Plight of the Yazidis
A Sinjar (“moon” + “mountain”) woman
A people facing extinction
By Adhid Miri, PhD
Part II
The Yazidis (Yezidis) are impoverished cultivators and herdsmen who have a strictly graded religious-political hierarchy and tend to maintain a more closed community than other ethnic or religious groups. The Yazidi homeland in the Sinjar region in northern Iraq remains a war-torn area, and the prospect of economic and political stability in Iraq remains unclear.
The advance of ISIS into Sinjar in August 2014 led to the displacement of almost the entire Yazidi community and the capture, killing, and enslavement of thousands. It was a tragic turning point in their history. Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis escaped to Sinjar Mountain, revered by the faith as the place where Noah’s Ark landed, in the scorching summer heat as the Islamic State group took over the region. Most of them were ultimately resettled in refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan.
As part of our series on ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq, we hope this second article will shed even more light on the history and the plight of the Yazidi community in the 21st century. Part I was published in the June 2024 issue of the Chaldean News.
Geopolitical Challenges
Following the American invasion, the Sinjar region fell under the category of “Disputed Territories.” These territories, which mostly consist of oil-rich and agricultural areas, have long been at the heart of the Arab-Kurdish conflict in Iraq.
Before the American invasion, these areas were mostly under the control of the Iraqi Army. However, after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the Kurdistan Regional Government, with the support of the U.S. military, came to control parts of these areas including the Sinjar region. The sectarian environment and the political vacuum following the fall of Saddam contributed to the rise of the Islamic State group in the region.
The 2014 Islamic State group attack which led to the fall of Sinjar and the mass exodus of the Yazidi community, known as “The Black Day,” was not an isolated event. Rather, it had its roots in the 2003 American invasion of Iraq and the power struggle that ensued.
On the eve of the terrorist attack in 2014, thousands of Yazidis put their hope in the promises of Kurdish authorities for protection. However, the hasty withdrawal of Kurdish forces left the entire region defenseless.
ISIS Calamity
The story of the ISIS conquest of the Yazidi homeland in August 2014 is essential for understanding the plight of this endangered community, one which has faced centuries of what can only be described as a genocidal assault. It is a tragic tale of the followers of a peaceful religion whose very existence is threatened by a combination of fanaticism on the part of ISIS and indifference on the part of Western powers. Yazidis often say they have been the victim of 72 previous attempts at genocide. The memory of persecution is a core component of their identity.
The Kurdish Peshmerga forces, who had been protecting the area, withdrew without warning, leaving the local population defenseless. An estimated 200,000 Yazidi civilians fled for their lives, with at least 50,000 heading to Sinjar Mountain, where they were trapped in the scorching summer heat for days without food or water. Those unable to escape or who attempted to defend their villages from ISIS fighters were subsequently murdered or abducted, with large-scale massacres of Yazidi men and boys in the villages of Qiniyeh, Kocho, and Jdali.
An agreement signed by the Kurdistan and Iraqi governments in 2020 to restore stability in the Sinjar region has not yet been implemented. This agreement provides a framework for the deportation and disarmament of all armed groups in the region and for helping displaced Yazidis return to their homeland.
Defenseless Sinjar
In 2014, with the territorial gains of the Salafist militant group calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) there was much upheaval in the Iraqi Yazidi population. ISIL captured Sinjar in August 2014 following the withdrawal of the Kurdish Peshmerga troops, forcing up to 50,000 Yazidis to flee into the nearby mountainous region.
ISIL had previously declared the Yazidis to be devil worshippers. Most of the population fleeing Sinjar retreated by trekking up nearby mountains to reach Dohuk in Iraqi Kurdistan (normally a five-hour drive by car). Concerns for the elderly and those in fragile health were expressed by the refugees, who told reporters of their lack of water.
