Family feud driving illegal evictions north of Baghdad: Human Rights Watch

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Iraqi army has unlawfully evicted almost 100 families from a village north of Baghdad since July due to an apparent family feud involving a government minister and a woman with past links to the Islamic State (ISIS), Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Wednesday.

Iraqi army units rolled into the village of al-Aetha in Salahaddin province in mid-July, families told HRW, evicting locals with no notice or justification and forcing them north to al-Jada camp in Nineveh province. The evictions are said to be retaliation from an unnamed government minister after his brother married a woman alleged to have been previously married to an ISIS fighter.

More families were forced out of their homes earlier in August.

The evictions are not the first time al-Aetha villagers have been left homeless, the monitor said. Families were previously forced to flee due to ISIS and were then later driven out of displacement camps.

"Authorities should immediately halt the evictions and punish all officials responsible for the abuse of their authority," it added.

"The notion that a minister can on a whim and without justification kick hundreds of people out of their homes should shock the conscience," added Belkis Wille, HRW's senior crisis and conflict researcher. "These families have been suffering for years at the hands of a government that has endorsed and sometimes participated in a range of collective punishment measures against them."

More than 200 families remain in the village, but the minister's son has claimed they will all have to leave, HRW added.

There has been no government response so far, with the Ministry of Migration and Displacement providing no justification for the evictions.

HRW has repeatedly warned of collective punishment used against people with suspected ISIS links, including preventing children from enrolling in school unless their families disavowed relatives suspected of joining the terror group.

It also condemned a wave of camp closures spearheaded by the displacement and migration ministry last year, warning that it left many vulnerable to retaliation if they returned to their home areas due to alleged links to ISIS.

Al-Jada is one of just two camps still open in areas under federal Iraqi control. It mainly houses families with suspected links to ISIS, including returnees from northeast Syria's al-Hol camp.