US hails tolerance of Kurdistan Region
WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan24) – “The Kurdish region has been phenomenal in saving lives,” Amb. Sam Brownback, the State Department’s Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, said on Wednesday in an interview with Kurdistan 24. “I can say that from years of working on issues surrounding Iraq and your region.”
Brownback served in the US Congress from 1995 to 2011, first as a member of the House of Representatives from his native Kansas, and then as a Kansas senator. Brownback chaired the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, and he has held his current position at the State Department since February 2018.
Brownback noted that, “unfortunately,” there have been repeated attempts “to cleanse the region” of religious and ethnic minorities, but persecuted groups regularly “found a safe haven in the Kurdish region.”
“That’s where they fled to,” Brownback continued. “That’s who provided them protection and a place to stay, and it continues today.”
“It’s something that the global community is very thankful that you do,” the ambassador said, as he addressed the people of the Kurdistan Region in a live interview with Kurdistan 24’s program, “The Newsroom.”
The United States, Brownback explained, is very much committed to restoring to their homes the minority communities in northern Iraq that were displaced by the so-called Islamic State.
“We’ve poured about $340 million into the region so the ethnic and religious minorities could go back to their areas,” he said.
But security remains a problem. “People want to move back to their home regions,” he continued, “but they can’t if they don’t feel secure, and they don’t believe they’re secure.”
The Kurdistan Region provides a “level of security,” he added, and “so I think you’re seeing some of these ethnic and religious minorities resettle there.”
“They would rather go back home,” Brownback suggested, but until their homes are, in fact, secure, “they’re unlikely to do so on a lasting basis.” Many will “try to keep a foot in Erbil or somewhere in the Kurdish region for them to be able to land if things don’t go well.”
