Yazidi children freed from IS group still haunted by trauma: Amnesty International

Issued on: 30/07/2020 -

Displaced Iraqi Yazidi children stand next to a tent at a camp in Khanke, a few kilometres from the Turkish border in Iraq's Dohuk province, on June 24, 2019. AFP - SAFIN HAMED

Text by:FRANCE 24

Nearly 2,000 Yazidi children freed from the grips of the Islamic State group in recent years are still trapped by psychological and physical trauma, Amnesty International warned on Thursday. 

In a new report based on dozens of interviews in northern Iraq, the rights group found that 1,992 children who faced torture, forced conscription, rape and other abuses at the hands of IS were not getting the care they need.

"While the nightmare of their past has receded, hardships remain for these children," said Matt Wells, deputy director of Amnesty's crisis response team.

Thousands of #Yezidi children were brutalized during conflict with Islamic State.

New @Amnesty report highlights how their health must now be prioritized.

“While the nightmare of their past has ended, hardships remain for these children” - @mattfwellshttps://t.co/CT0S3GRGDW— Amnesty International (@amnesty) July 30, 2020

The Yazidis are an ethno-religious minority numbering around 550,000 in their heartland of northwest Iraq before IS swept through the rugged region in 2014.

Slamming the Yazidis as heretics, IS slaughtered thousands of men, abducted women and girls and forced boys to fight on its behalf.

Yazidi children were forcibly converted to Islam and taught Arabic, banned from speaking their native Kurdish.

To this day, child survivors suffer "debilitating long-term injuries," as well as post-traumatic stress disorder, mood swings, aggression and flashbacks.

According to the report, many child survivors return to their families having been starved, tortured or forced to endure or participate in hostilities. In many cases, these experiences have a major impact on their health.
While some children return with treatable conditions such as anaemia or scabies, others have debilitating, long-term injuries, illnesses or conditions.

As a result of their involvement in fighting, boys who were forcibly recruited by IS are especially likely to suffer from serious health conditions and physical impairments, such as lost arms or legs during fighting. Girl survivors of rape and other sexual violence suffer unique health issues, including traumatic fistulas, scarring, and difficulties conceiving, during pregnancy or giving birth to a child.

Nowhere to turn

Yazidi children interviewed by AFP last year in a displacement camp in the northwest district of Duhok played aggressively, wore all black and spoke Arabic to each other, even months after they were freed from IS.

One of them, a ten-year-old girl, had threatened to commit suicide multiple times, her mother told AFP.

A doctor who has provided medical care for hundreds of Yazidi women and girl survivors told Amnesty that almost every girl she had treated between the ages of nine and 17 had been raped or subjected to other sexual violence. Yet according to humanitarian workers and other experts, existing services and programmes for survivors of sexual violence have largely neglected girls, focusing instead on women survivors.

Sahir, a 15-year-old former IS child soldier, told Amnesty that he knew he needed mental support to cope with his trauma but felt he had nowhere to turn.

"What I was looking for is just someone to care about me, some support, to tell me, 'I am here for you'," he said.

"This is what I have been looking for, and I have never found it."

'Accept our children'

Amnesty said access to education could help ease children back into society, but tens of thousands of Yazidis still live in displacement camps where schooling is irregular.

Many have also gone into debt from paying thousands of US dollars to smugglers to free Yazidi relatives who were held by IS.

Yazidi mothers forcibly wed to IS fighters are struggling to heal their own psychological scars, while dealing with the stigma of having children born to jihadist fathers.

"I want to tell (our community) and everyone in the world, please accept us, and accept our children... I didn't want to have a baby from these people. I was forced to have a son," said 22-year-old Janan.

Many Yazidi women who were rescued from IS' last bastion in Syria over the last two years were forced to leave their IS-born children behind when they returned to their families in neighbouring Iraq.

"We have all thought about killing ourselves, or tried to do it," said Hanan, a 24-year-old Yazidi whose daughter was taken from her.


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As a result of IS’s policies of systematic rape and sexual enslavement, Yazidi women gave birth to hundreds of children during their captivity, say Amnesty in the report. Many of these women are in desperate situations, in some cases experiencing severe mental anguish after being forced to separate from their children, and in others, remaining in IDP camps or with IS captors in order to avoid giving up their children.

Several such women interviewed by Amnesty said they were pressured, coerced and even deceived into leaving their children behind by family members or by individuals or groups who work to reunite captured Yazidi women and children with their families. They also said they were falsely assured that they would be able to visit or reunite with their children at a later stage.

Mothers must be reunited with their children and no further separation should take place, Amnesty said.

"These women were enslaved, tortured and subjected to sexual violence. They should not suffer any further punishment," said Wells.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

KURDISH 

Women Fighting Patriarchy and Oppression in Northern Iraq

A photo essay
By Paul Trowbridge

October 15, 2023

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.




In Sinjar, a small town in Northern Iraq, the consequences of genocide and war linger heavy. Nearly a decade ago, in August of 2014, the Islamic State group (ISIS) carried out genocide against the Yazidi religious minority based in, and around, Sinjar. To this day, the town lies in rubble and its people scattered in camps for the displaced. Those who have returned face numerous challenges and obstacles as they struggle with the legacy of genocide. ISIS targeted Yazidis, Christains and Shia Muslims during their campaign of violence, but no other group was targeted as brutally as the Yazidis. During the genocide, ISIS fighters killed approximately 10,000 Yazidi people and enslaved and sex trafficked approximately 10,000 women and girls. More than 3,000 of the enslaved women and girls remain missing. Nearly 10 years on, 350,000 Yazidi people remain displaced living in camps for internally displaced persons (IDP).

Yazidis are a religious minority from northern Iraq, and Sinjar and its surroundings are their ancestral homeland. Yazidism, the religion of the Yazidis, is an ancient syncretic faith that combines elements of Zoroastrianism, Islam and Christianity. Yazidis have faced persecution and discrimination throughout their history because they believe in their own religion. Yazidis count 74 genocides perpetrated against them. However, none of the previous genocides are comparable to the brutality of the atrocities perpetrated against the Yazidis by the Islamic State group.

Against this backdrop of genocide and violence, the Sinjar Resistance Units (abbreviated YBS, and the all-women division abbreviated YJS) organized to fight ISIS and protect the Yazidi community. The YBS-YJS is a Yazidi armed group, based in Sinjar. Initially, the YBS-YJS was trained and armed by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) so that Yazidi people could protect themselves and fight against the Islamic State group. The PKK is a left-wing insurgent group, rooted in the ideology of revolutionary Marxism and decolonial independence struggle. The YBS-YJS also received support and training from the People’s Protections Units/Women’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ). The YPG/YPJ are armed Kurdish-led opposition groups based in northeast Syria that also share the ideology of the PKK. The YBS-YJS, too, shares the Marxist-based ideology of the leftist Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

The YBS-YJS played a central role in the liberation of Sinjar from ISIS occupation. YBS-YJS fighters then continued into Rojava and finally to Raqqa, where they also played a central role in the liberation of Raqqa. Raqqa, a town in northeast Syria, was the epicenter of ISIS slave markets and sex-trafficking operations. The YBS-YJS does not exclusively work for the Yazidi community. The YBS-YJS provided assistance and humanitarian aid to Arab villages and fought for Arab villagers throughout the Sinjar Region. During the war against ISIS, the YBS-YJS fought side-by-side with Arab tribes to liberate the region from ISIS control.