UN groups say at least 40,000 members of the Yazidi sect, many of them women and children, took refuge in nine locations on Mount Sinjar, a craggy, 4,600-foot-high ridge identified in local legend as the final resting place of Noah’s Ark, facing slaughter at the hands of jihadists surrounding them below if they fled, or death by dehydration if they stayed.
Between 20,000 and 30,000 Yazidis, most of them women and children, besieged by ISIL, escaped from the mountain after the People Protection Units (YPG) and Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) intervened to stop ISIL. They opened a humanitarian corridor for them, helping them cross the river Tigris into Rojava-Syria.
Captured women were treated as sex slaves or spoils of war, some were driven to suicide. Women and girls who converted to Islam were sold as brides, and those who refuse to convert are tortured, raped, and eventually murdered.
Babies born in the prison where the women are held are taken from their mothers to an unknown fate. Nadia Murad, a Yazidi human rights activist and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner, was kidnapped and used as a sex slave by the ISIL in 2014.
Persecution
For hundreds of years, the Yazidi community has been persecuted for its religious views, an amalgamation of Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam. Throughout their history, they have been killed, forced to convert to other religions, and even taken as slaves.
Since the spread of Islam began with the early Muslim conquest of the 7th–8th centuries, Yazidis have faced persecution by Arabs and later by Turks, as their religious practices have commonly been charged with heresy by Muslim clerics.
To this day, many Muslims consider them to be devil worshipers. So, in the face of religious persecution, Yazidis have concentrated in strongholds located in remote mountain regions with most of them concentrated in northern Iraq, in and around Mount Sinjar.
The history of the Yazidi community in northern Iraq is laden with oppression and violence. For almost six centuries, Yazidis were subjected to persecution during the Ottoman Empire that ruled between 1299 to 1922. After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the British Army targeted Yazidis and other ethnic groups in northern Iraq in the early 20th century.
The violent campaigns against Yazidis continued during the Baath regime that was in power from 1968 to 2003. The destruction of Yazidi villages at the time resulted in Yazidis’ mass displacement. In 2007, A few years after the American invasion of Iraq, the Yazidi community endured one of the deadliest car bomb attacks in post-Saddam Iraq. The Yazidi lore attests to 74 persecutions throughout history.
In the wake of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Yazidis faced increased persecution by religious extremists who incorrectly regarded them as ‘devil worshippers’ due to a misinterpretation of their religion. Community members were regularly targeted by extremists, a July 2008 report from Iraq’s Ministry of Human Rights estimated that between 2003 and the end of 2007, a total of 335 Yazidis had been killed in direct or indirect attacks.
The effects of these and later attacks on the community were often far-reaching. In 2013, for instance, there were numerous attacks on Yazidi students attending Mosul University. By the end of the year, approximately 2,000 Yazidi students had stopped attending their classes at the university.
Most recently, the 2014 Yazidi genocide that was carried out by the Islamic State saw over 5,000 Yazidis killed, thousands of Yazidi women and girls forced into sexual slavery as well as the flight of more than 500,000 Yazidi refugees.
Arabization and Kurdification Policies
Before the ISIS advance, Iraq’s Yazidis numbered approximately 500,000. They were concentrated in Sinjar, 150 kilometers west of Mosul, with a smaller community in Shaikhan, the Kurdistan foothills east of Mosul, where their most holy shrine of Shaykh Adi is located.
The Yazidis have always remained on the fringes of Iraqi society, but because of the strategic position of Sinjar Mountain, they received unwelcome attention from Hussein’s state security. Under the Ba’ath regime, repeated efforts were made to Arabize the area and to persuade Yazidis that they were Arab. Reaction was mixed, but some Yazidis supported the Kurdish national movement. Yazidis reluctantly served in the army against Iran, and the community escaped the Anfal, the Kurdish genocide, in 1987-1988.
