“To that end, we will continue to support the victims of these atrocities, work with responsible governments and other international partners to hold those responsible for these crimes fully accountable, and strive to prevent the commission of such atrocities in the future.”
Yet Ambassador Anne Patterson, assistant secretary of the State Department’s Near East Bureau, hinted at a House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last month that a genocide designation might be in the works.
Asked by U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) whether Islamic State’s atrocities are considered genocide, Patterson said she could not say yes or no, but that she believes “there will be some announcements on that very shortly.”
Earlier this year, Fortenberry introduced a bipartisan resolution denouncing the genocide against Christians as well as other ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria.
“The international community must confront the scandalous silence about their plight. Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities have every right to remain in their ancestral homelands,” the resolution stated.
Pressure on the Obama administration to publicly use the genocide label is mounting, coming from various spheres of influence. Scholars, religious leaders, and NGOs represented by the International Religious Freedom Roundtable recently sent a letter to President Obama urging his administration to “formally declare the systematic destruction of these ancient communities a genocide.”
This past March, the UN human rights office strongly suggested that Islamic State may be committing genocide. Yet Adama Dieng, the UN’s special adviser on the prevention of genocide, conveyed that it is not a simple move to make the designation.
“Only a judicial body with an appropriate mandate can make a legal determination,” Dieng said in a statement.
Dieng warned that “the international community cannot afford to wait until such a determination is made. We must take action to protect populations earlier, before situations deteriorate to the point where the window of opportunity closes and the options for action are fewer and more costly.”
Brett McGurk, America’s special presidential envoy to the Global Coalition To Counter ISIL, recently told reporters, “We’re going to destroy this terrorist organization, and in two ways: We’re going to suffocate the core, which is in Iraq and Syria; and we’re going to suffocate the global networks.”
The 65-member coalition’s plan is “taking back major ground and territory, of finding out about the financial networks, the economic structures, how they’re actually financing themselves, and then trying to root that out,” said McGurk.
Yet apart from America’s military goals for dealing with Islamic State, the Obama administration’s humanitarian efforts to prevent genocide remain a mystery. Last year, Obama stated in reference to the Yazidis that “the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye. We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide.”
Arabo – who lobbies on behalf of Chaldeans from the Middle East, particularly from Iraq, who are seeking asylum in the U.S. – believes that genocide is exactly what is being committed against Christians in the Middle East.
“We need to be upfront and honest when dealing with the culture of intolerance and persecution against religious minorities like Christians. We cannot turn a blind eye to the reality of death and genocide occurring against the Middle East Christian minorities,” Arabo told JNS.
Without the genocide designation, added Arabo, “We would be facing the end of Christianity in the Middle East. There is little hope, there is little chance, and there are no longer any viable options. The cradle with which Christianity was born will forever be altered by the evil that is ISIS.”
(JNS)
