Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - July 18, 2015, Winnipeg, Manitoba winnipegfreepress. com WINNIPEG A 10 WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, SATURDAY, JULY 18, 2015 WAR ON TERROR FREE PRESS, SATURDAY, JULY 18, 2015 A 11 Wise customers read the fine print: *, � The Trade In Trade Up Sales Event offers are limited time offers which apply to retail deliveries of selected new and unused models purchased from participating retailers on or after June 2, 2015. Offers subject to change and may be extended without notice. All pricing includes freight ($ 1,695) and excludes licence, insurance, registration, any retailer administration fees, other retailer charges and other applicable fees and taxes. Retailer order/ trade may be necessary. Retailer may sell for less. * Consumer Cash Discounts are offered on select 2015 vehicles and are deducted from the negotiated price before taxes. � Starting from prices for vehicles shown include Consumer Cash Discounts and do not include upgrades ( e. g. paint). 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They made headlines last summer after thousands were chased by violent extremists from their homes in northern Iraq onto the craggy desert mountain. Now they're in a refugee camp in Turkey awaiting paperwork they need to fill out to eventually join their relatives in Winnipeg, said Nafiya Naso. Her husband's older brother, Shivan Hassan, and his family are being sponsored to come to Winnipeg, which has an estimated 200 Yazidis. Naso said it could take from six to 18 months for them to arrive in Canada. In the meantime, the family is barely surviving. " The humanitarian aid they get is very, very little," said Naso, who's anxious for the family with five kids ranging in age from seven to 18- year- old twin daughters to come to Canada. " There's no schools for the kids who stay home all day. They do nothing," said Naso. She said they aim to raise $ 34,000 to sponsor the family and provide them with support for one year. So far, they have $ 26,000 - mostly from the group Friends of Israel that approached the Yazidi community wanting to help, said Naso. They are privately sponsoring the Hassan family through the Mennonite Central Committee, which sponsored Naso and her family to go to Morden, when she was a little girl. Calvary Temple is collecting the money to support the Yazidi family and issuing charitable income tax receipts to donors, she said. Hassan did farming, construction and restaurant work in the small city close to Mount Sinjar, where the family lived, said Naso. She last saw them during visits to northern Iraq in 2006 and 2008. The family of seven - with four daughters and a son - has had a perilous, difficult time as refugees chased out of their home by violent extremists, said Naso. " They left their home on Aug. 3 and were stuck on Mount Sinjar for six days." They were among 40,000 Yazidis who faced dehydration and death from exposure on the mountain and worse if they went down to where the terrorists had surrounded them. Naso said they survived thanks to aid from western countries dropped on the mountain, then support from Kurdish fighters that allowed them to escape. But their struggle wasn't over. " They walked a very long distance into Kurdistan," and arrived at a refugee camp in the city of Duhok, Naso said. On June 26, they were moved to a refugee camp in Turkey, she said. " It's really hard. The tents are crowded. They all share one tent and 18 families share one bathroom and one shower." Now they are waiting to come to Canada and start a new life in peace. Naso said they are $ 8,000 short of their goal to meet the $ 36,000 they need to sponsor the family. Tax- deductible donations can be sent to Calvary Temple, c/ o Friends of Ezra fund, 440 Hargrave St. Winnipeg R3C 2H6 or online www. canadahelps. org/ dn/ 4455. carol. sanders@ freepress. mb. ca FAITH PAGE / D15 Who are the Yazidis? They are members of a Kurdish religious minority found primarily in northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, the Caucasus region and parts of Iran. The Yazidi religion includes elements of ancient Iranian religions as well as elements of Judaism, Nestorian Christianity and Islam. Yazidi mythology says they were created separately from the rest of humankind, being descended from Adam but not from Eve, and as such they seek to keep themselves segregated from the people among whom they live. Marriage outside the community is forbidden. The Yazidi cosmogony holds that a supreme creator god made the world and then ended his involvement with it, leaving it in the control of seven divine beings. The chief divine being is Malak Ta us (" Peacock Angel"), who is worshipped in the form of a peacock. It's often been identified by outsiders with the Judeo- Christian figure of Satan, causing the Yazidis to be inaccurately described as devil worshippers. - source: Britannica. com Raising cash to bring Yazidi family to city Parents, five kids forced to flee to Turkish refugee camp By Carol Sanders SUBMITTED PHOTO Shivan Hassan, his wife, Terko ( not in photo), and their five children need financial help to join their relatives in Winnipeg. O TTAWA - The menace posed by the Islamic State keeps Canada's new top military commander awake at night. Gen. Jonathan Vance, who took over as the country's 