For YBS-YJS members, the defining characteristic of their organization, and their struggle, is their ideology. During my interviews with women leaders and members of the group, they all told me that the organization’s position on women’s liberation and the role of women in fighting patriarchy and oppression was the key factor for their participation in the group. Women participants told me in interviews that through their participation in the group, they “found their strength.” They told me that through organizing and taking up arms against ISIS, “women [were] protecting women.” They saw that by Yazidi women taking up arms against ISIS, it was also revolution against patriarchy and oppression. They carry these convictions today while they continue their participation in the YBS-YJS. They told me their participation in the YBS-YJS is deeply rooted in them because of the Ideology of the group. While there are other armed groups in the Sinjar region, the pro-minority and pro-woman position of the leftist Kurdish groups drew Yazidis, while at the same time they eschewed other groups because they felt the other group’s ideologies and political positions did not resonate with their lived experience. The women leaders and members I interviewed said they continue to participate in the YBS-YJS because the Yazidi community is constantly under threat of recurrent violence, and the problems facing the Yazidi community in Sinjar continue, and so they continue to struggle. One of the principal conclusions from my interviews with the YBS-YJS was the confluence of their experience with gender-based violence and genocide coincided with an ideology of anti-patriarchy and anti-oppression that was the key factor in organizing and mobilizing Yazidi community and remains the most salient factor in their continued participation in the group.

Yazidi women rescued eight years after ISIS kidnapping - analysis

While many Yazidis have been saved, the community continues to live in displaced persons' camps and does not receive much international assistance.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN

JERUSALEM POST
Published: JUNE 5, 2023 

Yazidi refugees stand behind fences as they wait for the arrival of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Special Envoy Angelina Jolie at a Syrian and Iraqi refugee camp in the southern Turkish town of Midyat in Mardin province, Turkey, June 20, 2015.
(photo credit: UMIT BEKTAS / REUTERS)

Six women from the Yazidi minority in Iraq were recently rescued with the assistance of the authorities in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and activist Nadia Murad. Murad wrote in a statement posted online on June 3 that “after weeks of investigation I am extremely heartened to report that we have rescued six more Yazidi women who were taken captive by ISIS.” The US Consulate in Erbil also praised the work of Nadia Murad, an activist and community leader, and the Kurdistan Region.

The report says that the women were kidnapped by ISIS in 2014. They were trafficked from Iraq to Syria and were rescued on Saturday. ISIS took over Mosul in Iraq in June 2014, nine years ago. At the time the Iraqi army retreated, leaving Iraq’s second-largest city in the hands of the extremists. ISIS first ethnically cleansed Christians and other minorities from Mosul and then set its sights on genocide against the Yazidi minority in Sinjar.

The Yazidi community lived in numerous villages near Mount Sinjar. ISIS attacked the area in August 2014 and rounded up Yazidis that were unable to flee. While hundreds of thousands of the minority community fled to Sinjar mountain or to Syria, where they were assisted by the Syrian YPG, others were held by ISIS.

Yazidi suffering at the hands of ISIS

ISIS divided women and children from men and elderly women and then systematically murdered most of the men and elderly women, killing thousands. Those who were murdered were buried in dozens of mass graves in scenes similar to how the Nazis murdered Jews in the 1940s. The women and children were sold into slavery and subjected to abuses. At the time ISIS enjoyed support in the West from volunteers and had impunity on social media to brag about its crimes, including the massacre of Shi’ites at Camp Speicher and the genocide of Yazidis.


However, the crimes eventually led to the intervention of the US-led anti-ISIS Coalition which defeated ISIS in 2019 with the leadership of the Iraqi army, Kurdish Peshmerga and the SDF in Syria. While 3,500 Yazidis have been saved and returned to their families, it is believed 2,700 people are still missing.

Displaced Yazidi women protest outside the headquarters of the UN Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), north of Baghdad, in 2015. 

(credit: AZAD LASHKARI/REUTERS)

According to a statement by Murad and her organization Nadia’s Initiative the women who were rescued will be reunited with their families and have been flown to Erbil in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. “Rescuing trafficked and enslaved Yazidi women and children is an ongoing humanitarian campaign and the reunification of these six women with their families, after nearly nine years, gives us hope that more can be found.”

The US Consulate tweeted “Congratulations to Nadia Murad and President of the Kurdistan Region – Iraq Nechirvan Barzani’s Office for Rescuing Kidnapped Yezidis for their successful efforts to rescue six Yezidi women from the hands of ISIS and BringThemHome.”

While many Yazidis have been saved, the community continues to live in displaced persons' camps and does not receive much international assistance. In addition, many of the survivors of genocide and kidnapping do not receive enough international support for their trauma.

When Yazidis return home to Sinjar they find destroyed villages and desolate landscapes that receive very little investment from the authorities. They still suffer from militia checkpoints and neglected security in their areas, as well as a lack of access to proper health care and educational facilities. In addition, Turkey claims to be “fighting terror” in Sinjar and has carried out drone strikes and extrajudicial assassinations that have killed Yazidis in recent years.

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Sinjar’s Yazidis, Once Again Displaced, Fear Ongoing Insecurity


by Alessandra Bajec | May 18, 2022


Iraqis in the Yazidi-majority town of Sinjar, still traumatized by memories of ISIS’s brutal assault, were displaced for a second time following hostilities between the Iraqi army and a local militia group at the beginning of May. They are now calling upon the local governments and the international community to find a resolution.

Many Yazidis fled their homes for the first time after ISIS seized Sinjar in summer 2014, but they returned in recent years to rebuild their homes.

(Photo by Emrah Yorulmaz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Heavy fighting erupted on May 1 in the Sinjar district in northern Iraq when Iraq’s military launched an offensive to clear the area of the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) forces. The YBS has ties with Turkey’s banned separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and is mostly comprised of minority Yazidi Muslims. Iraqis from the town of Sinjar, most of whom are Yazidis, were forced to flee north to the Kurdish-run region and now fear for their lives.

Iraqis from the town of Sinjar, mostly Yazidis, were forced to flee north and now fear for their lives.

The clashes that took place in the sub-districts of Dugri and Sinuni escalated on May 2 and 3, leading as of May 5 to the displacement of more than 10,000 people from Sinjar and its surrounding areas, according to a local official in Duhok. The Iraqi Department of Migration and Displacement and Crisis Response (DMCR) confirmed the same figure.

Most of the displaced are now spread across camps in the Kurdistan Region, near Duhok province.

As of May 4, The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Iraq recorded 135,703 people, mainly Yazidis, sheltering in 15 camps in the governates of Duhok and Nineveh, as well as some 195,000 additional internally displaced persons (IDP) living independently in the area. The total estimated displaced Yazidis in the Kurdish region are around 330,000.

Many fled their homes for the first time after ISIS seized Sinjar in summer 2014, but they returned in recent years to rebuild their homes. The latest wave of displacement has reminded them of those days, causing feelings of fear and helplessness and evoking the trauma of ISIS’s genocidal campaign of killings, abductions, rape, and enslavement.

“After years of displacement, recent returnees are once again forced to flee their homes due to current armed clashes in Shingal,” Yazidi genocide survivor and activist Nadia Murad said, reacting to the escalation, calling on the international community to protect civilians in the district.

“The fighting today in Sinjar is totally unacceptable.”

“The fighting today in Sinjar is totally unacceptable. Regardless of political/military affiliation, there should be no attacks against Yazidi[s] from Sinjar by anyone at any time,” tweeted the Free Yezidi Foundation in response to the assault on the Yazidi minority’s hometown.

