The Crisis of Cuba and Venezuela, Immigration Chaos

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9 Latin nations band together to plead with U.S. over Cuba

Cuban migrants were photographed in November outside the border control building in Penas Blancas, Costa Rica, after Nicaragua closed its borders to Cuban migrants. Nine Latin American governments on Monday charged that U.S. policy toward Cuban migrants has created a humanitarian crisis for the region. Cuban migrants were photographed in November outside the border control building in Penas Blancas, Costa Rica, after Nicaragua closed its borders to Cuban migrants. Nine Latin American governments on Monday charged that U.S. policy toward Cuban migrants has created a humanitarian crisis for the region. Esteban Felix AP

McClatchy/WASHINGTON:Eight Latin American governments on Monday joined Costa Rica in calling on the United States to end its special treatment for Cuban migrants.

The Ecuadorean foreign minister delivered a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry signed by the foreign ministers of the eight countries and Costa Rica in expressing their “deep concern” that U.S. policy toward Cuban migrants is creating a humanitarian crisis and encouraging “a disorderly, irregular and unsafe flow of Cubans.”

“Cuban citizens risk their lives, on a daily basis, seeking to reach the United States,” the letter says, according to excerpts forwarded by Ecuador’s embassy in the United States. “These people, often facing situations of extreme vulnerability, fall victim to mafias dedicated to people trafficking, sexual exploitation and collective assaults. This situation has generated a migratory crisis that is affecting our countries.”

The letter was signed by the foreign ministers of Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru.

State Department officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This situation has generated a migratory crisis that is affecting our countries. Nine Latin American governments

The countries have been caught up in the drama of record-breaking Cuban migration. More than 46,500 Cubans were admitted to the United States without visas during the first 10 months of the 2016 fiscal year, according to the Pew Research Center. That figure compares with more than 43,000 in 2015 and just over 24,000 in 2014.

Several of the countries found themselves caring for thousands of stranded Cubans who were stuck at their borders or in the interior after running out of money to continue the journey.

Costa Rican Foreign Minister Manuel González told McClatchy in an interview last week that the issue has cost his country millions of dollars it doesn’t have and has raised complaints from Costa Ricans about spending resources on stranded foreigners when they were needed by the nation’s own citizens.

“The difficulties between the U.S. and Cuba has a direct consequence on other countries in our region that serve as transit,” González said. “And we are, in a way, paying the consequences of that bilateral relationship.”

The difficulties between the U.S. and Cuba has a direct consequence on other countries in our region that serve as transit.

The nine signatories say the “main cause of the current situation” is the Cuban Adjustment Act, which allows Cubans who reach American soil to remain in the United States, even if they arrived without legal documentation. The signatories say revising the act would be the first step toward addressing the worsening crisis.

They have called for Kerry to attend a “high-level meeting” to review the issue.

“It is time for the United States to change its outdated policy for Cuban migrants, which is undermining regular and safe migration in our continent,” said Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Guillaume Long.

John Kirby, the State Department spokesman, confirmed Tuesday that Kerry had received the letter and said the U.S. was continuing talks with the nine governments. He called on the countries to respect the human rights of migrants and asylum-seekers.

“Irregular migration often involves dangerous journeys that illustrate the inherent risks and uncertainties of involvement with organized crime, including human smugglers and traffickers, in attempts to reach the United States,” Kirby said.

The Obama administration has also been encouraging the countries to enforce their own immigration requirements and send undocumented Cubans back to Cuba. But Cuban activists worry that that policy will only encourage Cubans to instead flee the island on dangerous ocean voyages to reach Florida.

The number of Cubans making the sea trip has nearly doubled in the past two years, Coast Guard statistics show.

Related reading: Creating the exile pool

Normalization has so far not included an end to the Cuban Adjustment Act, which encourages Cubans to become undocumented aliens. Mexicans are told to stay home or “get in line” for a green card, but Cubans who reach US shores can be fast-tracked to citizenship. More here.

 

Meanwhile, there is Venezuela.

