Roj Bash Kurdistan

YAZIDIS URGENTLY NEED MORE SUPPORT

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Letter to all the World and its Leaders

We beg and plead all the World's leaders, the media and the entire population of this planet, to pay attention to the terrible situation of = Yezidis in the Southern Kurdistan and to help then to be rescued from a genocide.

The existence of thousands Yezidi Kurds hang in the balance. They fled their homes in Shingal Mountain to escape the onslaught of the murderous and unforgiving fighters of the Islamic State. Some 50,000 Yezidis – half of them are children – are now trapped on the mountain. Weaponless men unable to defend their families, innocent women, children, babies in arms, the sick, the old, the vulnerable, a whole population now face a choice between slaughtering from the merciless Islamic State or dying slowly by starvation and thirst.

Yezidis are a gentle and peaceful community which suffered during past centuries from many massacres and a genocide in 1915, when they shared in Ottoman Turkey the fate of Armenians and Syriac Christians. At this time, Yezidis from Sinjar offered a shelter to many Armenians fleeing Northern regions.

Now it is time to save them now from a total annihilation. We pray to all people receiving this statement to be kind enough to print it, post it, email it, sent it to media outlets, your local MP and the President/Prime Minister of your country.

Please do not allow that horrific genocide of Halabja, when 6000 Kurds were gassed by Saddam Hussein, to be repeated today in Shingal.

Respectfully

Dr. Jawad Mella and Friends

President Kurdistan National Congress 05/08/2014
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Jawad ... e=bookmark

Your support for these innocent people is much appreciated and you are invited to sign your names before passing the letter on.

Telegraph

Death of a religion: Isis and the Yezidi

They are scared of lettuce. They abhor pumpkins. They practise maybe the oldest religion in the world. And now, after at least 6,000 years, they are finally being exterminated, even as I write this.

If you haven’t noticed this epochal crime – the raping and the slaughter – you’re not alone. Of late, the world has focused on the horrors of Gaza. When we’ve had time to acknowledge the Satanic cruelties of Isis, in Iraq, we’ve looked to the barbaric treatment of women, and Christians. Yet the genocide of the Yezidi, by Isis, is as evil as anything going on right now in the Middle East; it is also uniquely destructive of a remarkable cultural survival.

So who are the Yezidi? Some years ago I studied them when researching a thriller. I also traveled to meet their small diaspora community, in Celle, north Germany. And what I found was astonishing.

Yezidism is much older than Islam, and much older than Christianity. It is also deeply peculiar. The Yezidi honour sacred trees. Women must not cut their hair. Marriage is forbidden in April. They avoid wearing dark blue because it is "too holy".

They are divided strictly into castes, who cannot marry each other. The upper castes are polygamous. Anyone of the faith who marries a non-Yezidi risks ostracism, or worse. Yezidism is syncretistic: it combines elements of many faiths. Like Hindus, they believe in reincarnation. Like ancient Mithraists, they sacrifice bulls. They practise baptism, like Christians. When they pray, they face the sun – like Zoroastrians. There are also strong links with Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam.

Then there is the devil worship: arguably, the Yezidi worship what Christians or Muslims might call “Satan”, though the Yezidi call him “Melek Taus”, and he appears in the form of a peacock angel.

Why might Melek Taus be “the devil”? For a start, the Yezidi believe the peacock angel led a rebellion in heaven: clearly echoing the story of Lucifer, cast into Hell by the Christian God. Also, the very word "Melek" is cognate with "Moloch", the name of a Biblical demon – who demanded human sacrifice.

The avian imagery of Melek Taus likewise indicates a demonic aspect. The Yezidi come from the ancient lands of Sumeria and Assyria, in modern-day Turkey, Iraq and Kurdistan. Sumerian gods were often cruel, and equipped with beaks and wings. Birdlike. Three thousand years ago the Assyrians worshipped flying demons, spirits of the desert wind. One was the scaly-winged demon in The Exorcist: Pazuzu.

The Yezidi reverence for birds – and snakes – also appears to be extremely old. Excavations at ancient Catalhoyuk, in Turkey, show that the people there revered bird-gods as long ago as 7000BC. Even older is Gobekli Tepe, a megalithic site near Sanliurfa, in Kurdish Turkey (Sanliurfa was once a stronghold of Yezidism). The extraordinary temple of Gobekli Tepe boasts carvings of winged birdmen, and images of buzzards and serpents.