The UN mission in Iraq condemned the latest violence and declared, “Sinjaris’ safety and security should be front and centre. They’ve suffered enormously in the past and deserve peace under state authority.”

With ongoing insecurity in Sinjar, mostly connected with the presence of several armed forces, families have been prevented from returning to their homeland.

The PKK-affiliated YBS has controlled much of Sinjar since 2015 when, with the help of PKK fighters, it drove out ISIS from the district two years before the extremist group was defeated in 2017. The local force has since remained there, expressing mistrust of the federal government forces deployed to protect the area. Neither the YBS nor the Iraqi military have succeeded in providing a real sense of security for the population in the Yazidi heartland.

The Iraqi army has attempted on repeated occasions to retake the town from the YBS militia with limited success. Armed clashes between the group and government troops broke out on April 18, when the latter reportedly tried to seize a checkpoint controlled by Ezidxan Asayish, a security force affiliated with the YBS.

Under the October 2020 Sinjar agreement between the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG), PKK-affiliated forces were to withdraw from the area and the federal government was to be put in charge of establishing a new local security force. However, the deal was rejected by the PKK and its proxies and criticized by members of the Yazidi community for its lack of involvement in the process.

[Nadia Murad’s Extraordinary Courage to Live and Fight ISIS]

[Rising Oil Revenues Are Not Enough to Salvage Iraq’s Economy]

Absent implementation of the agreement, thousands of residents of the northern Iraqi province remain displaced in camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, unwilling to go back to Sinjar due to the unstable situation.

People of Sinjar held peaceful protests across several towns.

In the days that followed the hostilities, people of Sinjar held peaceful protests across several towns, asking for better security and local governance in their region and demanding that the armed groups keep the conflict away from the civilian population. The protesters continually rallied, blocking several roads to armed units and insisting that all forces –– except for local police and national security ––withdraw from the populated areas.

Yazidis have been calling for their inclusion in their own governance and security for years. Abid Shamdeen, director of Nada’s Initiative which advocates for Yazidi survivors, tweeted, “In 2014, Yazidis were abandoned & left to face a genocide. This is the reason they don’t trust any Iraqi or Kurdish security forces with their security anymore unless that force includes Yazidi fighters.”

Farhad Barakat, a Yazidi activist from Sinjar, witnessed the displacement of hundreds of residents from the town after the skirmishes in early May. Two of his cousins living in the Sinjar mountains, close to where the fighting had taken place, temporarily took refuge in his family home.

“We don’t know exactly what will happen, but we’ve seen things are not stable in our town,” the activist told Inside Arabia on the day when the ceasefire was announced. “People are still scared. The situation is very volatile.”

“People are still scared. The situation is very volatile.”

He estimated that half of the Sinjaris who fled the violence in the preceding days to find shelter in the Kurdish region were among the same people who had returned from IDP camps between 2016 and 2017 toward the end of ISIS’ rule.

As for himself, like other Yazidis, Barakat decided not to leave his hometown no matter what.

“Sinjaris have suffered a lot. We want to live peacefully,” he said, while hinting that Yazidi people are skeptical about the agreement on joint management of Sinjar. “We call on all sides to leave the towns and not endanger people’s lives.”

Murad Ismael, co-founder and head of the educational initiative Sinjar Academy, fears that the lack of security will lead to more problems. “The most realistic scenario is that the status quo continues with sporadic clashes that will cause more partial displacements,” he told DeutcheWelle.

Although the government forces and the YBS group reached a ceasefire on May 5 amid reassurances from the Iraqi army that it had re-established order in the area, Yazidis are reluctant to return to their homeland after witnessing recurring violence and subsequent displacement.

They think fighting could resume at any time and are demanding that the governments of Erbil and Baghdad, along with the international community, find a radical resolution to their region’s suffering.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Alessandra Bajec is a freelance journalist specializing in the Middle East and North Africa. Between 2010 and 2011 she lived in Palestine, she was based in Cairo between 2013 and 2017, and she is now based in Tunis. Her articles have appeared in Middle East Eye, The New Arab, TRT World and rt.com among others. @AlessandraBajec

Countries must face the International Court of Justice over Yazidi genocide


Dr Leyla Ferman and Aarif Abraham

The images of the Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar in Aug 2014, surrounded by fighters of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), facing death by thirst in the searing desert heat or through capture, remains indelibly imprinted in all our minds.

So do the harrowing accounts of Yazidi women being subject to repeated sexual violence, girls as young as eight being forced into sexual servitude and sold as chattels, and young Yazidi boys captured and indoctrinated to kill their kith and kin.

The Yazidis are one of humanities’ oldest communities and their religion is the oldest surviving monotheistic tradition. As these horrific events unfolded, in lands remote and distant from Britain, many of us took it for granted that, firstly, such a community – a pre-cursor to Judaism, Christianity and Islam – could still exist. Secondly, that this apparent “genocide” had a long and slow genesis rooted in state failures from the corridors of power in Westminster to the deserts of Iraq.

And those were the allegations from which the Yazidi Justice Committee (YJC), an ad hoc group of five leading human rights NGOs, began their investigations two years ago into 13 states allegedly responsible for what happened to the Yazidis at the hands of ISIS. What did they find and why ought the British government be concerned

A precedent must be set to signal the real-world consequences of committing genocide

The YJC found that genocide is exactly what happened to the Yazidis: killings, serious bodily mental harm, conditions of life calculated destroy, measures intended to restrict births, and transfer of children from the Yazidi group to ISIS. All with the intent by the ISIS perpetrators to destroy the Yazidis. They confirmed not only that genocide occurred, as contemporaneously assessed by the United Nations from 2014 onwards, but that it remains ongoing today with continuing inaction from Iraq or Syria to protect the fraction of those who returned to their homeland (50-100k out of 600k in Iraq and less than a 1000 out of 20,000 approximately in Syria) and repeated attacks on Yazidis by Turkish armed forces or affiliated militia.

As critical is the YJC’s findings that Iraq, Syria and Turkey failed to prevent the genocide, failed to prosecute individual perpetrators of genocide (not a single prosecution for genocide has been brought) and failed to give proper effect in their domestic law to the provisions of the Genocide Convention. In respect of one state, Turkey – a Nato member – they found that state officials were complicit with ISIS perpetrators through, inter alia; allowing the free flow of fighters across the border, weapons transfers, training support, trade in Yazidi women and girls and materiel support to ISIS.

States are required, under the Genocide Convention, to deploy “all means reasonably available” to prevent genocide the instant they know of the “serious risk” of genocide. The YJC Yazidis were at serious risk from at least April 2013 – more than a year before the harrowing events on Sinjar Mountain. Yet these states did precisely nothing.

The consequence of a failure to honour duties to protect, prevent and punish, means that a third state, such as Britain or another ratifying State to the Convention, could bring failing states before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and hold them accountable.

The UK government has long held, erroneously, that it cannot make a determination of genocide until a competent international court has ruled on the matter. For this reason, it has never recognised the Yazidi genocide. It is now open to the UK government, with others, to seize the initiative and take one or more of these states before the ICJ. There are, of course, realpolitik considerations of taking Turkey (a not so reliable NATO ally) or Iraq (an avowed partner) to the ICJ – but Syria, where the genesis of ISIS began and a State which helped create the conditions for the ongoing Yazidi genocide (with cover from Russia from 2015), is an obvious starting point for action.

