Bikram Vohra

By : Bikram Vohra

For some reason, there is a general perception that things in Iraq are fine and the post-Saddam period is one of relative peace.

The latest report released by the United Nations comes as a shock and a revelation of exactly how bad things are and how Iraq is a victim of militancy like no other nation after Syria.

The spotlight on the harnessing of child soldiers, the rapes and enslavement of women and minors and the sour litany of human rights abuses is stunning and yet, sort of does not get the attention it deserves. For one, there is not enough media coverage on an ongoing basis and for another, the figures are so staggering that it is difficult to absorb them.

How do you register nearly 19,000 killings, over 4,000 slaves, nearly 40,000 wounded civilians and the battering of a nation by daily battles between Daesh and the government forces?

The United Nations has rightly called such figures obscene and they are a blot on the global conscience but what is the solution? There does not seem to be any letup in the misery quotient and one can only see more victims adding to the statistics.

The suffering has reached a point where even if there was concerted action by any coalition it would be a long time before things would even reach a semblance of normality. Every bit only seems to get worse. And there is no sign of relief. One notices that even as government troops struggle to score military victories against Daesh-held enclaves, the mistreatment and exploitation of the civilian population intensifies and there is no breather.

It was against this backdrop that the United States is expected to increase its military presence in Iraq and join the coalition troops in an attempt to end the miseries and the indiscriminate killings.

The United Nations report has to come as an eye-opener: “Daesh continues to commit systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law. These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly genocide.”

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