WashingtonPost: VENEZUELA’S MAN-MADE humanitarian crisis is deepening. The Associated Press reports that the typical resident of Caracas, the capital, spends 35 hours a month waiting in line to buy food, and 9 in 10 say they can’t find enough . After the government of Nicolás Maduro opened six border crossings to neighboring Colombia on Aug. 13, about 380,000 Venezuelans poured across in the first eight days, desperately seeking supplies. Sackings of food warehouses by hungry mobs have been reported; 50 animals in the Caracas zoo are said to have starved to death. Meanwhile, Mr. Maduro refuses to allow aid shipments into the country, contending they are unneeded.

The United States and most of Venezuela’s neighbors have responded to this collapse of a once-prosperous oil-producing country by doing their best to ignore it. They issue feckless statements calling for “dialogue,” overlooking the by-now obvious reality that the regime has no intention of seriously negotiating with the opposition. This week, it will become harder for the United States and others to remain apathetic. Opposition parties are seeking to organize a mass demonstration in Caracas on Thursday; last Saturday, the regime responded by transferring a top leader from house arrest to prison. The government appears intent on crushing the protest movement, rather than responding to its legitimate demands.

First among these demands is the staging of a referendum by the end of this year to recall Mr. Maduro from office. Venezuela’s constitution provides for such a process, and though its requirements are onerous, the opposition has shown it can meet them. Early this month, the government-controlled electoral authority acknowledged that the recall campaign had met an initial requirement for gathering petition signatures across the country. But it then released a timetable indicating that a referendum would not be held by the end of this year, the effective deadline for a meaningful vote. If Mr. Maduro were recalled after Jan. 10, he would be replaced by his vice president, rather than an opposition nominee.

Mr. Maduro, who polls show would win as little as 15 percent of the vote in a recall ballot, has been gloating over this obstructionism. He ordered the firing of hundreds of government employees who signed recall petitions. When a U.S. federal indictment was unsealed against a general for drug trafficking, Mr. Maduro appointed him interior minister, in charge of domestic security forces.

Prodded by the secretary general of the Organization of American States, the Obama administration and 14 other governments issued a statement on Aug. 11 calling for the referendum to be held “without delays.” On Sunday, the State Department toughened its rhetoric, condemning the imprisonment of opposition leader Daniel Ceballos as “an effort to intimidate and impede the Venezuelan people’s right to peacefully express their opinion September 1.” The administration should be prepared to act if the regime responds violently to the protest. It should quickly punish officials involved in repression and press the OAS to move against Venezuela under its democracy charter.

At the same time, the United States should begin coordinating with Colombia, Brazil and other nations about ways to respond to the humanitarian crisis. As Mr. Maduro cracks down, Venezuelans are likely to get hungrier.

 

ISIS Built Their Network in Front of Europe’s Face

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How ISIS built the machinery of terror under Europe’s gaze

TimesofIndia: The day he left Syria with instructions to carry out a terrorist attack in France, Reda Hame, 29, a computer technician from Paris, had been a member of the Islamic State for just over a week.

His French passport and his background in information technology made him an ideal recruit for a rapidly expanding group within ISIS that was dedicated to terrorizing Europe. Over just a few days, he was rushed to a park, shown how to fire an assault rifle, handed a grenade and told to hurl it at a human silhouette. His accelerated course included how to use an encryption program called TrueCrypt, the first step in a process intended to mask communications with his ISIS handler back in Syria.

The handler, code-named Dad, drove Hame to the Turkish border and sent him off with advice to pick an easy target, shoot as many civilians as possible and hold hostages until the security forces made a martyr of him.

“Be brave,” Dad said, embracing him.

Hame was sent out by a body inside the Islamic State that was obsessed with striking Europe for at least two years before the deadly assaults in Paris last November and in Brussels this month. In that time, the group dispatched a string of operatives trained in Syria, aiming to carry out small attacks meant to test and stretch Europe’s security apparatus even as the most deadly assaults were in the works, according to court proceedings, interrogation transcripts and records of European wiretaps obtained by The New York Times.

Related reading: Terror in Europe: Safeguarding U.S. Citizens At Home And Abroad
Officials now say the signs of this focused terrorist machine were readable in Europe as far back as early 2014. Yet local authorities repeatedly discounted each successive plot, describing them as isolated or random acts, the connection to the Islamic State either overlooked or played down.

