German FM to help displaced Iraqi Kurds return home

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock assured Iraqi Kurds on Wednesday of broad support for the return of around 1 million internally displaced persons following the military victory over the terrorist militia Islamic State.

"Nobody wants to live in a camp for the rest of their lives," Baerbock said after a meeting with Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdish autonomous regions in northern Iraq in the Kurdish capital Erbil.

Barzani said the regional government hopes to hold elections, which were postponed last year, by the end of this year.

The threat from the Islamic State was "still casting shadows over this region," Baerbock said, adding that the security forces were still very much challenged to "keep this terrorist threat at bay."

Baerbock said forces from outside and inside were "trying to divide and thus destabilize" the region and they were especially keen to "counteract social and economic development."

She was referring to continued attacks from Iran and Turkey in northern Iraq as well as to internal Kurdish conflicts.

"It is all the more important that all forces that stand for security work together," she said. The German contribution in this context was "above all a contribution to stabilization and security."

The Islamic State once controlled large areas in Iraq and Syria. Since 2017, members of the terrorist group have been considered militarily defeated, but cells continue to carry out attacks.

When they overran the region around the Sinjar Mountains in northern Iraq in 2014, they killed and abducted thousands of people. Many women were enslaved and raped.

Kurdish fighters finally drove the Islamic State out of the region but a huge numbers of Kurds remain stuck in refugee camps.

The UN speaks of genocide against the ethno-religious minority of the Yazidis living there. In January, lawmakers in Germany's Bundestag officially recognized the Islamic State crimes as genocide.