[Al Jazeera] The Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
of Iraq and the Levant's (ISIS, also known as ISIS) "deliberate, wanton annihilation" of agricultural land in northern Iraq amounts to a war crime,
The rights group, in a report released on Thursday, said the ISIS's "scorched-earth tactics" devastated Iraq's rural communities as it looted livestock, burned orchards, planted land mines, sabotaged water pumps and destroyed farmland.
The report was released a day after Nobel Peace Prize winner and Yazidi activist Nadia Murad visited Iraq's capital, Baghdad, to call for more government support to her native Sinjar region.
ISIS overran Sinjar in 2014, killing Yazidi men, forcefully enlisting boys as soldiers and kidnapping more than 6,000 women and girls as "sex slaves".
The US-backed Iraqi forces gradually drove the fighters from the territory under their control, declaring victory last year after a costly campaign that destroyed entire neighbourhoods and towns.
'COMPENSATE THE DISPLACED'
"The conflict against ISIS eviscerated Iraq's agricultural production, now an estimated 40 percent lower than 2014 levels," the Amnesty report said.
"Before ISIS, around two-thirds of Iraq's farmers had access to irrigation - only three years later, this had fallen to 20 percent. Around 75 percent of livestock was lost, spiking to 95 percent in some areas."
Richard Pearshouse, senior crisis adviser at
"The damage to Iraq's countryside is as far-reaching as the urban destruction," he said.
The London-based rights group said ISIS fighters sabotaged wells by filling them with rubble, oil or other materials. The gang also stole or destroyed pumps, cables, generators, transformers and vital electricity lines.
Amnesty called on the Iraqi government to repair rural infrastructure and compensate the displaced. About half of Sinjar's residents have returned, with many others saying they have nothing to go back to.