Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

[Anthea]

The fragility of Armenia’s
largest ethnic minority

On a hot and dry September morning, the descendants of three Yazidi villages from the Armavir region in Armenia met at a cemetery on a hill, on the outskirts of the town of Sardarapat

Every village has its own annual cemetery festival, which is pegged to the cattle feeding seasons. “We remember our dead every year as an act of giving wellness,” said Sheikh Kenyas Sijaddin, a priest attending the festival.

Originally a religious minority from northern Iraq, Yazidis came to Armenia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The origins of the monotheistic religion are disputed because it does not have a book and its sacred songs are passed on orally from generation to generation.

In Armenia, Yazidis living in compact settlements preserved the secrets of their ageless religion, while developing their own distinct culture and history. “We know songs that are long forgotten in Iraq,” said Sheikh Tosun Shamsani, a priest from a nearby village in Armavir.

Over 300 people came to the cemetery on that day, many having travelled from Russia and Europe to visit the graves of their ancestors. “Armenia is our homeland. It is where our relatives are buried and we come to this cemetery every year to visit them,” explained Katya Broian, an Armenian-born Yazidi who lives in St Petersburg.

Armenian Yazidi village's cemetery festival

Broian’s father is buried at the Sardarapat cemetery. She, her sisters, mother, grandmother and aunts travelled from Russia to bring white flowers and mourn at the foot of his grave. At the request of another family, the priest Sijaddin stood in front of a grave, his palms facing up to the sky as he recited prayers for the dead. For the occasion, he wore a grey suit and crocodile shoes with the initials of a famous French fashion brand. The men of the deceased’s family each give him 1,000 drams (around £2). Older women, known as “bleeding hearts”, extolled elegies to the dead, sometimes sung, sometimes spoken.

“I don’t write or record anything, my words are spontaneous and they come from within,” said Lucik Safarian, an Armenian-born elderly woman who now lives in Georgia.

“There is a deep respect for the bleeding hearts when they sing,” said anthropologist Estelle Amy de la Breteque, who has documented the oral traditions of Yazidi villages in Armenia. “The women can raise their voices about the community’s political or social issues, without any interruption from men.”

But this event in Armenia may be among the last. “Every year, fewer people attend these ceremonies, because they live abroad,” bemoaned villager Temur Akmoyan.

The question of how to preserve the community is complex and related to Armenia’s own social and political struggles.

Every village has its own annual cemetery festival, pegged to the cattle feeding seasons

The World Bank estimates that 21.9 per cent of Armenians are unemployed. Just two years ago, one in four Armenians lived below the country’s national poverty line; in 2004, it was one in two. Over one million Armenian migrants are estimated to be working in Russia, and Armenia’s population of 2.9 million is on the decline. A war with Azerbaijan over the disputed territories of Nagorno-Karabakh was reignited on 27 September, plunging Armenia into further uncertainty.

For the Yazidis of Armenia, these national issues are a threat to the dwindling community’s survival. For Armenians, the departure of Yazidis would represent the erasure of the last trace of diversity in a country that is 98 per cent ethnic Armenian and Christian. Yazidis in Armenia number at just over 37,000 people, or 1.2 per cent of the Armenian population.

Behind the cemetery, on the other side of the hill, the Sardarapat Memorial commemorates an important battle for the city in 1918, which laid the foundations of modern-day Armenia. Like hundreds of thousands of Armenians, entire Yazidi villages were expelled from the Ottoman empire in 1915 by Constantinople authorities and their Kurdish Muslim mercenaries. In campaigns to defend the country’s current borders,

Yazidi battalions fought alongside the Armenians against the Ottoman armies

The Yazidis preserve memories of their expulsion from contemporary eastern Turkey in their oral traditions. In a village in Armenia’s Aparan region, the musician Savto Tamoyan sang one such epic lament. His voice carried through the wood and stone house, his words accompanied by two fellow musicians who played the duduk, an ancient Armenian flute.

“It’s the story of Uncle Alikhan who was killed by the Turks in 1915, while trying to save his nephew’s daughter. The nephew laments his death and asks God for revenge,” he explained, “We often play it at funerals, to make people cry. Crying for the dead is an important part of our tradition.”

In recent years, many of these laments have been adapted to commemorate the Yazidis killed by the Islamic State’s onslaught in their heartland of Sinjar, Iraq, in 2014.

Anahit Sharuef, from the Armenian Yazidi village of Ferik, recited a poem she had composed about the events. “I want to live, live and see my Sinjar mountain liberated, and covered with flowers instead of blood.”

This shared history of persecution forms part of a local narrative for Armenian Yazidis. “Yazidis and Armenians fought together in 1915 against the invading Turks, and again in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan,” said Sheikh Hasan Tamoyan, president of the Yazidi National Union, a longstanding and influential lobby group for Yazidi issues in Armenia.

There are streets and monuments dedicated to Yazidi war heroes in Yerevan, and in 2016, Armenia became among the first nations to officially recognise the Islamic State’s attacks on Yazidis in Sinjar as genocide.

“In Armenia, we could preserve our culture and religion. I always say that we are two nations with one homeland,” added Sheikh Hasan. The Soviet Union banned religion and commonly registered Yazidis as Kurds, who spoke the Kurdish dialect of Kurmanji. But, in 2002, at the request of the Yazidi National Union, the Armenian parliament recognised Yazidis as a distinct ethnic group,with its own language, Ezidki. The differences between Kurmanji and Ezdiki are disputed by academics, but Armenia is the only country in the world to list them as two separate languages.

Today, a small portion of Armenian Yazidis still identify as Kurds. But a younger generation of Yazidi activists today point to issues faced by the country’s largest ethnic minority. “Yazidis say that Armenia is the best country for their survival as a community,” said Sashik Sultanyan, a Yerevan-based human rights advocate, “but this silences the challenges that Yazidis face with regards to their labour rights and education. The consequences of this are migration or assimilation.”