“This didn’t all of a sudden pop up in the last six months,” said Michael T Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who ran the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014. “They have been contemplating external attacks ever since the group moved into Syria in 2012.”

Hame was arrested in Paris last August, before he could strike, one of at least 21 trained operatives who succeeded in slipping back into Europe. Their interrogation records offer a window into the origins and evolution of an Islamic State branch responsible for killing hundreds of people in Paris, Brussels and beyond.

European officials now know that Dad, Hame’s handler, was none other than Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian operative who selected and trained fighters for plots in Europe and who returned himself to oversee the Paris attack, the deadliest terrorist strike on European soil in over a decade.

 

The people in Abaaoud’s external operations branch were also behind the Brussels attacks, as well as a foiled attack in a suburb of Paris last week, and others are urgently being sought, Belgian and French officials say.

“It’s a factory over there,” Hame warned his interlocutors from France’s intelligence service after his arrest. “They are doing everything possible to strike France, or else Europe.”

For much of 2012 and 2013, the jihadi group that eventually became the Islamic State was putting down roots in Syria. Even as the group began aggressively recruiting foreigners, especially Europeans, policymakers in the United States and Europe continued to see it as a lower-profile branch of al-Qaida that was mostly interested in gaining and governing territory.

One of the first clues that the Islamic State was getting into the business of international terrorism came at 12:10 p.m. on Jan. 3, 2014, when the Greek police pulled over a taxi in the town of Orestiada, less than four miles from the Turkish border. Inside was a 23-year-old French citizen named Ibrahim Boudina, who was returning from Syria. In his luggage, the officers found 1,500 euros, or almost $1,700, and a French document titled “How to Make Artisanal Bombs  in the Name of Allah.”

But there was no warrant for his arrest in Europe, so the Greeks let him go, according to court records detailing the French investigation.

Boudina was already on France’s watch list, part of a cell of 22 men radicalized at a mosque in the resort city of Cannes. When French officials were notified about the Greek traffic stop, they were already wiretapping his friends and relatives. Several weeks later, Boudina’s mother received a call from a number in Syria. Before hanging up, the unknown caller informed her that her son had been “sent on a mission,” according to a partial transcript of the call.

The police set up a perimeter around the family’s apartment near Cannes, arresting Boudina on February 11, 2014.

In a utility closet in the same building, they found three Red Bull soda cans filled with 600 grams of TATP, the temperamental peroxide-based explosive that would later be used to deadly effect in Paris and Brussels.

It was not until nearly two years later, on Page 278 of a 359-page sealed court filing, that investigators revealed an important detail: Boudina’s Facebook chats placed him in Syria in late 2013, at the scene of a major battle fought by a group calling itself the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.”

According to a brief by France’s domestic intelligence agency, he was the first European citizen known to have traveled to Syria, joined the Islamic State and returned with the aim of committing terrorism. Yet his ties to the group were buried in French paperwork and went unconnected to later cases.

Including Boudina, at least 21 fighters trained by the Islamic State in Syria have been dispatched back to Europe with the intention of causing mass murder, according to a Times count based on records from France’s domestic intelligence agency. The fighters arrived in a steady trickle, returning alone or in pairs at the rate of one every two to three months throughout 2014 and the first part of 2015.

Like the killers in Paris and Brussels, all of these earlier operatives were French speakers — mostly French and Belgian citizens, alongside a handful of immigrants from former French colonies, including Morocco.

They were arrested in Italy, Spain, Belgium, France, Greece, Turkey and Lebanon with plans to attack Jewish businesses, police stations and a carnival parade. They attempted to open fire on packed train cars and on church congregations. In their possession were box cutters and automatic weapons, walkie-talkies and disposable cellphones, as well as the chemicals to make TATP.

Most of them failed. And in each instance, officials failed to catch — or at least to flag to colleagues — the men’s ties to the nascent Islamic State.
In one of the highest-profile instances, Mehdi Nemmouche returned from Syria via Frankfurt, Germany, and made his way by car to Brussels, where on May 24, 2014, he opened fire inside the Jewish Museum of Belgium, killing four people. Even when the police found a video in his possession, in which he claims responsibility for the attack next to a flag bearing the words “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” Belgium’s deputy prosecutor, Ine Van Wymersch, dismissed any connection.

