Iraq: On Vulnerable Ground

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A campaign of violence that targeted Christians in Mosul in late 2008 killed 40, displaced 12,000 and left Siham Alhad and her daughter-in-law as widows. Siham’s husband, Nafa’t Basheer Mikha, 63, left for his shop on August 28, 2008. It was the last time she would see him alive. Three nights later his body was found in a trash heap with four bullet wounds in his head and neck. A few days later, at about 8 a.m. on September 10, an assailant killed the couple’s son, Rayan, at his bicycle repair shop in Mosul. © 2009 Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch 75522
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A few days after assailants killed his father, Rayan Nafa’t Mikha was killed at his bicycle repair shop in Mosul on September 10, 2008. His widow holds his picture. © 2009 Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch 75522
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Kurdish authorities have sometimes dealt harshly with members of the Yazidi and Shabak communities who say they are resisting attempts to impose a Kurdish identity on them. In May 2007, Kurdish intelligence officers arrested two Yazidi activists, Khalil Rashu Alias and Wageed Mendo Hamoo. The two told Human Rights Watch that Kurdish authorities imprisoned them both for five months and tortured them for resisting what they called the Kurdish colonization of their territory in Sinjar. © 2009 Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch 75522
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A family member holds up pictures of his brother and nephew, both killed during last year’s campaign of violence against Christians in Mosul. On October 7, 2008, assailants armed with AK-47s approached Amjad Hadi Petrous, a builder, and asked him, "Are you a Christian?" He responded, "Yes, what is it that you want?" The gunmen shot Petrous, killing him instantly. The perpetrators then fatally shot his 20-year-old son, Wusam, also working at the site, with two bullets to his neck and cheek. © 2009 Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch 75522
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Emir Ghazi Khalil, a Shabak, (pictured with his cousin Ihsan Shanar Jafara, left) says that peshmerga and other Kurds shot and killed his two brothers and injured his mother on their family farm in al-Khazna. © 2009 Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch 75522
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A farm area in the Shabak village of al-Khazna. On August 11, 2009, two large flatbed trucks packed with bombs exploded simultaneously at around 5 a.m. in al-Khazna, which is under the control of Kurdish peshmerga forces. The force of the blast destroyed the village, leaving 65 houses in heaps of rubble mixed with bed frames, mattresses, furniture, and bloodstained pillows. Most villagers were asleep at the time, many of them on their rooftops to escape the summer heat. The final casualty toll was at least 35 killed and almost 200 wounded. © 2009 Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch 75522
Nineveh, Iraq's second most populous province, has a unique concentration of historic minority groups. It is also a main battlefront of a conflict over disputed territories between the Arab-dominated central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government. Samer Muscati, researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division, traveled to the region to interview and photograph victims of the violence directed at the Yazidi, Shabak, and Chaldean and Assyrian Christian communities.
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