A dentist with the humanitarian group Free Burma Rangers reacts as shots are fired nearby
WND EXCLUSIVE
'DEATH CONFRONTERS' PLEAD
FOR U.S. HELP TO DEFEAT ISIS
Art Moore
Peshmerga means literally “one who confronts death,” and so it comes as no surprise that after equipping ethnic-minority leaders to minister to the oppressed in war-ravaged Burma for nearly two decades, David Eubank, a former U.S. Army Special Forces and Ranger officer, would respond to a call for help from the Kurdish Peshmerga forces on the front lines against ISIS in Iraq.
Yazidi boy lost his hand to an exploding shell (FBR photo)
On three trips to northern Iraq this year, Eubank and his teams – including his family and ethnic Karen leaders from Burma – were in the thick of firefights, airstrikes and shelling in the area of rocky, wind-whipped Sinjar Mountain, where as many as 5,000 Yazidi men were massacred, and women and girls were captured as sex slaves in August 2014.
But as capable as Eubank is of bearing arms, the call was to share with the overwhelmed Kurds the knowledge gained through the experience of his Christian-based humanitarian group, the Free Burma Rangers, in bringing “help, hope and love” to people in conflict zones.
The Texas-born Eubank, who grew up the son of missionaries in Thailand, said the lifetime of oppression in Burma suffered by the Karen members of his team “helped them connect deeply with the Kurds.”
In Burma, FBR’s well-trained mobile squads, which work in the ethnic states on the country’s edges from east to west, typically include a medic, communications specialist and pastor to meet the needs of villagers besieged by the Burma Army.
ISIS flag in Sinjar, Iraq (FBR photo)
In northern Iraq, thousands of displaced Yazidis still live in tents and rough shelters on the mountain above Sinjar, a strategic city on the main route linking ISIS-held Mosul in the east with the ISIS capital of Raqqa in Syria.
Sinjar was recently liberated by the Peshmerga, with coalition air support, but images broadcast by media Friday revealed total devastation.
Eubank said the Kurds have been grateful for the American support, but they need much more help if ISIS is to be defeated.
“It is tactically right to do so now,” he said. “The longer we wait, the more confident and prepared ISIS becomes.”
Inaction, Eubank emphasized, allows ISIS to resupply and build up their forces and logistical infrastructure.
“Geopolitically, inaction gains ISIS more recruits and gives them more perceived legitimacy,” he said.
ISIS destruction on the road to Sinjar (FBR photo)
Eubank also believes there is a “moral imperative” and an urgency to rescue the thousands of girls and women ISIS has held as sex slaves.
“If our family was held or killed by ISIS, what would we do?” he asked. “We would try to rescue our families and hunt down the terrorists.”
Eubank said the Peshmerga forces need more basic supplies and equipment, including machine-guns and ammunition, mortar ammunition, night-vision equipment, armored vehicles, RPGS and other anti-tank and anti-armor systems.
ISIS trucks resupplying fighters on the front lines (FBR photo)
As a former Army Ranger captain, he also believes that to defeat ISIS, the U.S. needs, at the least, to put Special Forces on the ground who have more flexible rules of engagement, allowing them to fight alongside the Peshmerga, coordinate airstrikes and attacks, and “take the fight to ISIS.”
Eubank recalled that amid shelling and shooting in the Bashiqa area last summer, the Kurds told him they had only a few mortar rounds at their positions, preventing them from shooting back.
“We have to save them for an all-out assault from ISIS,” a soldier told him. “So when they shoot at us like this, we have to just take cover and hope we do not get hit. We can not suppress them with fire or stop their shooting. We need more ammunition.”
David Eubank with Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers in Iraq (FBR photo)
David Eubank’s wife, Karen Eubank, with Yazidi children
The Eubank children and an ethnic Karen leader perform (FBR photo)
Eubank also saw a big need for night-vision equipment.
“One night we were attacked by a large ISIS force, and they tried to penetrate and destroy the Kurdish position we were in,” Eubank said. “We could only see the muzzle flashes of their weapons as they advanced, and if some ISIS fighters did not shoot, we could not see them.”
An ethnic Karen medic leads an FBR training session (FBR photo)
U.S. airstrike photographed by FBR team
He said ISIS uses armored vehicles to assault the Kurdish positions, underscoring the need for anti-tank weapons. With the open terrain, it’s difficult, without armored vehicles, for the Kurds to move without getting blown up by ISIS gunners.
“There is great gratitude towards the U.S. for all our help, and a great love too for us, but they need more help; they need enough to destroy ISIS,” Eubank said.
See an FBR video about the work in Iraq:
Justice and mercy
FBR’s work in Burma is rooted in the Christian principles of justice and mercy, which, in practice, have been tested by a relentless Burma Army’s vicious effort to force the country’s ethnic groups to submit to the military regime, in some areas for more than 60 years.
Yazidi mother and child (FBR photo)
But Eubank believes they are principles that work.
“Fighting evil and grounding our actions in love are practical ways towards defeating ISIS and uniting for a new way forward,” he said.
That means, he explained, mobilizing the international community to carry out “the political, diplomatic, economic, humanitarian and military actions needed to set people free and defeat ISIS” and, in the aftermath, addressing ethnic and religious tensions with humility and mercy.