“He probably acted alone,” she told reporters at the time.
Among the clearest signs of the Islamic State’s growing capacity for terrorist attacks is its progress in making and deploying bombs containing triacetone triperoxide, or TATP.

 

 

Yup, He Commuted Another 111 Sentences

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Obama Commutes Sentences Of 111 Federal Inmates Convicted Of Non-Violent Drug Charges

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has cut short the sentences of 111 federal inmates in another round of commutations for those convicted of nonviolent drug offenses

Obama has long called for phasing out strict sentences for drug offenses, arguing they lead to excessive punishment and incarceration rates unseen in other developed countries.

White House Counsel Neil Eggleston says the commutations underscore the president’s commitment to using his clemency authority to give deserving individuals a second chance.

He says that Obama has granted a total of 673 commutations, more than the previous 10 presidents combined. More than a third of the recipients were serving life sentences.

Eggleston says he expects Obama to continue granting commutations through the end of his administration, but only legislation can ensure the federal sentencing system operates more fairly.

Prisoner applications are being reviewed by more than 1,000 attorneys at 323 law firms and organizations nationwide, pro bono. In the meantime, more than 35,000 inmates — about 16 percent of the federal prison population — have applied to have their sentences shortened under the Justice Department-led initiative. More her from the WashingtonPost.

This the program began under Eric Holder.

Obama has enacted his own SAFE Act, legislation that has not advanced, so he is using his pen and phone instead. Note the title ‘SAFE’….safe for who exactly?

The Safe, Accountable, Fair, and Effective (SAFE) Justice Act Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner and Rep. Bobby Scott

States Lead the Way in Corrections Reform

Since 1980, Congress has steadily increased the size and scope of the federal criminal code and with it the federal prison population. In that period, the federal government has added an estimated 2,000 new crimes to the books, while the federal imprisonment rate has grown by an astounding 518 percent. During the same period, annual spending on the federal prison system rose 595 percent, from $970 million to more than $6.7 billion, after adjusting for inflation.

Like the federal government, states also recorded sharp increases in imprisonment and associated costs over the past 30 years. During the past decade, however, the states have responded by reducing their imprisonment rate by 4 percent while the federal imprisonment rate jumped 15 percent. The state drop was driven in large part by comprehensive reform efforts in more than two dozen states designed to protect public safety while containing costs and preventing further growth in government programs.

These state reforms have returned dividends to taxpayers many times over: from Texas and Wisconsin to Rhode Island, from Georgia and South Carolina to New York, 32 states have reduced both their crime and imprisonment rates over the past five years. Cumulative cost savings in a subset of these states exceed $4.6 billion, and millions have been reinvested in prison alternatives better at breaking the cycle of recidivism.

The Safe, Accountable, Fair, and Effective (SAFE) Justice Act

The SAFE Justice Act is bipartisan legislation that puts lessons learned in the states to work at the federal level. The legislation protects public safety and reins in escalating corrections costs by –

Curtailing overcriminalization – requires public disclosure of regulatory criminal offenses; allows victims of regulatory over-criminalization to contact the inspector general; restores discretion to judges to determine to what extent manipulated conduct that results from fictitious law enforcement “stings” may be considered in court; protects against wrongful convictions; creates procedures to simplify charging and safely reduce pre-trial detention; and eliminates federal criminal penalties for simple drug possession in state jurisdictions.

Increasing use of evidence-based sentencing alternatives – expands eligibility for pre-judgment probation; promotes greater use of probation for lower-level offenders; and encourages judicial districts to open drug, veteran, mental health and other problem solving courts.

Concentrating prison space on violent and career criminals – clarifies original Congressional intent by examining the role an offender plays in a drug offense and targeting higher-level traffickers for mandatory minimums and recidivist enhancements; applies life sentences for drug trafficking only in the most egregious cases; allows eligible offenders to petition for resentencing under new trafficking laws; modestly expands the drug trafficking safety valve; clarifies that mandatory minimum gun sentences can only run consecutively when the offender is a true recidivist; and expands compassionate release for lower-risk geriatric and terminally-ill offenders.