The UK has a historical connection to this region and a real interest in the international rules-based order in world where might is increasingly solely right. An ICJ case would finally recognise genocide of the Yazidis recognised and hold responsible states accountable – only a single successful prosecution for genocide of a low-level individual has occurred in Germany Frankfurt last year. Thousands of ISIS fighters languish in prisons in Iraq, Syria and Turkey. An ICJ case would also, critically, assist survivors of the genocide by requiring a state to ensure remedial actions, reparations, commitments for non-repetition, prosecution of alleged perpetrators, actions for damages, and provisional measures asking for cessation of all continuing harm. A future precedent can and must be set to signal the real-world consequences of committing genocide.

Governments around the world should not only call what is happening to the Yazidis by its proper name: genocide. That is long overdue. But governments also ought to start to meaningfully engage and give effect to their international legal obligations - using all international diplomatic, economic, and political means and all international fora to consider state responsibility seriously - for that is possibly the sole and certainly the most salient route to ending the scourge of genocide. For the Yazidis it would mean the world and for the world it is a litmus test of our humanity.

Dr Leyla Ferman is the Director of Women for Justice and co-founder of Yazidi Justice Committee. Aarif Abraham is a barrister specialising in public international law and international criminal law.

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Yazidis plead with Canada not to repatriate ISIS members

Mon, January 30, 2023 

Mourners carry the remains of Yazidi victims of ISIS following their exhumation from a mass grave near Kojo, Iraq on February 6, 2021. (Reuters - image credit)

The looming return of alleged ISIS members to Canada has brought trauma, worry and fear to people who were invited to Canada as a safe haven after the terrorist group all but destroyed their ancient community in northern Iraq.

"When I first heard the news, I felt the strength leave my body," Huda Ilyas Alhamad told CBC News in her Winnipeg apartment. She is one of 1,200 survivors of the Yazidi genocide who were resettled in Canada; she spent years as a slave of ISIS members.

"I had to sit down right away. I was heartbroken and terrified at the same time because on one hand they had promised to protect us and bring us here and give us safety, and on the other hand they're offering that same entryway for these very people who raped and tortured us on a daily basis."


The Yazidis are members of an ancient Kurdish-speaking farming community in northern Iraq who practice their own monotheistic religion. They were victims of one of the worst atrocities of the 21st century at the hands of the Islamic fundamentalist terror group, which set out to eradicate the Yazidi people in a brutal campaign launched on August 3, 2014.

'Heartbroken and betrayed'

Earlier this month, the federal government agreed to repatriate 19 Canadian women and children from northeastern Syria, where they have been held in Kurdish-run detention camps for suspected ISIS members and their families.

Advocates for the adult detainees say there is no proof tying them to ISIS, and no justification for allowing them to remain in Syrian camps.

"It's clear that the Canadian government has the ability to bring our Canadians home, and where there is evidence to believe they've committed an offence, charge them and prosecute them," lawyer Lawrence Greenspon told CBC News.

The agreement to assist women and children to travel to Canada was followed a day later by an order from the Federal Court, instructing the government to also repatriate four men currently held in Syrian prisons, accused of ISIS membership.

Neither the government nor the court has disclosed the names of the ten adults to be repatriated.

Jamileh Naso, president of the Canadian Yazidi Association, said Yazidis feel grateful to Canada. Many have settled in Winnipeg.

"Canada was one of the first countries to respond to the plight of the Yazidis," she said. "And they couldn't be any more happy or grateful that they would come to a country like Canada where they could feel safe and protected, in a country that stood for all these great values of freedom, of rights, of justice, of accountability and all these things the Yazidi community wanted to see."

Naso praised the work of Winnipeg's Jewish community to help reunify families and privately sponsor Yazidi refugees, but she said others in the city have helped as well.

Jaison Empson/CBC

"This has really been a grassroots local community effort to reunite these families and this is what Canada is about," she said.

The ISIS repatriation order, she said, has left Yazidi families feeling "heartbroken and betrayed."

"A lot of them just broke down into tears because they thought this news was completely unbelievable. It can't be true," she said.

"We have submitted applications for family reunification to reunite with our family members who were in ISIS captivity. And here they are bringing the perpetrators of these crimes of genocide to Canada. And they know in most cases that these folks will not face trial. The evidence is not here and the witnesses aren't here. They are giving a free pass for their part in genocide and terrorism.

"It's really disappointing, not just for those in the Yazidi community, but for those across Canada who believe in liberal values, and that we should be a country that's standing up for victims and survivors."

A peaceful community destroyed

"Before ISIS arrived, we were very happy. We had 13 people in my family," Huda Alhamad told CBC News at her Winnipeg home. She was 17 years old in August, 2014, when ISIS attacked.

"It was always loud and noisy in the house, but I loved it. We would go to work, we would come home, we would have dinner as a family."

As ISIS closed in, Huda's family and thousands of others sought refuge on the slopes of the Yazidis' traditional refuge of Mount Sinjar. But they were captured, along with thousands of other Yazidi civilians. ISIS members then began to separate them by age and gender.

Huda said she believes the gunfire she heard as she was driven away after the initial separation of family members was the start of the massacre of older community members.

ISIS had different plans for different segments of the Yazidi population. The youngest boys were taken from their families to be converted to Islam and raised as jihadi fighters and suicide bombers. Thousands of older boys and men were murdered. Young women and girls, like Huda and her three sisters, were separated for sale to ISIS members as slaves.

The ISIS slave market

"They went around taking down names, ages, family members, who was connected to who, and then they started separating by looks," Huda said. "They came in like we were cattle, what looked good, what didn't look good. Who was too old, who had kids, how many kids they had."

"My sisters and I were taken to a separate room with a lot of the other young women and we were all sold.

"About 100 ISIS members came into the room. There were about 200 of us, and they all came in and started just grabbing us for themselves. And I, along with another young Yazidi girl, was taken by one of the ISIS members."

Reuters

Girls as young as 10 were taken as slaves by ISIS members. After raping them for a time, members would often sell them on. Many girls were sold multiple times.

Huda's sisters were taken by other ISIS members. Years would pass before she learned they had survived.

Huda's parents and older brother were never seen again. "Other than the four family members I'm with here, and then my two sisters and my brother who are in a refugee camp now, I'm not sure what happened to the others," she said.

Yazidis told CBC News there is a misconception that the women of ISIS were less culpable or less violent than the men.

"The women were worse than the ISIS fighters. The women would beat us constantly," said Huda. "They would refuse to feed us. I would usually get beaten with a cable by the wives of the ISIS fighters, and they would laugh at me, they would spit at me, they would kick me, and that was on a daily basis. And then when their husband would come, he would rape me."

Naso said Huda's experience with the women of ISIS is common among survivors.

"Almost all of them can tell you that when they were in captivity, the women played as much of a role as the [ISIS] fighters did in torturing them, in keeping them captive, in keeping notes on them and saying what they were doing, constantly beating them," she told CBC News. "The females had just as much to do with the inhumane treatment of the Yazidis as the men did."

Stolen children

Yazidis continue to arrive in Canada as individuals struggle to reunite the surviving members of families torn apart by ISIS.

Ayad Alhussein is just 13 years old. He spent five of those years in ISIS captivity and three more in a displaced persons camp. He arrived in Winnipeg only two months ago, rescued by two older sisters he had forgotten he even had.

Submitted by Layla Alhussein

"I've only been told now how hard my sisters worked with organizations here in Winnipeg like Operation Ezra (a reunification program sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg) and the Canadian Yazidi Association," he said. "How they submitted paperwork three years ago and went back and forth with the government and different people to try to get me here."