Last year, FBR responded to an invitation by the hundreds of thousands of people of the Nuba Mountains in Sudan who have been displaced by regular attacks by the Islamic dictatorship in Khartoum. On the first day, a Sudan Armed Forces jet fighter dropped three 500-pound bombs near the team, narrowly missing a clinic but wounding a woman.
About 200,000 people – Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Christians and Yazidis – lived in Sinjar before it was captured by ISIS in August 2014. An estimated 50,000 Yazidis fled in the attack. According to a U.N. report, ISIS massacred as many as 5,000 Yazidi men in August 2014. The regional Kurdish government found that another 4,000 Yazidi men, women and children were missing.
Encampment of displaced Yazidis on Sinjar Mountain (FBR photo)
The Yazidis traditionally practice the religion of Yazidism, which is linked to Zoroastrianism and ancient Mesopotamian religions.
‘We are in the right place’
In its visit earlier this month, Eubank said the team spent most of its time at the front line at the bottom of the mountain in Sinjar town amid shooting and shelling.
A Karen medic from Burma treats a wounded Peshmerga soldier (FBR photo)
He recounted a Karen FBR medic treating a Kurdish soldier who had been hit by a mortar.
“We are in the right place, we believe,” he said in a report from the scene to supporters.
On Nov. 2, the team spoke to a Yazidi girl named Heva at a site for internally displaced people. She had been captured by ISIS at Sinjar along with more than 1,000 other girls and women, and managed to escape.
She told her story of rapes, beatings and the suicides of Yazidi girls. Her brother, Amir, is still missing and presumed dead.
Amir had been captured with her, and the older boys and men were separated immediately. Many were killed, and others were taken away to Syria to work as slaves.
Her mother joined the conversation.
“When we get Sinjar back, it will mean nothing if our children are dead there,” she said. “There are still many girls still held as sex slaves in Sinjar, and if the attempt to retake Sinjar is not done right or fails, they will die.”
Women who escaped ISIS tell of rapes and beatings (All Things Possible Ministries photo)
Eubank said his team prayed with Heva and her father and mother.
At the site, the team also met a boy who lost his hand to an exploding shell, one of the thousands of traumatized children there.
Nowhere to run
In September, Eubank and his team participated in hearings on the ISIS crisis in Washington, D.C., with members of the U.S. Congress, State Department and Pentagon.
“We testified alongside a young Yazidi woman who had been captured by ISIS in August 2014 from Sinjar City,” Eubank said. “She was sold to an ISIS recruit and was held and raped for five months in Syria before escaping. She described the rapes and murders of hundreds of people. Her powerful testimony brought many to tears. She appealed for help for the more than 3,000 other girls who are still held captive.”
ISIS cut off members of a family trying to flee in their cars and executed them (Screenshot FBR video)
Remains of cars of family that tried to flee ISIS attack (FBR photo)
In June, an FBR team in Iraq heard first-hand accounts of the ISIS siege in August 2014.
Neam is the mother of 10 children who lived in a village near Sinjar Mountain of farmers and shepherds with a centuries-old connection to the land.
When ISIS invaded Sinjar, she and her 10 children and thousands more fled up the mountain.
“There was nowhere to run but up the mountain,” she said. “The enemy was all around the city.”
Neam fled with her family and 10 children (Screenshot FBR video)
Faced with starvation, her brother and nephew returned to the town with a search party. ISIS captured and killed them.
After ISIS took Sinjar City, it tried to take the mountain and pushed to within a couple of miles of the top before being stopped by the Peshmerga and other forces.
The majority of the more than 40,000 people trapped on the mountain escaped in the first two weeks when a major coalition push broke through the ISIS lines.
ISIS came into the house of this Peshmerga soldier and stripped his 1-year-old daughter from his wife’s arms also took his wife’s father (Screenshot FBR video)
Some 8,000 Yazidis stayed, not wanting to risk the walk to the Syrian border. Battling thirst, hunger and exposure, many didn’t survive the winter, when freezing rain and snow came.
As black flags flew over Sinjar, the Yazidis in tent encampments on the mountain watched the destruction of their homes in daily fighting.
ISIS destruction in the city of Sinjar (FBR photo)
Last summer, amid the fighting, Eubank’s team, including his wife and three children, conducted a program for the displaced children that included a health-care lesson, songs and a drama telling the story of the Good Samaritan.
Eubank observed that the Yazidi alliance with the Peshmerga is a “new, real-life Good Samaritan story, one of the only positive things to come from the catastrophe of ISIS’s attacks.”
The program concluded with a Karen song sung by three Karen team members that “asks for God’s blessing on them until we meet again.”
“We reminded them that God loves them and they can always ask Him for help, and that many people around the world are praying for them,” Eubank said.
Yazidi children (FBR photo)
David Eubank’s children join with Yazidi children in FBR’s Good Life Club (FBR photo)
When Jesus used the term “neighbor,” Eubank said, “he wasn’t talking about location or identity; he was talking about action.”
He referred to the Apostle Paul’s declaration in the book of Romans that nothing can separate us from the love of God.
“Neither can anything stop us from being the love of God – no oppression, no history or distance,” he said in a report from Iraq to supporters.
“So we are thankful for the opportunity to be here despite many obstacles, and we pray for the vision and courage to be God’s love here.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/11/death-confronters-plead-for-u-s-help-to-defeat-isis/#BvuXG8dgfmByTupw.99My comments: Obama' refusal to quickly destroy ISIS has resulted in immense human suffering.
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