Reducing recidivism – expands earned time to encourage more inmates to participate in individualized case plans designed to reduce their likelihood of reoffending; seeks to boost success rates of offenders on probation and post-prison supervision by mandating swift, certain and graduated sanctions for violations and offering credits for those who are compliant; creates a performance-incentive funding program; creates mental health and de-escalation training programs for prison personnel; and mandates the use of performance-based contracting for half-way houses.

Increasing government transparency and accountability – requires fiscal impact statements for sentencing and corrections bills; requires sentencing cost analyses to be disclosed in pre-sentencing reports; adds a non-voting federal defender rep. on the U.S. Sentencing Commission; requires the calculation of good time as Congress intended; requires federal agencies to report on corrections populations and recidivism rates, among other indicators; reauthorizes the Innocence Protection Act and directs the Attorney General to develop best practices to reduce wrongful convictions; and encourages prison savings to be invested in strengthening safety measures for law enforcement.

The Research Foundation for the SAFE Justice Act

The SAFE Justice Act, like the comprehensive corrections reforms enacted in many states, draws from the large and growing body of research about what works to reduce recidivism, including the following principles:

To deter offending, use swift and certain responses – Research demonstrates that delayed, unpredictable, and severe responses are less effective than swift, certain, and fair sanctions. Swift and certain responses—both punishments and rewards—are more effective because they help offenders see the response as a direct consequence of their behavior and because offenders heavily discount uncertain and distant responses.

States that have implemented swift and certain responses include Washington, Georgia, and West Virginia.

Earned time policies can reduce recidivism – Research demonstrates that rewards and incentives can work to change offending behavior and reduce recidivism. The benefits of earned time policies for inmates and earned compliance credits for offenders under probation or post-release supervision include lower costs (through accelerated release) and lower recidivism (by shifting correctional resources to those offenders who continue to violate rules and break laws).

States that have built earned time into their prison systems include Kentucky, Maryland, and Louisiana. States that have built earned time into their supervision systems include South Dakota, Mississippi, and Arkansas.

For drug offenders, sentence strategically – The most vicious, predatory and high-level drug offenders warrant prison cells to avert the harm they cause to individuals and communities, but research shows that long terms of incarceration for the vast majority of mid-level couriers, distributors and dealers has little impact on public safety. While imprisonment may temporarily disrupt a drug market, the “replacement effect”—whereby new recruits quickly replace those imprisoned for mid-level roles—negates the impact of incarceration on drug price, availability, or related crime. Instead, prison time should be focused on violent or kingpin drug traffickers who are controlling the marketplace.

States that have recalibrated their drug sentencing systems to differentiate higher-level from lower-level offenders include South Dakota, Georgia, and South Carolina.

Focus on high-risk offenders – For many lower-level offenders, especially those whose criminal conduct is driven largely by substance abuse, alternatives like drug and mental health courts, treatment programs, and intensive supervision both hold offenders accountable and work better to reduce recidivism. In fact, research suggests that for many lower-risk and less serious offenders a prison sentence may actually be responsible for an increase in recidivism by encouraging anti-social ties and breaking bonds at home.

States that have encouraged diversion of lower-level offenders to prison alternatives include Mississippi, California, and Illinois.

Age matters – Research has long shown that age is one of the most significant predictors of criminality, with criminal or delinquent activity peaking in late adolescence and decreasing significantly with time. As a result, imprisonment of offenders into their 50s, 60s and 70s provides diminishing and often negligible public safety returns. Implementing smart, targeted geriatric release programs can ensure heinous offenders remain behind bars while cutting down on costs and maintaining public safety.

States that have implemented geriatric or compassionate release programs include Alabama, Colorado, and Montana.