Sultanyan has been documenting instances of workplace discrimination against Yazidis and other minorities in Armenia, which he believes are widespread. “We need more competent policies that will integrate our national minorities, while letting them preserve and practice their culture,” he added.

Armenia’s rural poverty and lack of infrastructure also appear to be contributing to the community’s decline. The isolated village of Sorik, on the closed border with Turkey, is one of the biggest Yazidi villages remaining in Armenia. “We used to share this village with Armenian refugees from Iran,” said Vasir, the head of the village, pointing to the well-known Yazidi writers and Armenian diplomats who were born in Sorik. On top of the hill overlooking the village is the cemetery and a new shrine that was built with donations from an expatriate who now lives in Germany. Next to it lies a fallen meteorite which attracts foreign scientists every year.

Both Christians and Yazidis from nearby villages visit this rock and consider it to be sacred, lighting candles and placing icons around it. The ruins of a former Kurdish Muslim settlement appear at the bottom of the valley. But despite Sorik’s rich history, the winding road from the nearest town of Talin is so ragged and neglected that it takes over 40 minutes to drive 15 kilometres. The road closes permanently in winter time, once the snow sets in, and there is no public transport from the village. “In the Soviet Union we had a bus that drove us into town,” said Vasir, “If we could get a better road and a new bus, many problems would be resolved.” On the other side of the mountain, the isolated border village of Kanch, better known by its Yazidi name of Gialto, had few villagers left.

Sinjar poem by Anahit Sharuef, from the Armenian Yazidi village of Ferik

“We came from Kars, in eastern Turkey and settled here in 1920. This year, we will celebrate our village’s centenary,” said Pir Kulijan, a local priest. The ruins of abandoned homes stood out as we drove into the desolate village. “We used to be 80 families, today we are 15. I thank God that we can keep our identity in Armenia.”

In the Soviet Union, Armenia’s Yazidis became the custodians of the Kurdish language and culture. A Cyrillic script for Kurdish was devised in 1948 by the Yazidi scholar Haciye Cindi. The Yazidi author Arab Shamilov’s biographical novel The Kurdish Shepherd, published in Armenia in 1927, is widely considered the first Kurdish novel.

The Yerevan Public Radio’s daily Kurdish-language programme was broadcast into Iraq, Syria and eastern Turkey at a time when the Kurdish language was suppressed by nationalist regimes in those countries. “Kurdish people from the Middle East visit the radio today because they grew up on the songs that were recorded and broadcast from Yerevan during their childhood,” said the programme’s current broadcaster, Titale Kerem.

But today, activists have raised concerns about education levels among the Yazidi community. “The quality of education in Yazidi-only villages is poor. Few schools teach to high school level. Too many children leave school early and don’t pursue a higher education,” said Yerevan-based journalist and school teacher Zemfira Kalashyan, who recently published a report on the education of Yazidis in Armenia.

In Ferik, headmaster Levon Boghossian attempted to paint a positive image of his establishment. “All but one family sends their children to our school. The children learn the national syllabus and we provide extra lessons for their own language and culture,” he said. On the walls of the classroom are illustrated posters of Cindi’s alphabet, and portraits of the medieval scholar Meshrop Mashtots, who devised the Armenian script. But in a village of 213 children under the age of 18, the school takes just 46 pupils from the ages of six to 16, according to the mayor Rustam Hasanyan.

The school has only five classes, and in each, children of different school years are taught together. Shinam, a great-grandmother and influential elder of the village, lamented the decline in education standards. When we met at her home, her great-grandchildren played on the sofa, and other villagers gathered around as she spoke.“We need more classes and better teachers for our children. Even their parents didn’t learn enough at school, so they don’t see the value in education,” she said.

Children at the school in Ferik learn the national syllabus and their own language, with the help of Cindi’s alphabet

She recalled an anecdote from her own schooling in the Soviet Union: “One week, I had to memorise musical notes in order. I could not sing ‘do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do’, so I skipped school. The teacher told my parents, who scolded me. So I learnt to sing the notes. We don’t have this rigour and discipline today,” she said.

Part of the issue is that some more conservative families avoid sending their children to school and discourage education for girls. “If the educational levels were better it would resolve these issues,” added Kalashyan. Shinam was 11 when she left school. “I was the eldest of seven sisters and three brothers. My parents became my teachers,” she said. Yet she placed high value on the education of her great-grandchildren. “They’re the only pupils doing well at the school. That’s because, as a family, we push them to study.”

But many believed the government should provide more support. Currently, national minorities can apply for free education in their first year of university, to study a subject related to their minority’s language or culture. “But the job prospects from those subjects are so low that few people take this opportunity. Those resources would be better spent on improving high school education,” said Kalashyan. For Shinam, the consequences of these educational problems was clear. “Our village is in decline. Young people go to work abroad, and they never come back,” she said.

In 2018, a peaceful uprising across Armenia, known as the Velvet Revolution, provided hope for change. The new government led by prime minister Nikol Pashinyan promised to clamp down on corruption, diversify its foreign investment and reduce the country’s dependence on Russia.

Some changes have been felt at a domestic level. In 2019, the government announced that the shadow economy, the amount of untaxed profits in the country, stood at 22 per cent. This is a reduction of four per cent since the new government took over a year earlier, they said. And some Armenians from the diaspora have returned to set up new businesses.