Ayad was young enough to be spared by ISIS when his family was captured. Twelve members of his family have not been seen since August 2014.

ISIS raised the youngest Yazidi boys to be jihadi fighters and suicide bombers. Ayad forgot his native Kurmanji and learned to live in Arabic. He doesn't remember his life before capture.

Forgotten identity

"I was five years old when I was captured, so I didn't really have an idea of who my community was or who my family was or anything like that," he said. "And like the other little boys around me, I just kind of did whatever they did. At first I was scared, but then it just became normal."

Normal, he said, included almost daily beatings (the boys were told they would make them tougher), military training, weapons drills and religious indoctrination.

"And that continued on until I met some others [slightly older Yazidi captive boys] who told me that I wasn't a part of this. I had family elsewhere," he said. "And then I started learning more and more as the years went by. And when I finally reached the camp after five years of captivity, that's when I started to learn my mother tongue."

Today, Ayad is in school in Winnipeg, learning English with the help of cousins. He said he's happy in Canada and hopes to become a doctor.

But recent developments have rocked the teenager.

"When I heard the news that they would be bringing ISIS members here, I was terrified. That had not been that long since I came here," he said. "The whole point of coming to a country like Canada was to be offered safety and security. If they're bringing those people here, those terrorists, how am I supposed to feel safe?"

'We don't believe the government understands'

Huda said the news has brought on anxiety and panic.

"If I see somebody who semi-resembles one of the [ISIS] members, my heart starts beating really quickly," she said. "Sometimes I cry, sometimes I just have to drop everything I'm doing and go home right away. And that's been the case for the past five years. This news has just doubled that and I feel that all the time now.

"I'm scared to send my kids to school. What if they recognize some of us?"

Huda said it hurts to see ISIS families being reunited while her own sisters are still living in dangerous refugee camps.

"That's all I could really ask for, if I could be reunited with my sisters here. We've worked on their paperwork, we've submitted for family reunification," she said. "But for the past almost three years now, we have yet to hear anything about how their file is going."

Like many Yazidis, Huda said she believes the federal government and rights organizations working on behalf of suspected ISIS detainees are naive about the nature of the people they're helping.

"We don't believe the government truly understands. I mean, we've tried to share our story multiple times. We told them about the atrocities we faced," she said.

"The government was the one who recognized it as genocide. They're the ones who said yes, what they were doing to the Yazidi community constitutes genocide. They are raping women. They are separating families. They're trying to annihilate this community off the face of the earth.

"And yet here they are, bringing these very members, these individuals who chose to leave this country, this security, these freedoms, and go there and join this group that is committing these crimes. And so it doesn't make sense to us."

'No repercussions'

Although talking about her captivity is wrenching, Huda said "it's more important than ever that people know exactly what types of monsters they are, and we're inviting them into the country with no repercussions."

"If the Canadian government or anybody has questions about what ISIS was doing in Iraq and Syria," she added, "you can come talk to me.

"If you have questions about what women and girls had to face, how they were tied up and treated like slaves, how were they were sold, how 10-year-olds were raped, how girls were ripped from their mothers' arms and taken into separate rooms and they could hear them being raped. If you want to hear about why we should keep people like that out, you can come talk to me.

"I feel like I could talk for days about what had happened to us and share stories of the horrors I saw. But with this decision to bring in those very people who caused all this pain and suffering, does it even matter if we tell our stories anymore?"

EP Report Launch: Western Foreign Fighters and the Yazidi Genocide 

On March 16, 2021, CEP hosted a launch event for the new report, "Western Foreign Fighters and the Yazidi Genocide".

As Western states face an ongoing dilemma over the fate of their stranded and captured “foreign fighters”, award-winning historian and author, Tom Holland, and President of YAZDA, Haider Elias, joined CEP to discuss the role of foreign fighters in the Yazidi genocide and the search for justice.

In August 2014, ISIS launched an assault on Sinjar, home to Iraq’s vulnerable Yazidi religious minority. More than 3,000 Yazidis are thought to have been killed in the initial assault, many in mass executions, with almost 7,000 Yazidi women and children kidnapped and enslaved throughout ISIS’s so-called caliphate.

So far, justice for these crimes has not been delivered. This discussion aims to highlight Yazidi survivors’ ongoing fight for justice and the underexplored role of Westerners in the atrocities.

Speakers:
-Tom Holland, award-winning historian, author, and broadcaster
-Haider Elias, president, YAZDA, the leading Yazidi human rights NGO
-Liam Duffy, London-based CEP strategic advisor, author of CEP’s latest report: Western Foreign Fighters and the Yazidi Genocide

Moderated by:
-Lucinda Creighton, CEP senior advisor in Europe, former Irish Minister of State for European Affairs

Download the report here: https://bit.ly/3rTc4oH

Yazidi refugees again flee fighting in Iraq

2:37 Our Observer told us how these Yazidi refugees fled the violence in Sinuni, Iraq. 

© Observers

By:Djamel Belayachi
Issued on: 30/05/2022 - 

Intense fighting broke out between the Iraqi Army and Yazidi fighters affiliated to the Kurdish rebel group the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on May 1 and 2 in the region of Sinjar, in northwestern Iraq. The clashes displaced thousands of Yazidi people for a second time – as many as were only recently resettled in the area after fleeing the Islamic State group in 2014. Our Observer told us about fleeing the fighting.

Yazidis are a Kurmanji-speaking minority who are indigenous to the Sinjar region in Iraq. They follow a monotheistic religion with similarities to the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism.

The Iraqi Army wants to enforce an agreement signed between Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan providing for the withdrawal of Yazidi fighters and PKK fighters from the Sinjar region. But the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBŞ), a Yazidi militia created in 2014 to fight the Islamic State group, don’t want to withdraw and accuse Baghdad of wanting to take control of their region.

On the night of May 1, the Iraqi Army finally launched an offensive to push back Yazidi fighters, some of whom had taken up positions in civilian areas in villages near Mount Sinjar.

'Local residents were terrified'

When the fighting broke out on May 2nd, our Observer, Ferhad (not his real name), was at his uncle's house in the village of Sinuni. He fled with his family to neighbouring Iraqi Kurdistan.

I called one of my friends and he told me the Iraqi army was attacking the Sinjar Resistance Units, with tanks and helicopters. Local residents were terrified. We fled in a car. I saw lots of other families heading for the Sinjar mountains and villages that were not affected by the fighting.

There were 22 of us in the vehicle. We made our way to a refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan.

After the attack, about 10,000 displaced persons flooded into the camps in Iraqi Kurdistan. Many of the newly displaced were already forced to live in these camps once after fleeing the Islamic State group back in 2014. Many have moved into already overcrowded tents with family or friends already living there.

Sinjar massacre - Wikipedia

The Sinjar massacre marked the beginning of the genocide of Yazidis by ISIL, the killing and abduction of thousands of Yazidi men, women and children. It took place in August 2014 in Sinjar city and Sinjar District in Iraq's Nineveh Governorate and was perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The massacre began with ISIL attacking and capturing Sinjar and neighboring towns on 3 August, during its Northern Iraq offensive.

German woman convicted of keeping Yazidi woman as a slave in Iraq


BERLIN (AP) — A German woman was convicted Wednesday of keeping a Yazidi woman as a slave during her time with the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, and sentenced to nine years and three months in prison.

The state court in the western city of Koblenz convicted the 37-year-old of crimes against humanity, membership in a foreign terrorist organization and being an accessory to genocide, German news agency dpa reported. Authorities have identified her only as Nadine K. in line with German privacy rules.

