Golan Heights, saying the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria had “collapsed” with the rebel take-over of the country. (Photo of B-52 bomber: USAF via A&SF)

Syria
al-Hol

Syria: Kurdish militia accused of diverting US aid

USAID’s Office of Inspector General has found that security forces and administrators at northeast Syria’s al-Hol camp “diverted aid”—bread from a USAID-funded program—”from the intended beneficiaries to themselves.” An unnamed “awardee” of the aid, presumably an NGO, was “forced to rely on the Asayish and the Camp Administration to deliver bread within the inaccessible areas of the camp, which created the opportunity for the initial diversion. However, once the awardee received full access to the camp, the Asayish and the Camp Administration continued to divert the USAID-funded bread.” Asayish (for Internal Security Forces of North and East Syria) is the militia associated with the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Al-Hol, which is home to both sympathizers and victims of the so-called Islamic State, has become notorious for its dangerous and extremely harsh conditions. (Photo: SOHR)

Africa
Chad

Chad: military base overrun by Boko Haram faction

President Mahamat Déby has vowed vengeance for an attack by jihadists on an army base in Chad’s Lake region that killed at least 40 soldiers. The insurgents who managed to overrun the base are likely to be from Boko Haram’s “Bakura” faction, which is concentrated in the northern part of the region, on the Niger-Chad border. They’ve been involved in a long-running battle for supremacy in the region with the rival Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP). Their commander, Ibrahim Bakura Doro, has resisted both peace overtures and demands for assimilation by the larger ISWAP group. The night-time attack on the Barkaram base, in which weapons and equipment were captured, follows a military sweep through the region by a joint force of Nigerian, Cameroonian and Chadian troops—which at the time was proclaimed a success. (Photo of Chadian troops via Presidency of Chad/Facebook)

Syria
Qamishli

HRW protests child recruitment by Syrian Kurdish militia

Human Rights Watch (HRW) raised concerns over the forcible recruitment of children into a youth group associated with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), through which they are directed into armed activity. HRW interviewed multiple families whose children were taken by the Revolutionary Youth Movement of Syria. The report revealed that in the vast majority of cases, the families’ teenaged son or daughter “simply left home one day, and never returned.” Investigations revealed that members of the SDF often recruited children via social media or phone. Typically, recruitment took place by promising youth educational, cultural or vocational opportunities, constituting “covert recruitment.” (Photo: January 2022 protest against child recruitment in Qamishli. Credit: IKHRW)

Iran
Pakhshan Azizi

Iran: revoke death sentence of Kurdish activist

Over 26 rights organizations, including the Kurdistan Human Rights Network and Center for Human Rights in Iran, issued a joint statement calling for the immediate revocation of the death sentence imposed on Kurdish women’s rights activist Pakhshan Azizi. This sentence, handed down by the Iranian judiciary, has sparked international outrage, with the organizations calling it “a blatant violation of human rights principles and standards as well as international conventions and treaties.” Held in solitary confinement for months, during which time she was subjected to torture to coerce confessions, Azizi was sentenced to death by the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran on charges of “armed insurrection” and “membership in opposition groups.” Her lawyers maintain that Azizi has no involvement in any armed groups, but that she spent years working in displaced persons’ camps in Syria’s Rojava region, providing humanitarian aid to those displaced by ISIS violence. (Image: ANF)

Africa
iswap

ISIS franchise claims Nigeria massacre

At least 81 people were killed in an attack by militants on the village of Mafa, in Nigeria’s northeastern Yobe state. A statement listing grievances against the village was left at the scene in the name of Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a Boko Haram splinter group. The attack appears to have been in revenge for villagers alerting the military to the insurgents’ presence in the area—which lies on a smuggling route to ISWAP bases in the Lake Chad region. (Photo: ISS Africa)

Syria
Syria

Syria: Rojava Kurds clash with Assadist forces

Clashes broke out between Syrian regime forces and militia of the Kurdish-led Rojava autonomous administration near the Euphrates River in eastern Deir ez-Zor governorate. The fighting began after regime forces west of the Euphrates launched surface-to-surface attacks on Kurdish-held towns across the river. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the principal Kurdish-led military formation, said in a statement that an operation against regime positions was carried out “in retaliation for the blood of the martyrs” killed “by artillery shelling from the Syrian regime.” The violence erupted three days after US troops were targeted in a drone attack on a position they share with the SDF at Rumalyn Landing Zone in al-Hasakah governorate to the north. The current fighting is close to al-Omar oil field, which is protected by a joint force of SDF fighters and US troops. (Map: PCL)

Syria
al-Hol

Syria: Kurdish zone enacts amnesty law

Amnesty International responded favorably to enactment of Amnesty Law No. 10 in the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North & East Syria (AANES). The rights group commended the new law, which calls for a review of convictions under the regional administration’s expansive counter-terrorism laws. Aya Majzoub, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East, said: “The general amnesty law could reduce the sentences of Syrians convicted after unfair trials in the People’s Defence Courts, or, in some cases, offer them the chance to be free and resume their lives. Detainees were denied access to a lawyer and in many cases were subjected to torture or other ill-treatment to extract forced confessions.” Majzoub called on AANES authorities to expand the scope of the law to include Iraqi nationals convicted of collaborating with the Islamic State (ISIS). (Photo: SOHR)

North Africa
libya

More mass graves discovered in Libya

A mass grave containing two dozen bodies was discovered in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte, once controlled by ISIS. The National Authority for Searching & Identifying Missing People, a body of the internationally recognized government in Tripoli, said its team is recovering the 24 bodies found under destroyed buildings in the district of al-Kambo. A mass grave was similarly uncovered in the city in October 2022. Another mass grave is meanwhile reported to have been found in the desert along the Libya-Tunisia border, the UN Human Rights Commission confirmed. This was the second such mass grave found on Libya’s borderlands this year. In March, the International Organization for Migration reported the discovery of the bodies of at least 65 presumed migrants in southwest Libya. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)