Kenneth Roth and the Decline of HRW

If Human Rights Watch is going to retain any credibility, it is time to demand Roth resign or be fired

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch since 1993

ISIS, an organisation that seeks to destroy the norms of nation states by declaring their own paradigm and self-declared caliphate occupied the city of Mosul in June 2014.

Iraq’s most senior Shia cleric, Ayatollah al-Sistani issued a call to arms that was embraced by hundreds of thousands, in what is now called the ‘Hashd al-Shaabi’ otherwise known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces, it is a natural development once the state wasn’t able to protect its citizens, not an ideal situation but a necessity in the current turmoil.

What followed was one of the worst periods of violence in Iraq and resulted in the loss of major cities in Anbar province; Ramadi was one of the Iraqi government’s last strongholds in Anbar that fell to ISIS in May 2015.

With the help of the Mobilisation Forces, Iraqi Government forces initiated major offensives and managed to successfully retake major cities back from ISIS, including Tikrit in April 2015, Ramadi in December 2015, and Fallujah in June 2016.

How these victories were embraced by media outlets and analysts alike, set a superficial, politically motivated false narrative that did not reflect the reality on the ground.

Knowing that media sources are biased, we resort to human rights organizations for objective reporting on human rights violations around the world. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a decline in HRW neutrality and a constant source of biased reporting.

In one documented case, dated 11 June 2014, HRW’s Executive Director Kenneth Roth tweeted: “ISIS in Iraq reportedly tried not to alienate local population, unlike PM Maliki & his violent sectarian repression”

tweeted on 4:47 PM — 11 June 2014

Although Roth has made other problematic comments, this one particularly stands out. In June 2014, ISIS was already recognised internationally for its tendency to crucify civilians, massacre religious minorities, rape women and trade them for sexual slavery.

Before then, ISIS had infamously massacred over 1,700 Iraqi cadets in Tikrit in what is now known as the Speicher Massacre.

It was also already recognised internationally for its violence towards minorities, such as the Assyrian community of Mosul, Alawis and Shias as well as the Yezidis of Sinjar. It has taken hostage and executed aid workers and journalists while filming these acts and glorifying in them. Such action very much alienates the local population. Whether the Maliki government in Iraq had been sectarian or repressive is one thing, but to compare it to ISIS in such a manner is clearly intended to demonise it beyond repair; the moral equivalence Roth draws is absurd and inaccurate.

Time and time again Kenneth Roth attributes the collusion between ISIS and remnants of the Baathist party as a consequence of ‘grievances’. More importantly failing to realise that the political and security problems in Iraq stem from the the remnants of Saddam’s regime, many of whom joined ISIS.”

It has become fashionable, to blame this sympathy for ISIS with the abuses of the Maliki government, but the root causes are far deeper. While the last government did act harshly in Sunni areas, these actions were identical with the reaction of other western and non-western governments to terrorism and insurgency. Take for example the response of US forces in the Second Battle of Fallujah that prompted a documentary entitled Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre. It stated that the U.S. forces used white phosphorus as a weapon against civilians. The U.S. military maintains that white phosphorus was not used against civilians, but has confirmed its use as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants.

Of course, not all, nor even most, Sunni Iraqis were complicit in terrorism, but both Islamists and Baathists had considerable bases of support in places like Tikrit, Ramadi, and Fallujah. This support for insurgency movements was less about the rejection of the Maliki government and far more about rejection of the entire post-2003 political order, in which leaders are selected democratically, rather than chosen from the previous regime’s elite.

Every now and then, voices are heard measuring the current security chaos against the relative stability of Saddam’s rule (1979–2003). This ill-judged nostalgia for Saddam’s days needs a careful recount of history.

Take the South for example where Saddam’s forces were completely ruthless using helicopters in Karbala to set fire to refugees drenched with kerosene. They destroyed many revered sites of great importance to Shia Muslims in the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf and, in ways ISIS can only dream of doing today. Some tanks displayed banners with sectarian slogans which pronounced “No Shi’ites after today”.

Much of the gruesome acts we see today by ISIS are reminiscent tactics used by the Baathists to suppress the population and instil fear. The brutal oppression of the Shia, and the Kurds, by Saddam’s regime make the collusion’s between the remnants of that regime and ISIS not so surprising and also hard to attribute simply and solely to “grievances” as Roth suggests.

As Michael Rubin argues in the commentary magazine, Ken Roth has now been executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) for more than two decades. But directly because of Roth’s leadership, statements, decisions and tweets, HRW is much less of a human-rights organisation, and is instead a biased political advocacy group.

The executive director for Human Rights Watch’s se­lective and biased reporting leads the organisation to a much more limited and subjective political agenda.