The specter of "Hawija" haunts the Dutch government ... How will the Iraqi victims be compensated?

Muhammad Musa - Amsterdam 

The Dutch government has been chasing for months the specter of its participation in the Western military alliance that invaded Iraq in 2003. After admitting last October it was responsible for military errors that led to the killing of dozens of Iraqis in the cities of Mosul and Hawija in 2015, the Dutch government faces the benefits of financial compensation to victims, which may Tens of millions of dollars.

Recently, 52 Iraqi residents of Al-Hawijah city submitted an official compensation request to the Dutch Ministry of Defense, and this caused a sharp political debate in the country about the value of the compensation that the Dutch government can pay to the living victims or the families of the victims. The murdered ..? ".

Some also fear that opening compensation for "mistakes" that occurred during the Dutch military participation in Iraq since 2003 will lead to similar issues, especially since the Dutch military forces had an important role in the western alliance at the time, and their ground forces were stationed for years in the vicinity of the city of Samawah in southern Iraq .

After the Dutch ground forces withdrew from Iraq, the Dutch Air Force assisted the Western coalition in its operations in Iraq in the war against ISIS.

The Dutch Air Force bombed an ISIS bomb factory in the industrial neighborhood near the city of Hawija in 2015, but the factory explosion destroyed the area near it and killed dozens of civilians (probably up to 70 dead), and wounded them.

Errors and Prices
Despite the fact that the Dutch government justified the fall of this large number of Iraqi victims by returning to the large quantity of bombs that were at work, the Dutch lawyer Lisbeth Zichfield - who handles the compensation file for the victims of the city of Hawija - holds the Dutch military forces responsible, because it did not Calculate precisely the effects that a bombing factory bombing located near a neighborhood inhabited by civilians could leave.

The lawyer also revealed in an interview with the Dutch newspaper "NRC" that there are signs saying that the joint US-Dutch Air Force knew that its strike on the plant would lead to casualties among civilians who live close to the factory.

The lawyer added that the intelligence surveys of these forces were aware of the night movement of civilians witnessed in the vicinity of the factory in the evening, and that these civilians did not know the nature of his activities, contrary to what these forces claimed that the area was completely deserted in the evening except from ISIS operatives.

The Iraqis who have applied for compensation in the Netherlands claim that the Iraqi government is behind their demand, and that they have provided them with the necessary legal requirements to follow up on their case in the Netherlands.

They deny the truth of what was said about the involvement of the people close to the scene of the explosion in the activities of the Islamic State, and "except when the Iraqi government, which investigated in recent years the connection of the people of the region with the Islamic State, helped them," so the request for compensation that arrived at the Dutch Ministry of Defense came as a surprise to the government there. Which she wanted to study on a leisurely strategy in dealing with the issue, after she formed a committee last year to study the issue of compensation, and how to reach a satisfactory formula for all parties.

For its part, the Dutch Minister of Defense talked earlier last year about a collective aid fund for the residents of the affected residential area as a goodwill gesture, a proposal that did not receive a response among the families of the Iraqi victims.

Alone seeks compensation
and attorney Lizbeth Zichfield herself handles the Iraqi case file in the name of Razzo, whose Dutch raid destroyed his home in Mosul in 2015 and killed his wife, daughter, brother and cousin, and caused him to be deprived of his work.

It is noteworthy that the Dutch government acknowledged last November its responsibility for the bombing of Bait Al-Iraqi, based on misleading intelligence information about the presence of a senior leader of the Islamic State in the house.

A US Defense Department report published in the New York Times in 2017 revealed that the house of Razu was carried out due to suspicions of harboring ISIS leaders, and that although the American drones did not monitor the transfer of weapons from the house, they noticed that the house was empty of women and children, and that it was likely Turning it into a house of the Islamic State.

Basem Razu had rejected the sum of $ 15,000 offered to him as a goodwill gesture by the American forces, while today the Dutch government is asking for two million dollars in compensation for his moral and material losses.