At the time of writing, before the conflict resumed in Nagorno-Karabakh, Yazidi villages were hopeful that the revolution would bring new investment to their farming businesses. “Today, we sell meat and milk. But we also produce a lot of sheep’s wool and we’re looking for someone to buy it,” said villager Murad Usoyan, of Riya Taza, a village in the Aparan region. Back in Ferik, Sharuef read a poem which she had composed for the new prime minister: “Priceless mothers, our kind sisters, let your path be green, give birth to a son like Nikol, a lord and a protector to Armenia.”

However, the impact of the Yazidi community’s migration out of Armenia may be irreparable. From her living room in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, Lucik Safarian, the bleeding heart, sang a mourning song dedicated to those who had migrated and lived away from their families. “It’s a shame you don’t speak our language,” she told me, as her daughter poured us tea and served sugared figs, “Or you would be crying too.”

Safarian became a bleeding heart in her late 30s. “My father died and I felt a great sadness. I locked myself in my room. The words just came out of me,” she recalled. “I have lost many family members since then, so my sadness grew and grew. It comes to me when I sing.” She is often invited to sing at funerals. “She can make anyone cry,” said her daughter Leila, “Even at weddings, when she tries to sing happy songs, she bursts into sad ones. We have to ask her to stop singing.”

There are fewer bleeding hearts today. Safarian’s recent experience of a Yazidi funeral in Germany revealed how migration has caused these traditions to die out. She sang at the funeral through an online video call from her living room in Tbilisi. “Nobody in their community could sing for the man who had died, so they contacted me” she said, “The dead man’s daughters sat with their hands on their knees, looking down at the floor, unable to find the emotions.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 03313.html

[Anthea]

Return Plan Is Full of Risk

The Yazidis of northern Iraq are an ancient religious minority. Islamic State forces brought suffering to the group in a series of targeted attacks six years ago. Now, many Yazidis want peace, security and a better life in their hometown of Sinjar, but a new plan for the area has them worried

Iraq’s central government and Kurdish officials released the new security and reconstruction plan last week. The two praised the measure as a “historic” agreement.

Many Yazidis distrust the plan.

“The deal could pacify Sinjar - but it might also make the situation even worse,” said Talal Saleh, a Yazidi who lives in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The Yazidis have suffered since Islamic State (IS) fighters invaded Sinjar in 2014. The invasion and its violence shocked Western countries into military action to stop it.

ISIS considered the Yazidis as devil worshippers for their religion, which combines Zoroastrian, Christian, Manichean, Jewish and Muslim beliefs.

The Islamic State killed more than 3,000 Yazidis and enslaved 7,000 women and girls. The invasion pushed the 550,000 community of Yazidis off their homeland. Most now live in refugee camps in Kurdistan

United States-supported Kurdish forces ousted ISIS fighters from Sinjar in 2015. Since then, the Iraqi army and competing armed groups have taken control of the town and surrounding areas. The groups include Shi’ite Muslim militia, and Yazidi and Kurdish militants with different loyalties.

Under the government plan, Iraqi forces would guarantee security and permit the return of tens of thousands of Yazidis. Many have been afraid to return because of a lack of security and services, said the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.

But many Yazidis feel the plan is unclear and created by officials in Baghdad and Erbil, the Kurdish capital. The Yazidis say they were not included in the planning, and the security reforms could lead to more division and violence.

“The PKK and their Yazidi allies are not just going to leave Sinjar without a fight,” Saleh said.

The security plan includes the removal of the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group. It has long fought against Turkey’s government and bases itself in northern Iraq.

The plans also call for the ouster of PKK supporters, which includes a Yazidi force of hundreds of fighters.

The PKK helped thousands of Yazidis escape to Syria during the ISIS invasion after the Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga forces retreated. The peshmerga returned to help recapture Sinjar.

The PKK is under attack by Turkish forces in Iraq. It exists uneasily alongside the peshmerga and the Iraqi army.

The plan says the Iraqi army and the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) would oversee the removal of the PKK. That information comes from a copy of the plan seen by Reuters news agency.

The PMF is a paramilitary group made up mostly of Shi’ite militias.

Some people fear this could split up families where members sometimes belong to different militias, armed forces and groups. The Yazidis have their own force in the PMF.

“There are about six political groups in Sinjar now. Brothers belonging to the same family each join different parties,” said Akram Rasho. He is another displaced Yazidi living in Kurdistan.

But Iraqi and Kurdish officials are defending the plan.

“This is a good step to solve problems,” said a Kurdish government spokesman.

Sinjar has also been caught up in a land dispute between Iraq’s central government and Kurdistan since a failed Kurdish attempt for full independence in 2017.

The plan calls for the Baghdad and Erbil governments to choose new leaders for Sinjar and appoint a 2,500-member security force. Supporters of the PKK suspect that force would include returning Yazidis who are with the peshmerga.

I’m Susan Shand.

The Reuters News Agency reported this story. Susan Shand adapted it for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/f ... 24372.html

[Anthea]

Shingal men hope for police jobs

Nearly 8,000 people have registered to be policemen in Shingal as part of a recent agreement to improve security in the disputed area

“We are young people from Shingal. We’ve come here to register to be policemen as it was agreed upon by Baghdad and the Kurdistan Region. We are jobless and have come to be employed,” said Najim Khid.

A “historic” agreement was signed on October 9 over security and governance in Shingal, which lies in territory disputed between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

A number of groups have vied for control of the strategic district near the Syrian border since its liberation from the Islamic State (ISIS).

Ahmad Mulla Talal, spokesperson for Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi said that 2,500 people - 1,500 Yezidis from IDP camps and 1,000 young men from Shingal - would form a force responsible for security in the region.

Applicants should be between 18 to 35, must hold a sixth-grade certificate, be in good health and not have a criminal record.

A new mayor will also be elected and rehabilitation and administration of Shingal will be jointly coordinated by Erbil and Baghdad, according to the agreement.

