Foreign Minister Gabriel has emphasized the importance of the fight against "IS" for Germany during a visit to Iraq. However, he said Berlin doesn't intend to expand its military aid to the war-torn country.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/K. Nietfeld
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German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel became the first leading German politician on Thursday to visit territory in Iraq that had been reclaimed from the self-styled "Islamic State" (IS) group.
"As a person who comes from a peaceful society, you are totally shocked," Gabriel said in the heavily destroyed town of Bashiqa.
Gabriel delivered generators, water tanks and bulldozers to Bashiqa - located just 15 kilometers (9 miles) away from IS-held Mosul- to help with efforts to rebuild the town. Bashiqa's mostly Christian and Yazidi inhabitants fled when IS took the town back in June 2014.
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters retook the town last November with the support of the international anti-IS coalition. Until now, only 400 families have returned.
"The Peshmerga's fight against the Islamic State also protects the security of Germany," Gabriel said during his visit to the region in northern Iraq.
Around 140 German soldiers who are training Peshmerga forces are stationed in Erbil, located some 85 km outside of Mosul. The Kurdish fighters have received a large amount of German weapons including 20,000 assault rifles, 400 rocket-propelled grenades, and 1,200 anti-tank missiles.
Although President Barzani thanked Gabriel for Germany's support, he said that the equipment had not been enough for the operation to retake Mosul from IS.
Barzani's appeal for more weapons may hit a snag, as one day prior while in Baghdad, Gabriel made clear that Germany would not be sending new arms shipments to IS-conflict areas in Iraq or expanding training. Instead, he emphasized that the fight against IS will not be won solely by military means.
Gabriel also said that the quality of life for the people of Iraq must be improved. "That is the best way to fight life-despising ideologies," he said.
Until recently, the German military had confined itself to aiding Peshmerga forces in the north, but sent its first Bundeswehr instructor to Baghdad in January to advise the Iraqi army. It has also supplied non-lethal equipment to Iraq's central government. Gabriel's recently announced restrictions on weapon deliveries and military training are likely then to affect the Kurdish fighters the most.
The German foreign minister was also restrained when responding to questions about Barzani's independence referendum in the Kurdish region slated to take place this year. He said that negotiations over the region's status were an "internal Iraqi matter."
rs/msh (dpa, AFP)
New hope for Yazidi women tortured by IS fighters
A new psychological trauma institute for Yazidi women tortured by the so-called IS is being established at the university of Dohuk in Iraq. It is the first in the entire region.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Hoping for help
Perwin Ali Baku escaped the Islamic State after more than two years in captivity. The 23-year-old Yazidi woman was captured together with her 3-year-old daughter. "I don't feel right," she says, sitting on a mattress on the floor of her father-in-law's small hut in a northern Iraq refugee camp. "I still can't sleep and my body is tense all the time."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Tormenting flashbacks
When Perwin hears a loud voice, she cringes at the thought of her captors. She hopes for help at the newly established institute in Iraq, part of an ambitious project funded by the German state of Baden Württemberg that has already brought 1,100 women who had escaped Islamic State captivity to Germany for psychological treatment.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Kabarto refugee camp
Members of Germany's 100,000 strong Yazidi community reached out to help the women - and the Baden Württemberg state legislature approved a €95-million program ($106 million) over three years to bring women abused by the IS to Germany. Now, help is on the way on-site in Iraq.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
No trauma treatment - yet
As fighting rages between Iraqi forces and the IS in Mosul only about 75 km from Dohuk, the number of victims that make it to freedom increases daily. 26 psychiatrists work in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq with its population of 5.5 million and more than 1.5 million refugees and internally
displaced people. None specialize in treating trauma.
Hope on the horizon
German trauma specialist Jan Kizilhan, who has Yazidi roots but immigrated to Germany at the age of 6, is the driving force behind the new institute. The program will train local mental health professionals to treat people like Perwin and thousands of Yazidi women, children and other Islamic State victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Training psychotherapists
The idea is to train 30 new professionals for three years and then extend the program to other regional universities: in ten years' time, there could be more than 1,000 psychotherapists in the area. Students will receive a double master's degree in psychotherapy and psychotraumatology according to German standards, and training from both local and German professors.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Martins
Duty to help
Kizilhan has interviewed thousands of women in refugee camps - and more recently, prospective students for the program's inaugural class: "We are talking about general trauma, we are talking about collective trauma and we are talking about genocide. That's the reason we have to help if we can - it's our human duty to help them."