 

Russia Moves Air Defense, MiGs, bombers to Crimea

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Russian Anti-Access and Area Denial (A2AD) Range: August 2016

ISW: Russia has altered the security balance in the Black Sea, Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East by establishing large anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) exclusion zones. Russia’s power projection in these regions has been further extended by the deployment of the S-400 air defense system to Crimea in August 2016 and to Syria in November 2015. Advanced air defense systems create A2AD “bubbles” that prevent Russia’s opponents from establishing air supremacy in strategically significant theaters. The Baltic States, much of Ukraine and the Black Sea, northern Poland, Syria and parts of Turkey fall under Russian A2AD bubbles created by S-300 and S-400 air defense systems. Russia operates advanced air defense not only within its own territory, but from sites in Syria and occupied Crimea, as well as cooperatively through the Joint Air Defense Network in Belarus and Armenia. Russia can use these systems to impede the ability of the U.S. to defend its NATO allies by disrupting the ability of US air forces to access conflict zones in the event of a crisis.

DefenseWorld: Russian advanced bombers and jet fighters have been shifted to bolster Aerospace Forces Fleet in Crimea.

The Su-34 bombers have been moved to Crimean Peninsula as a part of snap combat readiness inspection, whereas MiG-39 and MiG-31 fighter jets have been relocated to mainland Russia.

The MiG-29SMT and MiG-31BM have been relocated to bases in Krasnodar Krai and Rostov Oblast, Western military district spokesman Igor Muginov said.

The Aerospace forces of Central and Western military districts have been relocated to bases in Southern military district as a part of snap combat readiness inspection, Russian Defense Ministry’s report was quoted by Sputnik News Saturday.

Fighter jets and bomber aircraft, as well as military transport and attack helicopters will perform a flight over a distance of 500 to 2,500 kilometers.

Snap combat readiness inspections are running across Russia’s Southern, Western and Central military districts, as well as the Northern Fleet, Aerospace Forces and Airborne Troops on August 25-31 on order of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

The inspection also includes military exercises of Russian fleets in Black and Caspian Seas, relocation of airborne troops and marines and maneuvers of S-300 and S-400 air defense systems.

This large-scale snap inspection does not pose threat to anyone and is being conducted in line with the country’s international obligations, Russian Envoy to NATO said.

“It the inspection can not threaten anyone by any means. I will stress that NATO is familiar with this practice. For our country, with its size, it is one of the most optimal ways to ensure the battle readiness of the army,” Grushko said.

72 Mass Graves Documented in Iraq

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AP documents 72 mass graves in territory freed of IS

HARDAN, Iraq (AP)— Peering through binoculars, the young man watched as Islamic State extremists gunned down the handcuffed men and then buried them with a waiting bulldozer. For six days he watched as IS filled one grave after another with his friends and neighbors.

The five graves arranged at the foot of Sinjar mountain hold the bodies of dozens of minority Yazidis killed in the Islamic State group’s bloody onslaught in August 2014. They are a fraction of the mass graves Islamic State extremists have scattered across Iraq and Syria.

In exclusive interviews, photos and research, The Associated Press has documented and mapped 72 of the mass graves, the most comprehensive survey so far, with many more expected to be uncovered as the Islamic State group’s territory shrinks.

(This image released by the the Mass Graves Directorate of the Kurdish Regional Government shows a human skull in a mass grave containing Yazidis killed by Islamic State militants in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq in May, 2015. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory. (Kurdish Mass Graves Directorate via AP)

 Go here for the 28 pictures from the AP photo essay.

In Syria, AP has obtained locations for 17 mass graves, including one with the bodies of hundreds of members of a single tribe all but exterminated when IS extremists took over their region.

For at least 16 of the Iraqi graves, most in territory too dangerous to excavate, officials do not even guess the number of dead. In others, the estimates are based on memories of traumatized survivors, Islamic State propaganda and what can be gleaned from a cursory look at the earth.

Still, even the known numbers of victims buried are staggering — from 5,200 to more than 15,000.

Satellites offer the clearest look at massacres such as the one at Badoush Prison in June 2014 that left 600 inmates dead. A patch of scraped earth shows the likely site, according to exclusive photos obtained by the imagery intelligence firm AllSource Analysis and shared with AP.

On Sinjar Mountain, Rasho Qassim drives daily past the mass grave in Hardan that holds the bodies of his two sons.

The sites are roped off and awaiting the money and the political will for excavation. The evidence they contain is scoured by wind and baked by sun.