The court found that the defendant for three years abused a young Yazidi woman “in her own interests as a household slave.” It said that her husband brought the woman to their home and regularly raped her, and that the defendant enabled those assaults and should have intervened.

Prosecutors have said that the defendant traveled to Syria with her husband in 2014 and joined IS. In 2015, the couple moved to the Iraqi town of Mosul, where they allegedly kept the Yazidi woman.

The defendant was arrested in March 2022 after being brought back to Germany from a camp in northeastern Syria where suspected members of IS have been held.

In a statement read out at her trial by a defense lawyer, she denied having coerced the Yazidi woman at any point. She said there had been frequent arguments with her husband over the woman's presence and she was ashamed of not having done more for her.

In February, the Yazidi woman testified at the trial and said she recognized the defendant.

She traveled to Koblenz again for the verdict. “She hopes that others follow her example” and that all who committed similar crimes face trial, said her lawyer, Sonka Mehner.

The trial is the latest of several in Germany involving women who traveled to regions controlled by the IS group in Syria and Iraq.

In one case, a German convert to Islam was convicted in 2021 on charges that she allowed a 5-year-old Yazidi girl she and her husband kept as a slave to die of thirst in the sun. Her husband was subsequently convicted as well.

Earlier this year, an appeals court ordered a new sentencing hearing for the woman, who was given a 10-year sentence. She now risks a longer prison term.

The Associated Press

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Iraq: Evangicals spark outrage by praying 'to break power' of Yazidi temple

A video posted by the Light a Candle organisation appeared to show activists praying against the 'Satanic curse' of the temple

An activist from Light a Candle prays at a Yazidi temple in Iraq (screenshot)

By Alex MacDonald
Published date: 21 April 2023

A video apparently showing evangelical Christians praying at what they brand a "Satanic" Yazidi temple in northern Iraq has sparked outrage.

Light A Candle, an organisation that professes to "shine the light and love of Jesus by preaching the Gospel", on Thursday posted a story on its Instagram page showing a number of its missionaries praying outside the temple overlayed with a caption reading "We see chains broken and the enemy's power defeated.

"So right now we just break the power of this temple, we break the power of the Satanic curse that it places on people who enter Jesus... and we curse all of the enemy that is attached to this, we say it will come to nothing," one of the activists can be heard saying in the video.

Social media users identified the temple as being near the Yazidi-majority town of Ba'adre, which is located in a region disputed between Baghdad and the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), though the latter is currently in control of the town.

Middle East Eye could not independently verify the location, however.

Yazidis have for centuries faced persecution from other Abrahamic religions which claim that Melek Taus, the central figure in the Yazidi religion, is analogous to Satan.

Accusations of Satanism have been used to justify numerous attacks on the group, including the massacre of thousands of Yazidi men, and the enslavement of thousands more Yazidi women, by the Islamic State group in 2014.

Online outrage

The video sparked outrage online with many questioning why the local authorities had allowed the visit to take place.

MEE contacted Light a Candle to ask if they stood by the implication of the Yazidi religion as akin to Satanism, but had received no response at time of publication.

Narin Briar, a Kurdish human right activist, said that the act was particularly offensive considering the "centuries of genocide and erasure" that Yazidis had faced.

'American Christian missionaries are hunting Yazidis , falsely labelling them as "Satanic" in their social media posts, in hopes of forcefully converting them and erasing their ancient culture even further'

- Narin Briar, activist

"Just recently, the Yazidis fled the Ezidi Genocide at the hands of [the Islamic State]" she told MEE.

"Now, through an organisation called Light a Candle, American Christian missionaries are hunting Yazidis , falsely labelling them as 'Satanic' in their social media posts, in hopes of forcefully converting them and erasing their ancient culture even further."

Light a Candle was founded by Sean Feucht, a singer-songwriter and activist who claims to have had four number one albums in the Christian Worship section of iTunes.

The group has been involved in distributing aid to displaced people in northern Iraq, including Yazidis, but has also been accused of attempting to recruit Christian converts during their visits.

In the pinned tweet of his Twitter account, Feucht claims leftists have "hijacked" the minds of the younger generation and calls for "REVIVAL" as the solution, while lambasting such policies as student loan forgiveness, "open borders", abortion and LGBTQ rights and the "mutilation of children’s bodies".

A profile in Rolling Stone characterised Feucht as having a "far-right Christian nationalist agenda" and being a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump. It also suggested he had made considerable sums of money out of his work, owning homes in the US valued at over $2m.

MEE also contacted the KRG for comment, but had received no response at the time of publication.

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The Yazidis and India

Here I want to speak of the lesser-known connections between the Yazidis and Indians.
By Subhash Kak
-September 2, 2019

Here I want to speak of the lesser-known connections between the Yazidis and Indians.
According to their folklore, the Great Flood compelled Yezidis to disperse to many countries including India, and they returned from these adoptive countries around 2000 BCE.

The Yazidis live far away from India in Iraq, Iran and Turkey. Even though they have legends connecting them to the east, the idea of a link with India appears ridiculous at first sight. But history has wheels within wheels and sometimes reality turns out to be vastly different from common belief.


The Yazidis speak a northern dialect of the Kurdish language, which some call a separate language with the name Ezdiki. Their religion, Yazidism, is also called Sharfadin (the religion of the cultured folks). Reviled as devil worshipers for centuries by their Muslim and Christian neighbours, they have endured over 70 genocides in which millions died and most others were compelled to abandon their culture.

It is not only the kings who had Sanskrit names; a large number of other Sanskrit names have also been unearthed in the records from the area.

The Yazidis were denounced as infidels by al-Qaeda in Iraq who sanctioned their indiscriminate killing. In 2007, a series of coordinated car bombs killed nearly 800 of them.

The Islamic State began a campaign of destroying their cities and villages in 2014. It murdered nearly 3,000 of them, abducted 6,500, and sold 4,500 Yazidi women and girls into sexual slavery. Many of the abducted girls committed suicide. Nadia Murad, the Yazidi human rights activist and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner, was kidnapped and used as a sex slave.

Here I want to speak of the lesser-known connections between the Yazidis and Indians. We are not speaking here of the links through the overarching Indo-Iranian language family, but even there it should be noted that in this family the earliest node on the Iranian side is Avestan, which is literally identical to Vedic Sanskrit, and so the family should really be called the Vedic family, of which Indo-Aryan and Iranian are two daughters. These two subfamilies are connected in multiple ways through shared notions and history [1].

In the second millennium BCE, we have the Mitanni of Syria worshipping Vedic gods. Even prior to that in the third millennium BCE, the figure of Paśupati (Lord of Animals), an epithet of the Hindu deity Śiva, is seen in the famous eponymous seal of the Sarasvati-Sindhu Civilization, a memory of which was retained in the Indic groups who lived across Central Asia. Śiva’s son Skanda (also known as Kumāra, Murugan or Kārttikeya), the general of the gods, has peacock as his amount. The main deity of the Yazidis is the Peacock Angel, Taus Melek.

The peacock is native to the Indian subcontinent and it has long served as a symbol of royalty. We find images of the peacock going all the way back to the 3rd millennium BCE sites of the Sarasvati Civilization. The peacock is worshipped in the Pongal Festival in Tamil Nadu and revered all over India.