Under persistent pressure to assimilate with Iraqi Kurds, particularly in the northern territories, abduction, and forced marriage were risks for Yazidis. Yazidi activists reported that after 2003, there were numerous cases of Yazidi women being abducted and forced to marry members of the Kurdish security force Asayish. Yazidi families were threatened with reprisals if women and girls refused marriage with militia members. Such marriages effectively sealed off these women from their families and communities as Yazidi beliefs prohibit marriage outside the religion. Those who undertake such vows thereby renounce their faith and must identify as Kurdish.
Abduction, Slavery and Genocide
Thousands of Yazidi women and girls were abducted for forced marriage or sexual slavery.
The ISIS jihadists captured hundreds of Yazidi women as Sabiya (Quran-legitimized sex slaves). In October 2014, the United Nations reported that more than 5,000 Yazidis had been murdered and 5,000 to 7,000 (mostly women and children) had been abducted by ISIL. ISIS has, in their digital magazine Dabiq, explicitly claimed religious justification for enslaving Yazidi women and sold them like chattel in markets to ISIS fighters.
These women, many of them young girls, were systematically raped and abused by their ISIS masters (Amirs). Most remain living in misery as sex slaves for fanatics who legitimize their abuse by labeling them “idolaters” and “infidels.” Older women who were deemed unworthy to be Sabiya were dragged away and collectively murdered in cold blood.
Large numbers of women were subsequently transported to Syria to be sold or forcibly married to ISIS fighters. ISIS’ treatment of the Yazidi minority has been labeled as genocide by the United Nations and several other international organizations.
World Reaction
In response to ISIS’ genocidal assault of the Yazidis beginning in 2014, the United States assembled a global coalition of 80 countries from around the world to defeat ISIS. A decade later, Yazidis still struggle to recover in Iraq and in Syria. Hundreds of thousands remain displaced, heavily traumatized, facing threats from an array of actors.
The Iraqi and US governments must develop policies for Iraq and Syria that prioritize Yazidi and minority rights, they must ensure that Yazidis do not suffer persecution and further marginalization even after the military defeat of ISIS.
Yazidis, Christians, and Mandeans, more than any other ethnic minority, were victims of genocide. Responses by the Iraqi government were not the correct responses. The Yazidis in Iraq are seeking not only to preserve their traditions but also to combat misinformation and stereotypes about their faith. But most have been scattered far and wide from their sacred lands, and many have joined in the movement of refugees to Europe. The Yazidis’ exile from the ancient shrines of their people threatens to dilute their identity as a distinct people. There are huge challenges for the Yazidis, to restore security, stability, and community security in the Nineveh / Sinjar region.
It’s not only Yazidis that faced the wrath of ISIS. In the last two decades, Iraqi Christians have been reduced by over 80% from 1.5 million to less than 200 thousand. As of January 2021, the Sabean-Mandaean population in Iraq was estimated to be less than 5,000 people. This is a significant decrease from the 50,000–70,000 Mandaeans who lived in Iraq before the 2003 US-led invasion. The violence that followed the invasion, along with the rise of Islamic extremism, led to many Mandaeans fleeing the country for Iran, Syria, Jordan, and other destinations. Some Mandaeans have also been forcibly converted to Islam, which can make them apostates if they try to return to their religion and could put their lives at risk. Iraq has few Jews left, mostly in the KRG region, after over two millennia.
A peaceful coexistence between Christians, Yazidis, and Arabs must be established, together with a legal process for transitional justice and fact-finding. Ensuring that those involved in crimes are brought to justice and compensating the victims and those affected with fair compensation are crucial.
We can safely say that the world would be a less colorful place should the ancient Yazidi people disappear from the pages of history, as so many other ethnic-religious groups in the Middle East region and Iraq have over the centuries.
Sources: Wikipedia, Yazda.org, Pari Ibrahim, Free Yezidi Foundation, Byavi Asher-Schapiro, National Geographic News, the Guardian, The Yazidis Narrative by Zuhair Kadhum Abood, Le Yezidis in Syria and Mount Sinjar by Roger Lescot, Brian Glyn Williams.