"We’ve certainly beaten them [the Islamic State] back and defeated them militarily, but again the political conditions, social conditions, the cultural conditions, the lack of reconciliation, the lack of accountability — criminal accountability is an extraordinarily important issue but criminal accountability alone does not give us communities that can live with one another," Padgett said. "This is an issue that has to be dealt with as well. ISIS[Daesh] may be gone, but something like ISIS[Daesh] can come back."
Since early July, Iraq has witnessed a series of mass protests in several cities, with demonstrators denouncing corruption, unemployment and disruptions in electricity and water supplies.
According to local authorities, some cells of the Daesh organization remain active in Iraq, despite the fact the country's leaders declared the end of the war against Daesh in December.
On Friday, Human Rights Watch said in a press release that Iraq has yet to prosecute members of the Daesh terror group for the August 2014 massacre and abduction of thousands Yazidis in the country’s north.
"While Iraq’s judges have been charging thousands of ISIS [Islamic State] suspects, according to over a dozen lawyers and judges involved in the trials of ISIS[Daesh] suspects, there are almost no known trials specifically for crimes committed against Yazidis," the release stated.
Additionally, Daesh fighters abducted an estimated 6,300 Yazidis, forcing women and girls into a system of organized rape and sexual slavery, according to the release.
The release faulted Iraqi officials for prosecuting Daesh captives under a vaguely worded counterterrorism law and relying on confessions instead of investigating specific crimes such as the Yazidi pogrom.
The release also criticized authorities for failing to protect dozens of mass graves, thereby allowing evidence of Daesh crimes to be lost to time.