The Atharvaveda describes Kumāra as Agnibhuh or born of Agni, the fire god. The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa refers to him as the son of Rudra and the ninth form of Agni. The Taittirīya Āraṇyaka contains a Gāyatrī mantra for him. The Chāndogya Upaniṣad refers to Skanda as the “way that leads to wisdom.” The Baudhāyana Dharmasūtra provides additional names of Skanda, such as Mahāsena and Subrahmanya. The Skanda Purāṇa is devoted to the narrative of Kārttikeya. 12th-century image of Skanda from Andhra Pradesh Vedic gods in West Asia

Mitanni ruled northern Mesopotamia (including Syria) for about 300 years, starting 1600 BCE, out of their capital of Vasukhāni[2]. In a treaty between the Hittites and Mitanni, Indic deities Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra, and Nāsatya (Aśvins) are invoked. Their chief festival was the celebration of Viṣuva (solstice) very much like in India. It is not only the kings who had Sanskrit names; a large number of other Sanskrit names have also been unearthed in the records from the area.

The list of the Sanskrit names used in Syria and elsewhere was published by P. E. Dumont of the Johns Hopkins University, in the Journal of American Oriental Society in 1947, and one may see a summary of that in my own book chapter on Akhenaten, Sūrya, and the Ṛgveda[2]. The names of the main kings are (with the standard Sanskrit form or meaning inside brackets): The first Mitanni king was Sutarna I (good Sun). He was followed by Baratarna I (Paratarṇa, great Sun); Paraśukṣatra (ruler with axe); Saustatar (Saukṣatra, son of Sukṣatra, the good ruler); Paratarṇa II; Artadama (Ṛtadhāman, abiding in cosmic law); Sutarṇa II; Tushratta (Daśaratha or Tveṣaratha, having ten or fast chariots); and finally Matiwazza (Mativāja, whose wealth is thought), during whose lifetime the Mitanni state became a vassal to Assyria.

The peacock imagery adorns Yazidi shrines and houses of worship and other places. The attacks on them are a consequence of the Christian and the Muslim belief that the Peacock Angel is Satan or Iblis.

Across India, Iran and West Asia in the ancient world, the worshipers of Veda were called Devayājñi (or Devayasni), or deva-worshiper, of which the terms Sanātana Dharma or Vedic Dharma are synonyms. The name by which the Zoroastrians call their own religion is Mazdayasna (Sanskrit, medhā-yajña), or the religion of Ahura Mazda (Sanskrit Asura Medhā, Lord of Wisdom). Zarathushtra presented his religion as a rival to the religion of the devas (spelt now as daeva in Avestan), that is Devayasna. One can assume that before Zarathushtra, the Indo-Iranian speakers in West Asia were all Devayasni.
Devayasni worship

The Yazidis call themselves Daseni (Dawasen, pl.) which is the same as Devayasni, which confirms what we know from the Mitanni records about the history of that period. The word Yazidi is cognate with Sanskrit Yajata (worthy of worship) which in Old Persian (and Kashmiri) is Yazata [3],[4].

According to their folklore, the Great Flood compelled Yezidis to disperse to many countries including India, and they returned from these adoptive countries around 2000 BCE. From the archaeological record, the most plausible spread of Devayasna from India took place about 1900 BCE, soon after which Vedic gods begin to be mentioned in Mesopotamia and Syria.

Zarathushtra came from Bactria near Afghanistan and his new religion split the Deva-worshipping communities in the West from the ones in India. The 4,000-year estimate of the Yazidis on when they returned from India is consistent with this figure.

After the rise of Zoroastrianism, Devayasna survived for a pretty long time in West Asia. The evidence of the survival comes from the Deva- or Daiva-inscription of Iranian Emperor Xerxes (ruled 486–465 BC) in which the revolt by the deva worshipers in West Iran is directly mentioned. Xerxes announces[15]: “And among these countries, there was a place where previously Daiva [demons] were worshipped. Afterwards, by the grace of Ahuramazda, I destroyed that sanctuary of Daiva, and I proclaimed: The Daiva shall not be worshipped!” This, nearly 2,500 years ago, is an early record of the persecution suffered by the Devayasni, the ancestors of the Yazidis. This accusation of demon or devil worship was repeated later by Christians and Muslims.

The peacock was a sacred symbol to the Jats[6], an Indic group on the Eurasian Steppe, who served as a mediating agency between India, West Asia, and Europe.

Skanda/Murugan, together with the peacock mount, has been a popular deity in South India, which was strongly linked by sea-trade to West Asia and Europe. The story of the spread of the reverence for the peacock from India to Persia and beyond to Europe is well-known.

We see the centrality of Śiva and Skanda in the representation of their coins of the first-century Kushana kings in the deities Οηϸο (Oesho, Īśa = Śiva) and Σκανδo koμαρo (Skando Komaro, Skanda Kumara). The rule of the Kushanas extended to regions that border on today’s Yazidi lands. Skanda with his consorts (Painting by Raja Ravi Varma)

The Yazidi religion

The Yazidis have a rich spiritual tradition and their modern culture goes back to the 12th-century leader Shaykh Adi (died in 1162), a descendant of Marwan I, the fourth Umayyad Caliph, whose tomb is in Lalish in Northern Iraq that is now the focal point of Yazidi pilgrimage.

Some believe that Yazidism is a branch of the pre-Islamic, native religion of the Kurds. There are also similarities between the Yazidis and the Yaresan, that extends back in time to the pre-Zoroastrian Devayasnic religion of West Asia.

The Yazidis number approximately 800,000, including about 150,000 who have taken refuge in Europe. They describe themselves as believing in one true God, and they revere Taus Melek, the Peacock Angel who is an embodied form (avatar) of the infinite God. Six other angels assist Taus Melek and they are associated with the seven days of creation with Sunday as the day of Taus Melek. The peacock imagery adorns Yazidi shrines and houses of worship and other places. The attacks on them are a consequence of the Christian and the Muslim belief that the Peacock Angel is Satan or Iblis.

The Yazidi religion is a mystical, oral tradition consisting of hymns (qawls), that are sung by qawwāls. Parts of the tradition have now been transcribed as two holy books called the Kitab al-Jilwa (Book of Revelation) and the Mishefa Reş (Black Book).


The Yazidi calendar goes back to 4750 BCE. It appears that this is connected to the Indian King list that goes back to 6676 BCE, which is mentioned by the Greek historian Arrian in his account of Alexander’s campaign.Tawûsê Melek, the Peacock Angel

Given that many Yazidis claim to have originated in India, the veneration of the peacock may be a memory of this origin. In India, apart from the peacock as the vehicle of Skanda, it is also associated with Kṛṣṇa, who wears a peacock feather in his hair or in the crown. Of the seven colours produced from the primal rainbow, Tausi Melek is associated with the colour blue, which is also the colour of Kṛṣṇa.

Through his manifestation as a snake, Taus Melek is consistent with the perspective of the yogis of India, for whom the serpent on the tree is a metaphor for the inner serpent (kundalini) that coils around the spine.

Yazidis pray in the direction of the sun, excepting for the noon prayer which is in the direction of Lalish. They believe in reincarnation and they take it that the angels (with the exception of Taus Melek) have been incarnated on earth as holy people or saints. Just like the Hindus, they use the metaphor of a change of garment to describe the process of rebirth.

Like other Indo-European cultures, the Yazidi society is tripartite, with the three classes of Shaykh (priests), Pir (elders), and Murid (commoners) and they marry only within their group. Their society does not allow conversion. The Shaykhs are divided into Faqirs, Qawwals, and Kochaks. The secular leader is a hereditary Mīr or prince, whereas Bābā Shaykh heads the religious hierarchy.

