Why isn’t anyone talking about the nightmare in northern Iraq?

Brendan O'Neill in Sp!ked:

For a terrifying insight into the cluelessness of today’s Western foreign-policy debates, look no further than the virtual silence on ISIS’s military gains against the Kurds in northern Iraq. It is remarkable that more people, particularly politicians, are not talking about this. For what we have seen in northern Iraq over the past 48 hours is a dramatic turning point in the unravelling of the Middle East, a severe blow against a group, the Kurds, who, largely by default, were the last line of defence against the spread of the post-nationalist, cosmic extremists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). We have watched as one of the few remaining peoples who adhere to the ideals of state sovereignty and nationhood have been routed by a self-consciously border-defying Islamist outfit, taking the dismantling of the old order in the Middle East to a horrifying new level, and yet no one seems particularly perturbed.

There are reports of awful attacks and events in northern Iraq over the past two days. Having already conquered huge swathes of territory in eastern Syria and western Iraq, and declared the establishment of the Islamic State, ISIS has now made serious inroads into northern Iraqi regions that were being protected by Kurdish military forces, getting closer to the semi-autonomous Kurdish state in northern Iraq. They have taken Kurdish-protected towns in the Dohuk province, the most significant being the ancient town of Sinjar. This is not only home to some Kurds but is also the ancestral home of the Yazidi religious group. ISIS denounced the Yazidi people as ‘apostates’ and ‘devil worshippers’, and according to the United Nations 200,000 Yazidi have fled their homes in 48 hours. (Question for the West’s anti-Israel obsessives currently refusing to talk about anything other than Gaza: why haven’t you commented on this act of what you might call ‘ethnic cleansing’?) Alongside conquering Sinjar, ISIS has taken other economically and strategically key towns that were being protected by Kurdish forces, including Zumar, which has some of Iraq’s most important oilfields, and Wana, a town close to the Mosul Dam that supplies electricity and water to Iraq. So ISIS is not only controlling greater amounts of Iraqi territory – it is close to controlling Iraq’s resources, too. Wana is 30 miles from Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, which ISIS captured in June and is already governing severely.

More here.