Under Pressure: IS Has Lost 22 Percent of Its Territory

Voice of America

Increased military pressure against Islamic State fighters in both Syria and Iraq led to the group losing 22 percent of its territory in the past 15 months, with about half of the loss coming since the beginning of this year.

That is the result of analysis by monitoring group IHS, which said the militants are "increasingly isolated and being perceived as in decline."

IHS pointed to the area of northern Syria between the Islamic State de facto capital of Raqqa and the Turkish border, where airstrikes from Russia and a U.S.-led coalition combined with Kurdish and Sunni fighters on the ground pushed out the militants and freed key border crossings.

Under IS Control

Islamic State now controls only a small portion of Syrian territory where it can smuggle in supplies and fighters from Turkey.

The addition of Russia's bombing campaign was controversial, with Western accusations that its forces were focused too much on targeting rebel fighters in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad instead of on Islamic State.

But the start of Russia's airstrikes on September 30 last year marked a significant increase in the overall aerial campaign.

Between January 1, 2015, and the start of Russia's airstrikes, the warplanes in the U.S.-led coalition were carrying out a combined average of 20 airstrikes per day in Iraq and Syria. Since the Russian bombing began, that number has risen to 23 per day, according to a VOA analysis of Pentagon data.

Iraq Cities

As the collection of forces beat back Islamic State in northern Syria, pro-government forces in Iraq made their own gains, highlighted by the army and Sunni and Shi'ite militias taking back the city of Ramadi.

Iraq plans to make a similar push in the northern city of Mosul, one of the major areas the militants have held for more than a year and a half, but that operation is not imminent.

The international community has pointed to the need for unity in the battle against Islamic State and for the Syrian government and rebels to reach a peace deal in order to allow military resources to focus on eradicating the militants instead.

That process, which saw little progress for several years as more and more people died and millions fled the country, has renewed life with this week's launch of U.N.-led negotiations in Geneva.

What Is Genocide?

Voice of America

The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday passed a bipartisan resolution declaring that systemic violence committed by the Islamic State group against Christians, Yazidis, Kurds and other ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria constitutes genocide.

The vote comes just three days before a deadline set by Congress for Secretary of State John Kerry to deliver the Obama administration's decision on whether it will declare that IS atrocities in Iraq and Syria constitute genocide. The atrocities include mass murder, crucifixions, beheadings, rape, torture, enslavement, and the kidnapping of children.

What is Genocide?

In 1948, the United Nations defined genocide – the word didn’t exist prior to 1944 -- as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such, by:

• Killing members of the group;
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The U.N. decided the following acts shall be punishable:

• Genocide;
• Conspiracy to commit genocide;
• Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
• Attempt to commit genocide;
• Complicity in genocide.

Key Terms

Genocide: Violent crimes committed against a group with the intent to destroy the existence of the group. The specific “intent to destroy” particular groups is unique to genocide.

Crimes against humanity: A closely related category of international law, crimes against humanity, is defined as widespread or systematic attacks against civilians.

War crimes: Criminal acts committed during armed conflicts and referring to grave breaches of the rules of warfare.

Historical cases

Not all incidents listed below are genocide; some are instances of mass killings that have not been legally classified as genocide.

Holocaust: Between 1933-1945, the Nazi regime in Germany and its collaborators carried out the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of 6 million Jews.

Armenia: About 1.5 million Armenians living in Turkey were killed or forcibly removed from their homeland from 1915-1918.

Bosnia-Herzegovina: Between 1992 and 1995, an estimated 100,000 people were killed, 80 percent of whom were Bosnian Muslims. As many as 8,000 male Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica were killed in July 1995, counting as the largest massacre in Europe since the Holocaust.

Myanmar: Anti-Muslim violence has targeted the more than 1 million Rohingya, a Muslim minority group living in Myanmar. The Rohingya have no legal status in the country, and the U.N. and U.S. State Department have documented widespread hate speech, blocking of aid and restrictions of basic rights.

Cambodia: Between 1975 and 1979, nearly 2 million people died when Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge subjected the country’s citizens to forced labor, persecution and execution in the name of the regime’s ruthless agrarian ideology.

Rwanda: From April to July 1994, Hutu radicals killed an estimated 800,000 people, most of them Tutsis.

Central African Republic: In 2013, Seleka fighters seized power in the majority-Christian nation, sparking reprisals by "anti-balaka" Christian militias. Groups and individuals are now being targeted because of their Christian or Muslim identity.

Democratic Republic of the Congo: Ongoing conflicts in North and South Kivu, Ituri province and north Katanga over the past two decades have killed more than 5 million civilians, and displaced millions more. Most have died from preventable diseases as a result of the collapse of infrastructure, lack of food and health care, and displacement.

Iraq: The Islamic State group targeted religious and ethnic minorities, including the Yazidis, in northern Iraq in September 2014. The campaign of violence forcibly displaced more than 800,000 people and resulted in the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians.

Darfur, Sudan: General Omar al-Bashir took power in a coup in 1989. Conflicts increased between African farmers and many nomadic Arab tribes. In 2003, rebel groups took up arms against the Sudanese forces, leading al-Bashir’s government to unleash the Janjaweed, Arab militias, who attacked hundreds of villages. The genocide in Darfur has claimed at least 400,000 lives and displaced more than 2.5 million people. In 2009, al-Bashir, became the first sitting president to be indicted by International Criminal Court for directing a campaign of mass killing, rape and pillage against civilians in Darfur.

Sudan: Sudan has experienced protracted social conflict and civil war. More than 2.5 million civilians have been killed in regional conflicts since the Arab-dominated government of Sudan began to impose its control over African minorities in the region. Continued clashes between government and rebel forces have killed tens of thousands of civilians and have displaced more than 2 million. A U.N. report said nearly 3 million people need humanitarian assistance.

Syria: A conflict arising from the Arab Spring has pitted the Syrian government with various rebel groups since March 2011. The fighting has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced millions more. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are in refugee camps throughout the region and are fleeing to Europe, which is experiencing the largest migration crisis since World War Two.