19th chief of defence staff Friday, said the rise of an extremist state in the Middle East is not something that can go unchallenged by the West. " The most worrying one right now, the most threatening is the Islamic State," Vance said in an interview with The Canadian Press. Countries in the region that are trying to develop democratic institutions and the rule of law cannot do so with a caliphate, bent on exporting terror, in the middle of them, he said. His geopolitical take stands in contrast to recent comments by the incoming chairman of the U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, who described a resurgent Russia as the biggest threat. Dunford told his confirmation hearing before the U. S. Congress last week Vladimir Putin's regime is a nuclear power with the capability of violating the sovereignty of other nations. " If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I'd have to point to Russia," Dunford told U. S. senators. " If you look at their behaviour, it's nothing short of alarming." Asked to list the major security threat facing Washington, Dunford told lawmakers Russia was on top, followed by China and North Korea. The Islamic State was in fourth place. Vance has said the country's contribution to checking Russian ambitions in eastern Europe is significant and will remain so, but the Islamic State has shown its willingness to create terror on Canadian soil. The Harper government alternates between the Islamic State and Russia in terms of its political rhetoric; Vance's comments provide an interesting glimpse into how the military sees the landscape ahead of this fall's election, when issues of national security are expected to be front and centre. The coming campaign will also see the government's record on funding the military put to the test. Vance's predecessor, retired general Tom Lawson, managed through a period of severe cuts, amounting to $ 2.5 billion on an annual basis. Prime Minister Stephen Harper sent a clear message to his new defence chief Friday in terms of his expectations. " Within the budgetary constraints to which we are all subject, your goal is to maintain a modern, combat- capable, highly trained professional force, one that I truly believe is the best for its size in the entire world," Harper said. In the interview, conducted prior to his swearing- in, Vance said he has confidence the current government will not " overcommit" the Canadian Forces in terms of international engagements. But there was also tacit recognition that despite the Conservative promise to inject more money after 2017, budgets will remain tight, and the policy discussion, particularly around procurement, rests on the military's ability to articulate its needs as well as predict future threats. " That is a difficult discussion to have because you're not sure," he said. " You risk- manage the future and you have finite budgets to get the capability needed." Asked about the government's promise to update the country's defence policy - known as the Canada First Defence Strategy - Vance said the matter is still before cabinet for consideration. - The Canadian Press New military chief sworn in Friday IS biggest threat: Vance By Murray Brewster ' The most worrying one right now, the most threatening is the Islamic State' - Gen. Jonathan Vance ( right), arriving for a change- of- command ceremony in Ottawa Friday PLEDGING TO END MISCONDUCT / A21 ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS C HATTANOOGA, Tenn. - To neighbours and former classmates, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez was a well- mannered, outgoing young man who seemed " as Americanized as anyone else." He wrestled in high school, his sister played tennis, and they enjoyed dinners with neighbours. About the only change they noticed in him lately was his bushy new beard. Now, investigators are trying to understand why the 24- year- old Kuwait- born man opened fire on two U. S. military sites in Chattanooga in an attack that left four marines dead and raised the spectre of terrorism on U. S. soil. He was killed by police. Abdulazeez did not appear to have been on federal authorities' radar before the bloodshed Thursday, officials said. But now counterterrorism investigators are taking a deep look at his online activities and foreign travel, searching for clues to his political contacts or influences. " Because the investigation is still in its early stages, it would be premature to speculate on exactly why the shooter did what he did," FBI agent Ed Reinhold said. " However, we are conducting a thorough investigation to determine whether this person acted alone or was inspired or directed." In the quiet neighbourhood in Hixson, Tenn., where Abdulazeez lived with his parents in a two- storey home, residents and former classmates sketched a picture of an utterly ordinary suburban existence. They said they would see him walking along the wide streets or doing yardwork. One neighbour recalled giving Abdulazeez a ride home when he became stranded in a snowstorm. " It's kind of a general consensus from people that interacted with him that he was just your average citizen there in the neighbourhood. There was no reason to suspect anything otherwise," said Ken Smith, a city councilman who met with neighbours Thursday night. As ordinary as the Abdulazeez family appeared