President Barack Obama is actively considering ordering US intervention, including air-strikes, against Islamist militants in Iraq attacking Christian and religious minority groups in the north of the country, administration officials have said.
The potentially sharp reversal of US policy came as Islamic State (formerly ISIS) militants continued to make significant gains on Thursday including claiming to have seized control of Iraq’s largest dam, giving them control of vast water and power resources and access to the river that runs through the heart of Baghdad.
“The situation is nearing a humanitarian catastrophe,” warned Josh Earnest, White House spokesman, “We are gravely concerned for their health and safety.”
Mr Obama spent yesterday morning conferring with his national security team. Administration officials said he was considering a full range of “active and passive” options - from humanitarian air-drops to targeted air-strikes - with a decision expected imminently. “This could be a fast-moving train,” one official told The New York Times.
“The cold and calculated manner in which (Islamic State) has targeted defenceless Iraqis, like the Yazidis and Christians, solely because of their ethnic and religious identity demonstrates a callous disregard for human rights and it is deeply disturbing,” the White House spokesman added.
“In particular, we’re concerned about the welfare of the large community of Iraqi Yazidis who are stranded on Mount Sinjar without food, water or shelter and the Iraqi Christians who have been force to flee from their villages in the region.”
Officials stressed that any military action would be “very limited in scope”, aimed at objectives such as “protecting American personnel or confronting counter-terrorism threats”.
When Islamic State militants swept through central Iraq in July, at one point threatening Baghdad, Mr Obama denied requests from the Shia-led Iraqi government of Nouri Al-Maliki to strike them.
The apparent change of heart came as reports of the plight of the Yazidi minority hit America’s front pages, triggering calls for action from leading figures such as Senator John McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate.
Iraqis inspect the site of a double car bomb attack which took place in Kirkuk, north of Baghdad
Calling reports of Islamic State advance “deeply disturbing” Mr McCain accused the Obama administration of failing to act against an organisation that, he said, now posed a “direct threat” to US national security.
Area in Iraq controlled by Islamic State in January 2014
In its crushing victory on Thursday, fighters of the Islamic State jihadist group swept aside resistance to seize the last remaining Christian towns of northern Iraq,
Area in Iraq controlled by Islamic State in August 2014
After overwhelming the Yazidi minority group of the deserts of north-western Iraq at the weekend, Islamic State broke the lines of Kurdish forces that had been defending the Christian towns of Bartella, Tel Kayf and Qaraqosh, north and east of the city of Mosul, after continuous bombardment in recent days.
“There was no electricity, no water, we were frightened. A lot of people left,” said Rowaid, 20, who until recently was a university student in the city Mosul, which was seized two months ago. He fled Tal Kayf with his family of seven, including two elderly aunts.
“There were a lot of skirmishes outside the town and the situation in our area was intolerable. And we knew what was coming.
“Since they began attacking with the mortars three of my relatives have been killed.”
The towns were the last remaining hold-outs from among the Christian populations that once dominated the biblical Ninevah Plain. All Christians were told to leave Mosul last month, with the 20 too old to leave said by the church to have been forcibly converted to Islam.
Displaced people who have fled the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar west of Mosul, take refuge at Dohuk province (Reuters)
The last three towns’ tens of thousands of inhabitants fled on Wednesday night and Thursday morning into the Kurdistan Autonomous Region, and its capital, Erbil. “All the territories of the Plain of Ninevah are now empty of Christians. It has come under the control of Islamic State,” Father Yousef Benjamin, the coadjutor bishop of Tel Kayf, who was among those who left, told The Telegraph.
Iraq's ethnic mix
He said that as well as Erbil, residents had sought refuge in the city of Dohuk, three hours’ drive away, and some Christian villages in the mountains. “The situation is extremely bad,” he said. “There are many people sleeping in the streets, public parks, and in the cars, while there are no services for them.”
The seizure of the Christian towns followed an abrupt withdrawal by the Kurdish forces, known as the Peshmerga, that had pledged to defend them. “The Peshmerga withdrew - they didn’t tell us what happened, or why that happened,” Fr Yousef said. “It’s strange that an army could collapse all of a sudden just in some areas.
“The Peshmerga used to tell us that they would protect us, that our district’s security was as firm as Dohuk’s. That lasted for two months. They were fighting before but we don’t what happened yesterday.”
That collapse in Kurdish morale followed a similar withdrawal at the weekend from towns occupied by the Yazidi community, another religious minority who unlike the Christians are ethnically Kurdish. Thousands of Yazidis, who are termed devil-worshippers by the Islamic State, are stranded in the desert mountains south of the town of Sinjar, with some children already succumbing to dehydration and the heat.
Attempts to rescue them by a combined force of Peshmerga and guerrillas from the Kurdish regions of Syria and Turkey have so far failed.
The Islamic State posted a message on its social media pages celebrating its victories, saying it had taken 17 towns and cities and the Mosul Dam, Iraq’s largest, in five days. By taking the towns of Bartella and Qaraqosh, they were able to move to about half an hour’s drive from Erbil.
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