Iraqi MPs vote in favor of travel ban on US – Baghdad urges US to review ban

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Protesters gather at the Los Angeles International Airport’s Tom Bradley terminal to demonstrate against US President Donald Trump’s executive order effectively banning citizens from seven Muslim majority countries. Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. (Inset): Demonstrators gather outside the White House in protest of Trump’s immigration policies on Jan 29, in Washington, DC. (AFP)

BAGHDAD, Jan 30, (Agencies): Iraqi lawmakers voted Monday to call on the government to enact a reciprocal travel ban on Americans if Washington does not withdraw its decision to bar the entry of Iraqis.

The call is a response to President Donald Trump’s executive order barring citizens of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen from entering the US for at least 90 days, a move he billed as an effort to make America safe from “radical Islamic terrorists”. The travel restrictions, which come on the heels of repeated assertions by Trump that the US should have stolen Iraq’s oil before leaving in 2011, risk alienating the citizens and government of a country fighting against militants the president has cast as a major threat to America.

Parliament called on the Iraqi government to “respond in kind to the American decision in the event that the American side does not withdraw its decision”, a parliamentary official who was present for the vote told AFP, quoting text of the decision that was read at the session. “Parliament voted by majority on calling on the Iraqi government and the foreign ministry to respond in kind,” MP Hakim al- Zamili said. Sadiq al-Laban, another lawmaker, confirmed that “the vote was for a call on the government” to enact reciprocal measures. “We are against this stance from the new administration,” Laban said, adding: “We hope that the American administration will rethink… this decision.” Trump’s decision led to the detention of incoming refugees at US airports, sparking protests, legal challenges and widespread condemnation from rights groups. And it has led to a growing backlash inside Iraq that could undermine relations between Baghdad and the US amid the battle for Mosul, the largest military operation yet in the war against the Islamic State group.

The parliamentary vote came a day after its foreign affairs committee made a similar call for Iraq to respond in kind to the US measure. Hassan Shwairid, the deputy head of the committee, said that the call did not apply to the thousands of American military personnel in the country as part of the US-led coalition against IS. But US Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham said Trump’s ban would impact military cooperation and security in other ways. “This executive order bans Iraqi pilots from coming to military bases in Arizona to fight our common enemies,” the two lawmakers said in a joint statement.

“Ultimately, we fear this executive order pledgwill become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism,” they said. The Hashed al-Shaabi, a powerful paramilitary umbrella organisation that includes Iran-backed Shiite militias that fought against American forces in past years, called Sunday for US citizens to be banned from the country. Both units from the Hashed and American troops are deployed in the Mosul area as part of the operation to retake the city from IS, and heightened anti-US sentiment among militiamen could increase the danger to Washington’s forces.

Trump’s travel restrictions also drew condemnation from populist Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, America’s bete noir for much of its 2003-2011 war in Iraq. “Get your nationals out before removing expatriates,” said Sadr, scion of a powerful clerical family who rose to widespread fame due to his condemnation of and violent resistance to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Baghdad called Monday for the United States to review its “wrong decision” to prevent Iraqis from entering the country. “We see it as necessary for the new American administration to review this wrong decision,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. “It is very unfortunate that this decision was issued towards an allied state linked by strategic partnership with the United States,” it said. The ministry noted that the US move “coincides with victories achieved by (Iraq’s) brave fighters and with the support of the international coalition against the DAESH terrorist gangs in Mosul,” referring to the battle to retake the city from the Islamic State jihadist group.

Yazidis
Khudeeda Naif won refuge in the United States as a member of Iraq’s Yazidi minority, but what he fears more than religious persecution is retribution for his brother’s work as an interpreter for the US army in Iraq. Naif is one of the many affected by the US President Donald Trump’s decision on Friday to temporarily ban the entry of refugees and others from seven Muslim-majority countries. Naif was scheduled to leave Iraq this week with his wife and two children when the International Organization for Migration (IOM) told him the trip was off until further notice.

The 35-year-old electrical technician will remain instead at a refugee camp in Dohuk, northern Iraq, where he has lived since Islamic State militants overran the Sinjar area in the summer of 2014, purging its Yazidi inhabitants. The insurgents systematically killed, captured and enslaved thousands of Yazidis, whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions and are regarded by Islamic State as devil-worshippers.

A UN-appointed commission of independent war crimes investigators said last year the crimes against the Yazidis amounted to a genocide. Naif fled across the border to Syria on foot with his immediate family and thousands of other Yazidis before returning to Dohuk. But the family was afraid for their lives even before the Islamic State started its attacks. “People came here (to the camp) because there was a threat to the Yazidis in general, but for the people who worked for the Americans we had to be cautious even when we were home,” he said, contacted on the phone from the Kurdish capital Erbil. More than one hundred Yazidis are waiting for their IOM asylum applications to be processed, Saib Khidr, a prominent Yazidi lawyer and human rights activist close to the Baba Sheikh, the top religious leader of the community.

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