“2,500 people is not enough for Shingal, there will still be unemployed people. We want them to increase the number, either for the police or another kind of employment. A lot of us are unemployed,” said Mushin Murad.

According to Shingal Mayor Mahma Khalil, unemployment stands at 60 percent.

“If this recruitment is implemented, unemployment will decrease among people of Shingal without any political or religious discrimination,” he told Rudaw.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/281020201

[Anthea]

Shingal struggles to cope with COVID-19

Shingal is struggling to cope with a coronavirus outbreak and is neglected by authorities, according to doctors and local officials

According to Shingal’s health directorate, more than 600 people are infected with coronavirus, and 34 people have died in the past two weeks.

“Our situation is very severe. There is no doctor in our village. We thank Doctors Without Borders, when we come here they provide us with tablets and medicines,” said Latifa Mohammed.

Twenty-four Arab villages in Shingal district have no health centres, and Yezidi areas are also severely neglected.

Doctors Without Borders, an international organization supported by Mosul’s health directorate, are working to serve local residents, creating an “isolation area” for COVID-patients.

However, the mayor of Shingal says the district is being neglected by authorities.

“We told Mosul authorities to tell the Iraqi government to build a 50 to 100-bed hospital for coronavirus patients like all other cities. I have the document in which I said we are in a state of emergency. So far we haven’t had any answers,” said Shingal Mayor Mahma Khalil.

“They have sent some of the budget to Mosul for coronavirus treatment, but they have neglected Shingal” he said.

Yezidi residents of Shingal previously warned of a "disaster" in the area if it were hit by a COVID-19 outbreak.

Shingal, the heartland of Iraq's Yezidi minority, was overrun by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014, when the terror group launched a brutal genocide against the ethnoreligious community. Much of the district still lies in ruins.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/291020201

[Anthea]

Yazidis react to Sinjar accord
amid growing KRG-PKK tensions

In the days following the Oct. 9 security agreement between the Baghdad and Erbil governments on the disputed territory of Sinjar, a Yazidi delegation traveled to the Iraqi capital to meet with Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) chief Abu Fadak al-Mohammadawi

The delegation requested the PMU’s help to ensure that local armed groups close to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) be allowed to continue operating. The Yazidi Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) were trained by the PKK after the Islamic State (ISIS) occupied their area, and many consider them an affiliate of the group.

The PKK has long been designated an international terrorist organization by the United States, European Union and Turkey, and long-simmering tensions have been rising recently between it and the Kurdistan Region Government (KRG).

The agreement, backed by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), aims to put an end to disaccord over security arrangements and a lack of public services, in part by bringing in a unified administration. Many embassies and international organizations have praised it.

Observers and locals had long decried the confusing array of armed groups operating in the area and cited this as a major reason why many internally displaced persons had not returned, noting that it is a barrier to reconstruction. This had also negatively affected the ability of international aid organizations to provide assistance due to security concerns and time-consuming bureaucratic hurdles.

Sinjar came to international attention in mid-2014 after ISIS waged a brutal campaign in the city and surrounding area against the Yazidi religious group, kidnapping and killing thousands. Mass graves have yet to be exhumed and it is still unclear what happened to many women who were abducted with the intention of selling them as slaves to be raped and exploited by the transnational terrorist group.

It is part of the northwestern Ninevah province, the capital of which is Mosul, and is along the border with Syria. Inhabitants include Muslim Kurds and both Sunni and Shiite Arabs as well as the largest community of the Yazidi religious minority in the world.

The Oct. 9 agreement calls for a new mayor of Sinjar to be elected by a joint committee and the mayor of Mosul, PKK fighters to be removed and a new security force of 2,500 members to be established in the area.

A Kurdish security official who has been working in Sinjar since 2014 told Al-Monitor via WhatsApp Oct. 26 that the PKK is a major problem in the area. He asked not to be named due to security concerns. Another security official that this journalist met with in reporting from Sinjar in 2016 has since then reportedly been the target of assassination attempts allegedly by one of the various armed groups operating in the area and has been transferred elsewhere.

The official who is still working in Sinjar claimed the PKK continues to create problems in the area especially through “interference in the administrative affairs of the Sinjar district and its environs by appointing the directors of illegal districts with the PMU’s blessing and assistance,” “abduction of youths under the age of 18 of both sexes,” “digging tunnels in all areas of Mount Sinjar and preventing shepherds from reaching their areas,” “arresting anyone who is not in line with their ideology and detaining them in secret prisons of their own in the mountains” and “bringing officers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to Mount Sinjar and identifying strategic locations on the mountain to make them into sites for the PKK to use.”

The claim that the PKK continues to abduct teenagers and adolescents to recruit them to fight has been voiced by many to this journalist both in Syria and in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, including close to the Iranian border in September. Security officials have also repeatedly told this journalist that collaboration between the PKK and Iran-linked armed groups in the area is of concern.

Some say the burning Oct. 17 of the Baghdad offices of the KRG’s ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party was actually a reaction by Shiite-led armed groups connected with the PMU to the Sinjar agreement.

A statement by “Yazidi Elites, Leaders, and Institutions Regarding the ‘Sinjar Agreement’ between Baghdad and Erbil” welcomed the agreement, and the fact that the “two governments prioritized the situation in Sinjar in their negotiations” on territories disputed between the central government and the KRG.

It stressed, however, that “there are dangerous implications in the agreement that could lead to a disaster,” and set out points that should be addressed to avoid this, focusing on greater involvement of the Yazidis.

Though it did not specifically name fighters from the YBS, the statement urged that “all forces” active in the area be incorporated in the security mechanism, while stressing that all foreign fighters must be deported, in an apparent nod to the PKK.

Signatory Mirza Dinnayi is a Sinjar native and prominent activist who managed to get thousands of Yazidi women and children who had suffered at the hands of IS to Germany for medical and psychological treatment.

