UN UN: in 50 years, a million Iraqis disappeared without a trace

These are the figures that appear in a report published by the UN Committee against Enforced Disappearances, the result of a visit carried out by experts in November 2022. The call to combat the phenomenon is still present today. However, specific legislation is lacking. Saddam’s government, the US invasion and ISIS, among the causes of the waves of disappearances.

Baghdad () – In the last 50 years of the country’s turbulent history, around a million people have “disappeared” in Iraq, by force or violence. From Saddam Hussein’s regime to the US occupation and the rise of ISIS, later defeated militarily, many factors have contributed to the Arab nation being among those with the highest rate of “disappeared without trace” population in the world. world. This is confirmed by the results of a study published yesterday by the experts of the Committee on Enforced Disappearances of the United Nations, who ask the Government of Baghdad for a greater commitment “in the search for the victims and in the punishment of the culprits.”

The fact that the phenomenon of missing persons is not classified as a crime in the Penal Code also makes it impossible to fight effectively against it. Hence the request to the Iraqi government to “immediately establish the bases to prevent, eradicate and stop this heinous crime”, although up to now there has been no reaction from the executive or institutional representatives.

The experts of the Committee, in charge of supervising the application of the UN conventions on the protection of all persons against enforced disappearances, visited the country in November 2022 and produced a report that was published yesterday. In a note on the side of the presentation, they explain that although there was a cooperative attitude on the part of the authorities, disappearances continue today in a culture where impunity prevails.

The first phase of the mysterious disappearances coincided with the Saddam government, under which up to 290,000 people, including at least 100,000 Kurds, disappeared “by force” and independently of their own will. In Kurdistan, between 1968 and 2003, the UN committee note continues, the rais would have carried out a “campaign” comparable to “genocide”.

However, the phenomenon continued even after the US invasion that brought down the dictator, who was later arrested and hanged. The reference is to the “capture” or “imprisonment” of some 200,000 Iraqis, half of whom are being held – often without providing information – in prisons run by the United States or Britain. “There are strong suspicions,” the Committee says, “that people were detained without a warrant for their involvement in insurgency operations, while others were “civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

With the rise of the jihadists of the Islamic State in the summer of 2014 came a new wave of kidnappings and disappearances in the territories under their control (roughly half of Syria and Iraq at the time of their maximum expansion). “Other ongoing phenomena,” the note explains, “include the alleged forced disappearance of children, particularly Yazidi children who were born after their mothers were subjected to sexual violence in Daesh-controlled centers. [acrónimo árabe de Isis]”.

During the visit, the committee members heard testimony and collected evidence. One mother, outlining a “typical and ongoing pattern”, as confirmed by experts, said: “My son had gone to visit his cousin. I called him immediately after he left because he had forgotten the bread he wanted to give to my cousin. nephew. He told me that he was at a checkpoint, that some men in uniform were searching him and that he would call me later. He never did” and nothing more was heard from the young man. “Since then,” his mother concluded, “I have looked for him everywhere, in all the prisons, with all the authorities. But nothing, nothing, nothing.” And like this, hundreds of other families are looking for their loved ones, most likely detained in centers in Turkey, Syria or Iran, “where contact with the outside world – experts explain – is impossible.”

The UN Committee calls on the Iraqi government not only to start work on legislation and a penal code, but also to create an independent task force to draw up a list of those detained and that families be notified of their plight. Even today, the existence of secret prisons continues to be denounced -an accusation that the authorities deny-, which must be tracked by all means, from satellites to drones.