The present developments in Mosul are putting on the table
the unlawful issue of the use of civilians as human shields for Arab armed
forces. The United Nations have already expressed their concern about the ISIS taking
of 550 families from villages surrounding Mosul to the city, apparently to
avoid them fleeing and to use them as human shields. This is done in the framework
of what is expected to be the largest attack since the US invasion of Iraq in
2003 and the ousting of the dictator Saddam Hussein. There are currently about
five thousand US soldiers in Iraqi soil, from which about a hundred are
counselling the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi troops.
This wouldn´t be the first time in the last decades in the
Middle East that captive populations are used in armed conflicts as human
shields. During the 1991 operations in the Gulf War, the Iraqi Government moved
a large quantity of weapons and military equipment into civilian areas with the deliberate purpose of using them as shields
against attacks on legitimate military targets. During the Second Intifada
(2000–2005) Palestinian gunmen routinely used civilians and children as human
shields, for which there is photographic evidence. In 2006 the Hizballah used
Christian villages in Lebanon as human shields whilst they lead a rocket
aggression towards Nahariya and the coastal Galilee. In Gaza the Hamas has used
civilians to shield their military operations against the Israelis, and footage
has been released showing Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV calling upon children to form a
human shield at various structures in Gaza to prevent anticipated IDF
airstrikes. On the Hamas unashamed exposition of their tactics of using
civilians as a shield against the Israeli Army, see the Hamas MP Fathi Hammad
speech in al-Aqsa TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWIDZ7Jpdqg
Picture taken during the Gaza war of 2008-2009 showing civilians gathered on a roof to avoid attacks from the IDF (Israel Defense Forces).
In the past, Hamas has shot from the Islamic University of
Gaza, used an UNRWA school as a munition arsenal, relocated a police northern
command to the Kam’el Adwuan Hospital, hide terrorists in the Shifa Hospital,
etc.
It seems that now the ISIS is using this technique in the defense
of their positions in Mosul, one that is illegal by nations that are parties to
the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva
Conventions, and the 1998 Rome Statute. But of course the international
law is of no concern for ISIS, for whom only the Sha’aria, the Islamic law,
counts.