In speaking to Al-Monitor over WhatsApp Oct. 26, Dinnayi said that the Yazidi community was concerned that the agreement implies that new armed groups will be brought in so as to “ignore the YBS and all the other local forces in the region” and “this will make a new conflict."

He opined that the best option was to “disarm these groups in the region so that the youth, the young Yazidis from Sinjar who joined the YBS and other volunteer groups or the PMU” can be integrated into the local police, army or border police.

He stressed that “any and all foreign fighters” must leave the area and that even though the PKK had assisted the Yazidis in protecting civilians during the fight against ISIS, there is no reason for them to remain now.

It is also important, Dinnayi said, to “upgrade” Sinjar from a district to a governorate to protect minority groups and enable them to be better represented in parliament.

On the meeting between some the Yazidis and the PMU in Baghdad earlier this month, he noted, “We don’t need any kind of participation [in] or engagement with the forces that are against the presence of the US. We think that the US is a very good friend of ours: of Iraq first, generally, [and] of the minorities especially.”

“I think this small group of people who are actually in the PMU and who visited Abu Fadak and the others, I think they did not want to be part of the anti-US militia. They did that because they have concerns that there will be a new occupation of Yazidi areas and they don’t know what to do,” he concluded.

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/origin ... n-pmu.html

[Anthea]

Two New Yazidi Mass Graves Opened

After pausing activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Iraqi authorities have resumed the exhumations of mass graves, with support from the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/ISIL (UNITAD) and the International Committee for Missing Persons (ICMP), and in cooperation with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Yazda Organization.

On Saturday (24/10) Iraqi experts from the Mass Graves Directorate (MGD), under the leadership of Mr. Dia’ Karim Sa’idi, and the Medico-Legal Directorate (MLD), under the leadership of Dr. Zeid Ali Abbas, started exhumations in the mass graves left by ISIL in Solagh and Kojo, Ninewa Governorate.

Representatives of the Government of Iraq, the National Coordination Committee (NCC), the Yazidi community, UNITAD, ICMP, and IOM were in attendance. Also attending were around 300 people, including many relatives of missing persons. The ceremony and operations were held under appropriate protection by the security forces.

Link to Full Article:

https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/gover ... -isil-enar

[Anthea]

Two more Yezidis rescued

Two Yezidi women abducted by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014 were rescued from Syria’s al-Hol camp on Saturday and are expected to return to their homes to Duhok in the next few days, authorities have told Rudaw English

The women, between 17 and 20 years old, are from Kocho village and Ozer, a sub-district of Shingal in western Nineveh province, the director of the Office for Yezidi Abductees' Affairs Hussein Qaid told Rudaw English on Monday.

They were found on October 29 and were later rescued from al-Hol camp by the Office's "special teams", according to Qaid.

Approximately 6,418 Yezidis were kidnapped when ISIS overran the Yezidi heartland of Shingal in August 2014. Women and young girls were sold into sexual slavery, with young boys forced to fight for the terror group. According to the Office for Yezidi Abductees' Affairs, 3,542 have been rescued - including 1,204 women.

Thousands were killed and in what has been recognized by many countries as a genocide against the small ethno-religious community.

"The international community should have given more attention to this, to help us rescue those still in captivity at Al-Hol camp or other places." Qaid added.

Six years on, nearly 200,000 Yazidis are still displaced, many living in camps hours away from their homeland of Shingal, according to recent assessments by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Exhumation of mass graves by the Iraqi government recently resumed in the Shingal village of Solagh with the help of Kurdistan Regional Government and other international organizations. The village, close to Kocho, was the site of a massacre of many elderly Yezidi women in August 2014.

Approximately 68,000 people – including Syrians and Iraqis as well as those of foreign nationality – live in al-Hol camp. Nearly two thirds, approximately 43,000, are children.

Conditions at al-Hol, home to the vast majority of ISIS-linked women and children, have been almost universally recognized as unsuitable, with poor sanitary conditions and overcrowding.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) detailed the "filthy and often inhuman and life-threatening conditions" at the camp in a report published in June.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeas ... /021120201

[Anthea]

Holy festival of Jamaya Shibel Qasim

Last year, Yezidis Khalil Hemmo and his now wife Raniya Edui came to the temple of Shibel Qasim to pray for marriage



Now that they have tied the knot, they are back at the Yezidi Holy figure’s shrine to express their gratitude.

“Before we got married, we came up to this tree, the tree of objectives, last year. We tied our love knot to the tree,” recalled Hemmo to Rudaw. “Thanks be to God, we are now a married couple. We are back here together. We are here to mark the feast of Jamaya with our friends.”

Around a thousand Yezidis gathered on Mount Shingal over the weekend for the festival of Jamaya Shibel Qasim.

The ethno-religious minority mark the two-day festival annually in October by making pilgrimage to the holy shrine of the figure, who is believed to fulfill ambitions.

A piece of cloth is tied to a sacred tree located outside of the shrine, where pilgrims pray for their dreams to come true.

A large number of those who marked the festival, which ended on Saturday, are lovers.

“As a lover, I am here today, tying my love knot to the tree wishing for my dream to come true. I hope anyone who is in a love relationship would come up here,” Aliyas Khadida told Rudaw. “I am praying for God to help all the lovers to tie the knot.”

Shibel Qasim is the "father of ambitions," noted shrine visitor Khatoon Omer. “Many people come up to Shibel Qasim, men and women to fulfill their ambitions, or mothers praying to bear a child.”

Jeli Aliyas, the shrine’s caretaker, noted the importance of preserving traditions.