“We want to take them out of here. There are only bones left. But they said ‘No, they have to stay there, a committee will come and exhume them later,'” said Qassim, standing at the flimsy protective fence.

IS made no attempt to hide its atrocities. But proving what United Nations officials and others have described as an ongoing genocide will be complicated as the graves deteriorate. The Islamic State group targeted the Yazidis for slaughter because it considers them infidels. The Yazidi faith has elements of Christianity and Islam but is distinct.

“There’s been virtually no effort to systematically document the crimes perpetrated, to preserve the evidence,” said Naomi Kikoler, who recently visited for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. The graves are largely documented by the aid group Yazda.

Through binoculars, Arkan Qassem watched it all. His village, Gurmiz, overlooks Hardan and the plain below. When the jihadis swept through, everyone in Gurmiz fled up the mountaintop. Then Arkan and nine other men returned with light weapons, hoping to defend their homes.

The first night, a bulldozer’s headlights illuminated the killing of a group of handcuffed men. Then the machine plowed over their bodies.

Over six days, the fighters killed three more groups — several dozen each, usually with hands bound. Once, the extremists lit a bonfire, but Arkan couldn’t make out its purpose.

Two years later, the 32-year-old has since returned home, living in an area dotted with mass graves.

“I have lots of people I know there. Mostly friends and neighbors,” he said. “It’s very difficult to look at them every day.”

Nearly every area freed from IS control has unmasked new mass graves, like one found near a stadium in Ramadi. The graves are easy enough to find, most covered with just a thin coating of earth.

“They are beheading them, shooting them, running them over in cars, all kinds of killing techniques, and they don’t even try to hide it,” said Sirwan Jalal, the director of Iraqi Kurdistan’s agency in charge of mass graves.

No one outside IS has seen the Iraqi ravine where hundreds of prison inmates were killed. Satellite images of scraped dirt along the river point to its location, according to Steve Wood of AllSource. His analysts triangulated survivors’ accounts and began to systematically search the desert according to their descriptions of that day, June 10, 2014.

The inmates were separated by religion, and Shiites had to count off, according to accounts by 15 survivors gathered by Human Rights Watch.

“I was number 43. I heard them say ‘615,’ and then one ISIS guy said, ‘We’re going to eat well tonight.’ A man behind us asked, ‘Are you ready?’ Another person answered ‘Yes,’ and began shooting at us with a machine-gun,” according to the Human Rights Watch account of a survivor identified only as A.S. The 15 men survived by playing dead.

Justice has been done in at least one IS mass killing — that of about 1,700 Iraqi soldiers who were machine-gunned at Camp Speicher. On Aug. 21, 36 IS militants were hanged for those deaths.

But justice is likely to elude areas still under IS control, even when the extremists film the atrocities themselves. That’s the case for a natural sinkhole outside Mosul that is now a pit of corpses. And in Syria’s Raqqa province, where thousands of bodies are believed to have been thrown into the al-Houta crevasse.

Hundreds of mass graves are believed to be in areas that can only be explored when fighting stops. So far, at least 17 are known, in the list put together from AP interviews with activists, fighters and residents in former IS strongholds.

Some of the worst are in Deir el-Zour province. There, 400 members of the Shueitat tribe were found in one grave, just some of the up to 1,000 tribesmen believed to have been massacred by IS, said Ziad Awad, the editor of the local publication, The Eye of the City, who is documenting the graves.

“This is a drop in an ocean of mass graves expected to be discovered in the future in Syria,” said Awad.

___

Butler reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Balint Szlanko and Salar Salim in Irbil, Iraq; Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad; Zeina Karam and Philip Issa in Beirut, and Maya Alleruzzo in Cairo contributed to this report.

****

al Jazeera: After more than a decade of instability, parts of Iraq still lie in shambles, with several forces and groups fighting for control of large parts of the country.

Supported by air strikes from US-led coalition warplanes, the Iraqi government and Kurdish forces have been trying to take territory from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) armed group.

Currently, Mosul is ISIL’s only stronghold in the country, after suffering a number of territorial losses over the past few months.

ISIL has been losing territory not only in Iraq, but also in Syria, as this map of the Syrian civil war shows.

iraq civil war map isil isis kurds ypg