Hussein Zainulabdeen

Camp Speicher: 1,700 Killed in One Day — Iraq's Largest Single ISIS Massacre and the Unfinished Reckoning On June 12, 2014 — two days after ISIS seized Mosul — the group executed between 1,500 and 1,700 Iraqi Air Force cadets at Camp Speicher near Tikrit. It was the single largest mass killing of the ISIS campaign in Iraq. Twelve years later, justice remains partial, the missing are still being identified, and the full truth has not been established. What Happened at Camp Speicher Camp Speicher — named after US Navy pilot Scott Speicher, who was shot down over Iraq in 1991 — was a sprawling Iraqi Air Force base located north of Tikrit in Saladin Governorate. On June 10, 2014, as ISIS swept into Mosul and the Iraqi military collapsed across the north, the base's leadership ordered cadets to change into civilian clothes and make their way home. What followed was a systematic massacre. ISIS fighters stopped convoys of cadets on the roads, separated those who appear...

Taza Khurmatu 2016: The ISIS Chemical Attack That the World Chose to Ignore On March 8, 2016, ISIS launched a chemical weapons attack on Taza Khurmatu — a Shia Turkmen town south of Kirkuk. Hundreds were injured. Children were hospitalized with chemical burns. The attack was documented, verified, and reported. Then the world moved on. Nine years later, no one has been held accountable. What Happened in Taza Khurmatu Taza Khurmatu, a predominantly Shia Turkmen town located approximately 20 kilometers south of Kirkuk, had been on the frontlines of the fight against ISIS since 2014. The town had survived multiple conventional attacks. But on March 8, 2016, ISIS used something different: chemical weapons. ISIS fired rockets filled with sulfur mustard — a blister agent banned under international law since the 1925 Geneva Protocol — into residential areas of Taza Khurmatu. The attack injured hundreds of civilians, including children and the elderly. Victims reported severe bl...

The Shabak and Mandaeans: Iraq's Forgotten Minorities By Hussein Zainulabdeen | Independent Researcher — Iraqi Minority Rights | husseinmonitor.com When the world talks about Iraq's minorities, it usually means Christians and Yazidis. Occasionally Turkmen. Rarely Shabak. Almost never Mandaeans. This is not because the Shabak and Mandaean communities have suffered less. It is because they have fewer advocates, less international visibility, and no powerful diaspora community lobbying on their behalf. In the hierarchy of attention that governs humanitarian response, they occupy the lowest rung — and they are paying the price for it. Who Are the Shabak? The Shabak are an ethnic and linguistic minority concentrated in the Nineveh Plains east of Mosul — a community whose name derives from the Arabic word for "intertwining," reflecting a heritage woven from multiple traditions. They speak a language that blends Arabic, Farsi, Kurdish, and Turkish. Appro...