“This is an old festival. God willing, the Yezidis will not give up on their festivals,” he told Rudaw.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/021120202

[Anthea]

Speed up security agreement

Hundreds of people attended a protest in Shingal (Sinjar) on Sunday, calling on the governments of Iraq and the Kurdistan Region to implement their agreement on the security and governance of the area so that thousands of displaced Yezidis can return to their homeland

Around 400 people attended the protest at Shingal's Sharaf al-Din, a shrine for the Yezidi ethnoreligious community that calls the area home.

“Shingal has been through so much suffering and adversity, we want peace and security to be enforced,” said Khalaf Hadi, mayor of Kolka village in Shingal district, Nineveh province.

There were at least 3 other protests in different camps around Duhok province, where most Yezidis displaced from Shingal live.

Shingal, the heartland of Iraq's Yezidi community, was overrun in 2014 by the Islamic State. The terror group committed a brutal genocide against the Yezidis, targeting them for their non-Islamic faith.

Six years on, much of Shingal still lies in ruins

Security in the area currently handled by a number of armed groups and militias, including the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, also known as Hashd al-Shaabi), the Shingal Resistance Units (YBS, linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party), Iraqi army, federal police, Yezidkhan Protection Forces (founded by a local Yezidi leader), and Peshmerga.

Erbil and Baghdad struck a deal for the governance and security of the Shingal area early last month. Under the deal, security for the region is to be provided by forces made up of the local population, but under federal government control.

Attendees of the protest told Rudaw that militias are endangering local women and children.

Many people “from Siba (Kheikh Khdr), Tal Ozer, Grzark, Hayali… don’t dare come back because of the existence PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), they are scared for their girls” protester Zerifa Ahmed said.

Another protester, Harbia Hassan, asked that the militias be removed from Shingal and for mass graves containing the bodies of Yezidis killed by ISIS to be exhumed.

Children aren't attending school, and some "are forced to hold weapons,” Harbia said.

Approximately 6,418 Yezidis were kidnapped when ISIS overran Shingal. Women and young girls were sold into sexual slavery, with young boys forced to fight for the terror group. According to the Office for Yezidi Abductees' Affairs, 3,542 of those kidnapped have been rescued.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/081120201

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Shingal agreement

Iraq’s national security advisor visited Shingal (Sinjar in Arabic) on Monday to discuss the recent developments in a deal struck between Erbil and Baghdad on security and administration in the disputed district

Former Iraqi Interior Minister and current National Security Advisor Qasim al-Araji visited the area on Monday a day after residents of the Yezidi homeland took to the streets calling for the deal to be put into action.

“We are working on implementing the agreement, in addition to forming a local police force in the city, the federal forces will take care of the process,” he told Rudaw’s Tahsin Qasim.

“In the upcoming days, we will take steps toward returning Yezidi IDPs to their homes in collaboration with the Kurdistan Regional Government,” he added.

The Iraqi government and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) signed a "historic" agreement on October 9 to resolve a number of issues preventing displaced Shingalis from returning to the area.

Al-Araji’s visit came in response to a demonstration of hundreds of residents on Sunday, calling on the two governments to implement the agreement on the security and governance of the area so that thousands of displaced Yezidis can return to their homeland.

“We will not accept for them to deny us our rights, we have given too many lives,” said the head of the Khanasor Council, Dakheel Murad during the demonstration

“Shingal has been through so much suffering and adversity, we want peace and security to be enforced,” said Khalaf Hadi, mayor of Kolka village in Shingal district, Nineveh province.

Protests against the deal have also taken place, with demonstrators saying it acted against the will of Shingal's locals who were not consulted.

Under the Erbil-Baghdad agreement, security for the troubled region will be Baghdad's responsibility. The federal government will have to establish a new armed force recruited from the local population and expel fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and their affiliated groups, according to details released last month.

The PKK participated in the defeat of the Islamic State (ISIS) in the Yezidi homeland of Shingal and supports the all-Yezidi YBS, - one of some six armed groups currently operating in the area.

A top analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG) has advised against the exclusion of the armed groups from decisions about the area's future.

"There are some tensions around this as it will create a new force and this could potentially be a competition with the others. So it will be very important for the implementation of this agreement to ensure that various factions are either integrated into this force or there are other alternatives to them," the ICG's senior Iraq analyst Lahib Higel told Rudaw in October.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/101120201

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Yezidi boy returns home after ISIS captivity

A nine-year-old Yezidi boy found in Turkey was reunited with his family on Thursday after six years of Islamic State (ISIS) captivity

“Our teams from the Ministry have been working on his case in the Turkish embassy for over a year,” Ali Abbas, Spokesman for Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement told Rudaw on Thursday.

Barzan Ibrahim was only two years old when ISIS attacked the Yezidi heartland of Shingal, in Nineveh province. His parents were later killed and he was taken in by an Arab family from Tal Afar, who then migrated to Turkey and took Barzan with them, Abbas said.

“After medical tests his family was found and he was returned to his uncle,” he added.

ISIS took over large swathes of Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014. Iraq’s Yezidi minority was particularly targeted by ISIS, which invaded Shingal in August 2014, launching a genocide against the community. Thousands were killed and taken into captivity.

Approximately 6,418 Yezidis were kidnapped during the genocide, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Office for Abducted Yezidi Affairs. More than 3,500 have been rescued.

Several Yezidi children have been found with ISIS-linked families in Turkey.

A delegation from the Iraqi Migration and Displacement Ministry, headed by its minister Ivan Faiaq is in Turkey organizing the return of Iraqi refugees.

“193 refugees arrived back home today in Iraqi Ministry of Transportation buses,” Abbas said, “So far 8,000 Iraqi refugees have been returned back to the country from Turkey.”