The Yazidi calendar goes back to 4750 BCE. It appears that this is connected to the Indian King list that goes back to 6676 BCE, which is mentioned by the Greek historian Arrian in his account of Alexander’s campaign. (More on this is in my book The Astronomical Code of the Ṛgveda.)

During the New Year celebration, bronze lamps crowned with peacocks, called Sanjaks, which are similar to the bronze peacock ārati-lamps, are taken from the residence of the Mīr in a processional by the qawwals through the Yazidi villages. It is believed that the Sanjaks came from India, and originally there were seven, one for each of the Seven Sacred Angels, but five were taken away by the Turks, and now only two remain.

The Yazidis are a symbol of mankind’s indomitable will. As a persecuted people in world history, they deserve praise and support for their courage and bravery in the face of the greatest odds.

Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.

References
[1] S. Kak, Vedic elements in the ancient Iranian religion of Zarathushtra. Adyar Library Bulletin 67: 47–63 (2003)
[2] S. Kak, Akhenaten, Sūrya, and the Ṛgveda. In G.C. Pande (ed.), A Golden Chain of Civilizations: Indic, Iranic, Semitic, and Hellenic up to C. 600. (2007)
[3] B. Acikyildiz, The Yezidis. I.B. Tauris (2010)
[4] E.S. Drower, Peacock Angel. London (1941)
[5] The Achaemenid Royal Daiva Inscription of Xerxes.
[6] P. Thankappan Nair, The peacock cult in Asia. Asian Folklore Studies 33: 93–170 (1974)

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Subhash Kak

Padma Shri Awardee, Author, scientist. Quantum information, AI, history of science.

Yazidis still displaced in their own country

Years after the Yazidi massacre by the "Islamic State," tens of thousands of survivors still aren't able to return home. In Iraqi Kurdistan, a German aid worker is trying to help these refugees.

The Mam Rashan camp is bigger than a town, with some 1,500 families living there

A wide gravel road extends into the distance and blurs into the horizon. To the left is a sea of corrugated metal containers and electric poles — beyond that, nothing. This is where the Mam Rashan camp ends.

The refugee camp in the Nineveh district of the autonomous Kurdistan region is like a small town. Over 1,500 Yazidi families live here. Jan Jessen, a German journalist and development aid worker, is a regular visitor to the area in northern Iraq.

German aid worker Jan Jessen (left) is a regular visitor to the region

Today, he's meeting up with Mezafar Berges Matto, a friendly Yazidi man in his late 30s who seems much older. He and his family were just able to escape "Islamic State" (IS) terrorists and have been living in Mam Rashan since December 2015.

They sit in their living room, a small 10-square-meter area about the size of a car parking space with a walnut-colored PVC floor and an unpleasant blue light filtered through cigarette smoke. As a group of wide-eyed children turn up — some belonging to Berges Matto, some from nearby homes — his wife serves tea and water.

'They wanted to force us to change religion'

When Jessen asks Berges Matto to recount his story, the man clasps his hands together, breathes deeply and nods. Silence falls over the room as he recounts how his family were living in a village in Sinjar when IS militants turned up.

"They came and captured us. They wanted to force us to change religion," he explains, saying it was a miracle that he and his family were able to escape into the mountains.

They were lucky. According to the US-based NGO Yazda, some 12,000 people were kidnapped or killed in the first week of what the UN has characterized as the Yazidi genocide in August 2014.

Thousands were forced to flee, and many died as a result. IS fighters killed older people, along with those who were too weak to flee and those who refused to convert to Islam. They kidnapped and indoctrinated children. Boys were trained to become IS fighters, and women and girls were sold into sexual slavery. Thousands of Yazidis are still missing. Many mass graves have been found, but not all of them have been exhumed.

At the camp, children try to keep themselves distracted with soccer and other activities

But the "Islamic State" was driven out in 2017, so why have some 300,000 displaced Yazidis still not been able to go home? To find out, DW traveled west to Sinjar, a predominantly Yazidi region before the IS invasion.

The landscape changes drastically as the SUV arrives in the section controlled by Baghdad. Barbed wire, watchtowers and machine guns line the road, which runs through a barren landscape of empty houses, bombed-out cars and mountains of rubble and plastic waste. It feels like another country.

Checkpoints appear every 200 meters (219 yards) or so — and the car is stopped at every other one. Sometimes that means waiting for hours. Jessen gets out of the car to smoke a cigarette, calm despite the presence of soldiers armed with US-made M16 assault rifles and Russian-made Kalashnikovs. Hand grenades and other ammunition hang out of their vest pockets, which are decorated with skulls.

Eventually, the soldiers let the car pass, the decision to stop travelers seemingly made at random.

Various factions are operating in the volatile region of northern Iraq

Sinjar's volatile security situation keeps many away

"There are different problems in different regions," explains Thomas Schmidinger, a political scientist and cultural anthropologist who conducts research on ethnic and religious minorities in the Middle East.

The situation is particularly tense in Sinjar, which is crowded with various militias belonging to different factions: the People's Protection Units (YPG), which is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), recognized by the US and the EU as a terrorist organization; the Popular Mobilization Forces, supported in part by Iran; the peshmerga, the Kurdish branch of the Iraqi forces; and numerous other representatives of the Iraqi army. At the same time, Turkey regularly bombs the area, which is home to Kurdish insurgent groups who have demanded separation from Turkey.

The volatile security situation is the main reason not all Yazidis want to come back. And for many survivors, it's simply unthinkable to come back to a place inhabited by their tormentors. "Quite a few supporters and even active IS fighters [were] living in the Arab villages and towns near the Yazidi settlements, and some of them still live there," says Schmidinger.

NEW HOPE FOR YAZIDI WOMEN TORTURED BY IS FIGHTERS

Hoping for help

Perwin Ali Baku escaped the Islamic State after more than two years in captivity. The 23-year-old Yazidi woman was captured together with her 3-year-old daughter. "I don't feel right," she says, sitting on a mattress on the floor of her father-in-law's small hut in a northern Iraq refugee camp. "I still can't sleep and my body is tense all the time."

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Projects to help people 'start anew'

But a few families have returned to the town of Sinun to the north of Sinjar — which, according to Schmidinger, is somewhat safer. Caritas-Flüchtlingshilfe Essen, the refugee NGO for which Jessen works, set up a greenhouse project here last year.

"We are trying to set up projects to make it easier for people to start anew if they come back," he explains, blinking into the afternoon sun with the Sinjar Mountains behind him. Nearby, hoses distribute water among the greenhouses, where mostly cucumbers and herbs grow under white tarpaulin.

"The people coming back do not have jobs. The infrastructure is broken, and the security situation is difficult. But most of all they do not have jobs," said Jessen.

The greenhouse project is to show the returning Yazidis that it's possible to make money growing plants. A family can earn as much as $150 (€130) with one greenhouse — and they can eat their own produce as well.


Thousands of Yazidi children are looking for a brighter future

'I just want to survive'

But what's really necessary is a political solution to the conflict, says Schmidinger. "All the local actors have to agree. Otherwise, there will not be a peaceful solution for Sinjar."

Mezafar Berges Matto and his family plan to stay in Mam Rashan until the political situation back home is clearer. They feel safe here, even if they don't have much space.

Ajad, who is 10, is dressed like children everywhere, in an FC Barcelona tracksuit and sporting a digital watch. But he has a very specific dream: "I just want to survive," he says with a shy smile.

This article has been translated from German