ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Peshmerga forces are helping about 2,000 Arab and Kurdish families return to their homes in the liberated city of Zumar if they have no security concerns, a Kurdish official said on Tuesday. Families who have supported Islamic State militants and joined the radical group may not be allowed to go back to their homes after liberation, added Dindar Zebari, Deputy Head of Kurdistan’s Department of Foreign Relations. “According to the information we received, some families have helped Daesh and left the city from the very beginning to voluntarily join them, so their return is not guaranteed,” Zebari explained, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “For the rest of the people, including about 2,000 families in Zumar who had no security problems, Peshmerga are helping them to return home,” he added. “Some people had members of their family who escaped to Syria or Mosul at the time of the [ISIS] attack but proved they themselves have no security problems, so they have been helped by Peshmerga to return.” The remarks come as a response to multiple international reports including publications by Human Rights Watch and the United States Department for Human Rights at the end of 2015 and the beginning of this year accusing the Kurdistan Region of closing doors and preventing Arabs from going home to the liberated areas where a mixed population of Kurds and Arabs were living before attacks by the Islamic State. Almost all Kurdish families fled the city of Zumar at the time of the ISIS attack but many Arab families stayed. Some showed sympathy to the group while others decided to stay simply because they had no other place to go or did not think of the radical group as a real threat at that time. Kurdish forces recaptured Zumar, located in Nineveh province, in October 2015 and drove ISIS militants out of the surrounding areas.