on the outside, court documents allege it was an abusive and turbulent household. Abdulazeez's mother, Rasmia Ibrahim Abdulazeez, filed a divorce complaint in 2009 accusing her husband, Youssuf Saed Abdulazeez, of beating her repeatedly in front of their children and sexually assaulting her. She also accused him of " striking and berating" the children without provocation. Weeks later, the couple agreed to reconcile, with the father consenting to go to counselling. Abdulazeez graduated from Red Bank High School in Chattanooga, where he was on the wrestling team. A fellow Red Bank High graduate, Hussnain Javid, said Abdulazeez was " very outgoing," adding: " Everyone knew of him." " Obviously something has happened since then," said Sam Plank, who graduated from Red Bank High two years before Abdulazeez but hadn't crossed paths with him since 2006. " He was as Americanized as anyone else. At least that's what it seemed like to me." Hailey Bureau, who attended school with Abdulazeez, said they often sat next to each other because their last names were close alphabetically. She said she broke down Thursday when she learned Abdulazeez was the gunman, saying, " I imagine him the way I knew him then, laughing and smiling." She also remembered a yearbook quote Abdulazeez used: " My name causes national security alerts. What does yours do?" Abdulazeez was apparently quoting an American Muslim blogger who calls himself Hijabman. Bureau said at the time, it was just considered another joke. " Now it's very morbid," she said. Abdulazeez got an engineering degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2012 and worked as an intern a few years ago at the Tennessee Valley Authority, the federally owned utility that operates power plants and dams across the South. For the last three months, he had been working at Superior Essex Inc., which designs and makes wire and cable products. Karen Jones, who lived next to the family for 14 years, said she was somewhat surprised by his appearance last weekend when she saw him walking with another man in the woods behind the house, where he liked to shoot pellet guns at a red target suspended in a tree. " He had this big beard, which was not how he used to be," Jones said. She said he was typically clean- shaven. The women of the family always wore head coverings in accordance with their Muslim faith, Jones said. Javid, a 21- year- old senior at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, said he occasionally saw Abdulazeez at the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga, but the last time was roughly a year ago. The official Kuwait News Agency on Friday quoted the interior ministry as saying while Abdulazeez was born in Kuwait, he was of Jordanian origin. The report also said he travelled to Kuwait and Jordan in the spring of 2010. A U. S. official who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity said Abdulazeez was in Jordan last year for months, and those travels and anyone he met with are being looked at as part of the terrorism investigation. - The Associated Press BAGHDAD - A suicide car- bombing in Iraq's eastern Diyala province killed at least 80 people gathered at a marketplace to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Iraqi police officials said at least 50 people were also wounded in the attack in the town of Khan Beni Saad. Hospital officials confirmed the death tolls. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, according to messages posted on Twitter. The claim could not be independently verified, but it was posted by accounts commonly associated with the group. Security has been ramped up in areas across Iraq since the start of Ramadan amid fears the Sunni militant group would use the occasion to wage an assault on civilians to destabilize the Shiite- led government in Baghdad. Parts of the predominantly mixed Diyala province were captured by the Islamic State group last year. Iraqi forces and Kurdish fighters have since retaken those areas, but clashes between the militants and security forces continue. Last August, at least 64 people were killed in an attack on a Sunni mosque in the volatile province. The attack prompted Sunni lawmakers to pull out of sensitive talks last summer aimed at forming a new government after Prime Minister Haider al- Abadi was named premier- elect. The Islamic State fighters had been trying to convince two prominent Sunni tribes in the area - the Oal- Waisi and al- Jabour - to join them, but they have so far refused, provoking what many described as retaliatory attacks. The Sunni militant group has been behind several similar large- scale attacks on civilians or military checkpoints as it seeks to expand its territory, which includes a third of Iraq and Syria. - The Associated Press At least 80 dead after bomb attack in Iraqi market ' As Americanized as anyone else' Shooter showed no tendency toward extremism By Michael Kunzelman And Kathleen Foody DAVID GOLDMAN / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A moment of prayer is held Friday at a memorial to Lance- Cpl. Skip Wells at Sprayberry High School in Marietta, Ga., where the fallen marine attended classes. Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez's bushy beard was the only new thing neighbours noticed about the young man described as well- mannered and outgoing. ;