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeas ... y/13112020

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Yezidis Elect New Spiritual Leader

The ethnoreligious Yezidi (Ezidi) minority group on Saturday elected Ali Elias Haji Nasir as their new top spiritual leader, also known as Baba Sheikh, succeeding the late Khartu Hajji Ismael, who passed away early last month



The announcement came in Kurdistan Region’s Duhok city, after days of discussions on the matter among senior Yezidi figures. This followed a forty-day mourning period for the passing of the previous leader.

The choice is made after “consultations between family members, Yazidi tribes, and the Yazidi Supreme Spiritual Council, headed by Yazidi Mir (prince) Hazem Tahsin Saeed Beg,” Hadi Baba Sheikh, the younger brother of Khartu Hajji Ismael and then manager of his office, told Middle East Eye (MEE) in October.

Ali Elias Haji Nasir will be inaugurated at a special ceremony next Wednesday at the Lalish Temple, the minority group’s holiest site of worship.

He was born in 1979 in Sheikhan district, Duhok province. He is married with four children; he is also the son of a former Baba Sheikh who held the post from 1978 to 1995.

The Ezidi Prince

In July 2019, Hazim Tahseen Beg was inaugurated as the new Mir, or prince, of the Ezidis. This was months after his father, who previously held the post, passed away at 86. The post-holder has three deputies and heads the four-member supreme council.

The new Baba Sheikh “should be familiar with teachings of the religions of Yazidism, Islam and Christianity, to be a respected and wise man, and friendly to people,” Mir Tahsin Beg told MEE in October.

The emergence of the Islamic State and its violent assault on the Ezidi-majority city of Sinjar (Shingal) in 2014 led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands in the religious sect. Most of them fled to the Kurdistan Region, while others resettled in neighboring countries in the region or in Western states.

Others were not as lucky and remained stranded in the war zone where they experienced atrocities and mass executions at the hands of the extremist group for years. Militants subjected women and girls to sexual slavery, kidnapped children, forced religious conversions, executed scores of men, and abused, sold, and trafficked women across areas they controlled in Iraq and Syria in actions now widely recognized as genocide.

There are about one million Ezidis worldwide, with almost half of them living in Iraq and the autonomous Kurdistan Region.

https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/f3b ... 6eb732fbcf

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Yezidis select new spiritual leader

The chief of the Yezidi community has selected a new spiritual leader for the ethno-religious minority, a month and a half after the death of Baba Sheikh Khurto Hajji Ismail. The appointment, however, has not been unanimously accepted and a group of Yezidis in Shingal said they plan to select their own leader



Mir Hazim Tahsin Beg on Saturday met in Duhok with some 250 Yezidi representatives from across the Kurdistan Region and Iraq to inform them he had chosen Sheikh Ali Ilyas as spiritual leader. According to Yezidis religious rules, only the Mir has the authority to name a new spiritual leader.

All those present in the meeting showed their consent to the Mir’s decision “by standing up after the decision was made,” Sheikh Shamo, head of Lalish Temple’s High Committee, told Rudaw.

“The subject should not be politicized,” warned Shamo, who is also an advisor for Yezidis affairs to Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Prime Minister Masrour Barzani. He called on the whole Yezidi community to respect the decision “because the Mir’s decisions cannot be invalidated.”

A group of Yezidis in Shingal, however, refused to recognize the new spiritual leader, saying their opinion had been ignored.

“We do not have any problem with anyone elected as the new spiritual leader and we congratulate and respect them, but if they do not listen to the Shingalis on this matter and do not consider our opinion, we will not accept their election either,” said Sheikh Salih, the son of a temple leader.

The Shingal group said they plan to select their own spiritual leader on Sunday.

Mir Hazim, who succeeded his father after his death last year, does not have the full support of the Yezidi community. A group in Shingal protested his selection saying his mother is not from the Mir bloodline and that he was put into the post with political backing.

Sheikh Ali Ilyas was born in Duhok province’s Sheikhan in 1979. His father was the spiritual leader of Yezidis from 1978 to 1995. He will be inaugurated during a religious ceremony in Shingal on Wednesday. Then, he will be called Baba Sheikh – a title given to all spiritual leaders. His predecessor passed away on October 1 after being hospitalized for health complications.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/14112020

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Girl Taken By ISIS 6 Years Ago

A Yazidi mother who was separated from her daughter in the ISIS genocide believes she's found her. But she's awaiting confirmation from a DNA test

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Now to Iraq, where members of the Yazidi religious minority continue to search for thousands of missing loved ones, now six years after ISIS launched a campaign of genocide against them. ISIS killed Yazidi men, enslaved women and kidnapped children, seeking to erase the Yazidi identity. NPR's Jane Arraf has sent this report from Northern Iraq about one mother who ended up in Canada. She has now returned for the girl she believes may be her long-lost daughter.

NOOR: (Speaking Arabic).

KAMO ZANDINAN: (Speaking Arabic).

JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: The little girl, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, speaks in a soft voice as she sits next to the woman who might be her mother. The shy 10-year-old is in an orphanage in the Iraqi city of Mosul. The girl refers to herself as Noor from an Arab family in Mosul. But Kamo Zandinan, who's Yazidi, believes she's her daughter Sonya, taken from her by ISIS when she was just 4 years old.

ZANDINAN: (Speaking Arabic).

ARRAF: Zandinan has come back here from Canada to do a DNA test, and she's waiting for results to verify that the girl is her daughter. They're still getting to know each other. Noor tells her what she's been drawing...

NOOR: (Speaking Arabic).

ARRAF: ...A panda, flowers and a house. The orphanage director, Amal Zaki Abdullah, says approvingly, the girl's very well-behaved.

AMAL ZAKI ABDULLAH: (Speaking Arabic).

ARRAF: "God willing, the test results will come soon and you will take her. And I'm sure she'll be the best daughter," she tells the mother. Zandinan doesn't seem to consider the possibility that this isn't one of the daughters who was taken from her.

