On June 14, the armed group Islamic State (also known as ISIS) laid siege to Amerli, a farming town approximately 170 kilometers north of Baghdad. Many of the town’s approximately 18,000 residents are Turkmen who practice Shia Islam. ISIS fighters shelled the town daily with mortar fire, cut the public water supply and power lines, and cut off most land supplies of food, medicine, and other necessities. The siege lasted for nearly three months, during which Iraqi government helicopters dropped food and weapons to the encircled residents twice a week.
Independent pro-government Shia militias, volunteer fighters loosely organized as the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Front), and government forces broke the siege on August 31 after the United States and Iraq conducted air strikes on ISIS targets in the area. Iraqi ground troops and militias entered the town on September 1.[2] By that time at least 15 civilians in Amerli, including newborn infants, had died from lack of food, water or medical treatment, and more than 250 children were suffering from severe malnutrition and dehydration.[3]
According to residents, ISIS used towns nearby Amerli in Salah al-Din province as bases while they conducted their siege of Amerli. Based on witness accounts Human Rights Watch found that ISIS had at various times entered 14 villages around Amerli over the course of the siege and occupied some.[4] Residents from more than a dozen villages in Salah al-Din province told Human Rights Watch that during the attack on Amerli ISIS forces made occasional patrols through their villages, warned residents to leave the area because of impending fighting, or were seen on the outskirts of the villages driving to other areas.[5]
Residents told researchers that in many villages residents fled the area preemptively out of fear of being caught in clashes between ISIS and Iraqi government forces, but returned to their villages for short periods of time to collect belongings or secure their homes.
In response to Human Rights Watch queries as to whether ISIS committed abuses against residents of these villages, most responded that ISIS patrolled their villages on occasion, and while they feared ISIS, residents had not been specifically targeted by ISIS fighters. However some witnesses said that houses known to belong to military and police personnel as well as some high ranking officials seen as collaborating with the government were specifically targeted and destroyed by ISIS. Human Rights Watch also received unconfirmed reports that ISIS had ransacked and damaged some Shia mosques in the surrounding area during the siege of Amerli, but was unable to verify these reports.
Human Rights Watch has documented serious abuses and war crimes committed by ISIS since it came to prominence in Syria and Iraq in 2013, including mass executions, beheadings, the abduction, killing and expelling of minorities, and sexual violence.[6]
Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that while the Iraqi army carried out the initial phases of the operation against ISIS around Amerli, militias soon came to make up the majority of fighters on the government side. In an interview with Al-Jazeera English during ground operations in Suleiman Bek, a commander from the Iraqi Ministry of Interior said the government was coordinating with commanders from the militias Asai’b Al-Haqq, Saraya al-Salaam and Badr Brigades. Al-Jazeera footage showed a large militia force undertaking ground operations immediately after ISIS had been repelled.[7]
After US air strikes and Iraqi fighters broke the siege, pro-government militias began to raid Sunni and mixed Sunni villages in the areas surrounding Amerli.[8] They raided and looted residential and commercial properties, later burning down or blowing up thousands of buildings in more than 30 villages throughout Salah al-Din province, according to displaced residents and Peshmerga officers who witnessed the militias’ campaign of destruction.[9] Media reports support these accounts.[10]
Human Rights Watch analyzed satellite imagery that showed over 95 percent of the buildings in the village of Hufriyya, for example, were destroyed and over 75 percent of buildings were destroyed in at least 17 other villages.
On September 24, a member of Salah ad-Din’s provincial council called on the Iraqi government to investigate the “burning and destruction of tens of houses [in villages] between Tuz Khurmatu and Amerli in eastern Tikrit.” Al-Bayati attributed the actions to “governmental forces and popular front [Hashd al-Shaabi],” and stated that many residents had fled the areas as a result.[11]
It is against this backdrop that Human Rights Watch
conducted field investigations to determine what happened to civilians in areas
around Amerli after the siege was lifted.