In early March, CPT-Iraq released a 56-page report, “Where There is a Promise, There is Tragedy” that details the destruction of northern Iraqi village life by Turkish and Iranian attacks over the past two years.
The title quotes a Kurdish elder decrying his experience that every time governments promised something to the Kurds, a tragedy followed.
Team members wrote the report because regional and world powers, rebel groups, and the Kurdish Regional Government have dismissed the villagers, their lives, their futures, their lands, and their children, as irrelevant to the “larger” agendas of the parties involved.
The report documents the impact of an intermittent war waged on Kurdish villagers, the historical context in which the current warfare is occurring, and the international legal implications of decisions taken by various militaries to engage in acts of violence against a vulnerable civilian population. It concludes that, absent a genuine peace among Turkey, Iran, and their native Kurdish populations, the war they have waged for decades will continue to spill into the mountains of northern Iraq.
Since its publication in both English and Kurdish, team members have delivered the report to local partners and refugee communities, local government officials, the U.S. State Department and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). See full report at: https://goo.gl/CKH0
