ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Islamic State (ISIS) militants are conducting ethnic cleansing around Mosul, seizing Kurdish properties and lands and giving them to Arabs, a Kurdish official said. “ISIS terrorists have brought 218 families from Ramadi and Beiji to live in Kurdish-Shabak properties surrounding Mosul,” said the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s (KDP’s) Sa’ed Mamuzein. “These families are armed, and are against Peshmerga forces, and they are a total of 618 people,” he told Rudaw. “Shabak-Kurds have fled in fear of ISIS, leaving behind their belongings which are now seized by ISIS,” according to Mamuzein. “ISIS terrorists are cracking down on families, searching house-to-house to conscript people by force. Those who don’t fight have to pay” financially, he said. ”ISIS is getting desperate. This is why we are seeing bomb attacks. It is because they are growing weak.” This would not be the first time that Iraqi Kurds have been displaced and Arabs brought in. Under ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s Arabization program of the 1970s, many were displaced after Kurdish property owners found themselves with a legal decree that invalidated their claims of ownership without compensation.
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