(CROSSTALK)

ARRAF: We first met Zandinan in Sinjar in Northern Iraq in late October. Along with her 6 and 8-year-old son, along with other Yazidis, they were giving blood samples for DNA tests that investigators will use to try to identify bodies of Yazidis in mass graves.

ZANDINAN: I have two daughters, one son and my husband missing.

ARRAF: They've been missing since ISIS took them away five years ago. She believes her husband and eldest son were shot. A week later, they took 4-year-old Sonya and another daughter, Suzan, who was 13. She says the fighters knocked Suzan to the ground and started tearing off her clothes in front of her. She never saw the girl again. And she never heard word of Sonya until she was resettled in Canada with her four remaining children.

There, in March, she saw a Facebook photo of a girl found by Iraqi police in Mosul, rescued from an Arab family. Police have occasionally found Yazidi children as they look for ISIS fighters. This one had Zandinan's distinctive nose and a scar that her mother says she recognized.

ZANDINAN: She is in Mosul now. I come back. I test for DNA.

ARRAF: She's desperate to find and hold onto whatever she can of her family. But there's so much trauma here that coming back was incredibly hard.

ZANDINAN: Hard, hard, hard. I come back to my house, I see anything. It's hard, hard. Yeah.

ABDULLAH: Zandinan, who never went to school as a child, has been learning English in Canada. The younger children speak it now better than their native language. For them, Iraq is just a country they come from.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Laughter).

ARRAF: We visit them at a relative's house in a village. Zandinan's sons Arkan and Rakan are playing cops and robbers in the yard.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: What kind of gun is this? A pistol. Bleh (ph).

ARRAF: Zandinan tells us in the Yazidi dialect that she gave birth to the youngest boy a month after they were taken captive by ISIS. Her husband, an Iraqi soldier, told her he knew they would kill him.

ZANDINAN: (Through interpreter) He knew they would separate us. The only thing we wanted is to finish another day together. We never knew when it was going to happen. The same day they took my husband and son, they gathered all of us in the yard. They were going to kill all of us, but they sold some of us instead.

ARRAF: After we leave the orphanage, she tells us more.

ZANDINAN: (Speaking Kurdish).

ARRAF: She says the ISIS fighters beat her to take 4-year-old Sonya away, literally ripping the screaming girl from her arms. Zandinan had been hiding her 13-year-old daughter, Suzan, but the fighters found her.

ZANDINAN: (Through interpreter) I told them she was sick, but they tore her clothes in front of me. It was so difficult to see her in that situation. Suzan was crying and screaming, saying, mother, don't leave me. We were holding onto each other, but they beat me with a stick, and she fell on the ground, and I couldn't do anything.

ARRAF: Tears run down her face. ISIS took Zandinan and her remaining children to the Syrian city of Raqqa, where she was bought and sold by Arab and foreign fighters. She tried unsuccessfully to escape three times before her relatives managed to pay smugglers to rescue her. Zandinan believes her husband and eldest son are dead. As for Suzan, she believes she's still alive, living with an ISIS family like Sonya was.

ZANDINAN: (Speaking Kurdish).

ARRAF: If there was serious help, I could find her, she says. I don't know where she is, but my heart tells me she never left Iraq.

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/15/93521447 ... 5568477689

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New Yazidi spiritual leader sworn in

The newly-appointed Yazidi spiritual leader Sheikh Ali Ilyas was sworn in at Lalish Temple on Wednesday despite protests against his appointment from some Yazidis, including key commanders and religious figures



Sheikh Ilyas was appointed as Baba Sheikh - a title given to the Yazidi supreme spiritual leader- by the Yazidi community leader Mir Hazim Tahsin Bag on Saturday, more than one month after the death of his predecessor Khurto Hajji Ismail.

The new Baba Sheikh was inaugurated during a religious ceremony at the holy temple of Lalish on Wednesday, attended by some 5,000 Yazidis from different parts of the Kurdistan Region and Iraq.

Sheikh Ilyas was born in Duhok province’s Shekhan in 1979. His father served as the spiritual leader from 1978 to 1995.

However, some Yazidis - including military commanders and religious figures - have spoken out against the appointment of the new spiritual leader, saying they were not consulted.

Sheikh Shamo, head of Lalish Temple’s High Committee, told Rudaw on Saturday that “the subject should not be politicized,” calling on the whole Yazidi community to respect the decision “because the Mir’s decisions cannot be invalidated.”

A group of Yazidis in Shingal – the heartland of the long-persecuted community - have refused to recognize the new spiritual leader, saying their opinion had been ignored.

“We do not have any problem with anyone elected as the new spiritual leader and we congratulate and respect them, but if they do not listen to the Shingalis on this matter and do not consider our opinion, we will not accept their election either,” said Sheikh Salih, the son of a temple leader.

Top Shingal Peshmerga commander Qassim Shasho resigned from the Kurdistan Dedmocratic Party (KDP) and the Peshmerga forces earlier this week over the decision, which some say is politicized.

The appointment of Mir Hazim in July also drew controversy, with some claiming that his mother is not from the Mir bloodline and that he was put into the post with political backing.

Baba Sheikh Ali Ilyas told Rudaw after his inauguration that he will prioritize the return of thousands of Yazidis kidnapped by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014.

He said the kidnapped women are “holy” and “I will carry their message wherever I go.”

His predecessor made an unprecedented decision to welcome back women and girls taken as sexual slaves by ISIS, welcoming them back into a community that traditionally forbids sexual relations with non-Yazidis.

Some responsibilities of the spiritual leader include attending all religious events, fasting in the first 40 days of winter and summer and visiting each Yezidi village at least once a year.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/181120204