Taking all this evidence into account, a fair guess is that Yezidism is a vastly ancient form of bird-worship, that could date back 6,000 years or more. If this is right, it means that Yezidism is therefore the Ur-religion, the mother ship of Middle Eastern faiths, and it is us who have incorporated Yezidi myths and beliefs into our religions, of Christianity and Islam and Judaism.

And now, in the dusty cities of northern Iraq, Yezidism is finally dying. Moloch has returned to devour the gentle and peaceful Yezidi people, in the form of hateful, virulent, sadistic Islamism. Put it another way, the devil has revealed a sense of irony, even as the rest of us sit back, and passively watch the most ancient culture in the world being erased from human history.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/seant ... he-yezidi/

Telegraph

Isis's slaughter of the Yazidi is a new Rwanda happening before our eyes

The Yazidi wish to inform you that tomorrow they will be killed with their families. Actually, it may not be tomorrow. The 40,000 members of Iraq’s most ancient sect, who are currently huddling on the side of Mount Sinjar, might have a bit longer. If they stay there it will apparently take a few days, maybe a few weeks, before they die of thirst, malnutrition and sickness. If they don’t, their deaths at the hands of the butchers of Isis who have surrounded them will be quicker. Though not that quick.

Five hundred of their number have died in the last week alone, 40 of them children. Unfortunately the Yazidi don’t appear to have had access to iPhones, so you won’t have seen the harrowing images of their dead.

Think of the Hotel Rwanda. Or the Dutch UN compound in Srebrenica. That’s Mount Sinjar this morning.

The Iraqi army, who have the responsibility for protecting the Yazidi, are nowhere to be seen. Kurdish Peshmurga troops, regarded as a more potent fighting force, have also been forced to withdraw.

And where are we? "Everybody is retreating to their corners,” Ali Khedery, the former longest-serving US official in Baghdad, told the Guardian. “And there is no credible international actor that I can see that is trying to bring it together again. It definitely is an existential threat to the Iraqi government and I think it represents yet another manifestation of the disintegration of Iraq as we know it.”

It’s certainly an existential threat to the Yazidi. And another manifestation of the disintegration of our tattered moral authority.

“What can we do?” is the cry so often heard as we cast our eyes across these distant battlefields. And as I wrote yesterday, the answer is nothing. Because we choose to do nothing.

Full Article:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danho ... -our-eyes/

With the threat to Kurdistan let us not forget the Yezidis who remain trapped on the mountain

Rudaw

Georgian Activists: World Must Protect Yezidis
By Teimuraz Shamoian

TBILISI, Georgia — Yezidis, Christian and civic leaders in Georgia staged a protest on Wednesday calling on the United Nations and the international community to protect Yezidis from threats by Islamic extremists in Iraq.

The protest in front of the United Nations building in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, was organized by Yezidi community organizations but also drew many prominent figures including human rights defenders, lawyers, MPs and representatives from the Assyrian, Armenian Catholic, Armenian Apostolic and other Christian churches.

Yezidi leaders say upwards of 30,000 Yezidis from Sinjar in Iraq’s Nineveh province are facing life threatening conditions after they fled to nearby Shingal mountain, which is surrounded by the Islamic State (IS/formerly ISIS). At least 60 people, mostly children and the elderly, have already died of starvation and thirst.

IS seized the capital of Nineveh, Mosul, in June and have since taken Sinjar. They are trying to control resources such as Mosul’s massive dam and nearby oil fields, and are driving minority Christians and Yezidis out of the province.

Yezidis are ethnic Kurds who practice an ancient religious and are considered devil-worshipers by Islamic extremists.

An estimated 20,000 Yezidis live in Georgia, and the vast majority resides in the capital. Georgia is home to one of the largest Yezidi communities in the region.

Agit Mirzoev, executive director of the House of Yezidis, a community organization, called on the international community to act to help persecuted Christians and Yezidis, who have been stranded on a mountaintop.

“We stand here, today, in front of the UN office in Tbilisi, to send a message to the world to stand with us. We are delivering a letter to UN Secretary-General (Ban Ki-moon) asking to make every effort to stop the persecution of Yezidis and Christians,” Mirzoev said.

Yezidi cleric Dmitri Pirbari was one of several activists who compared the threats against Yezidis in Iraq to the persecution of Yezidis in the Ottoman Empire a century ago. He called on the government of Iraq, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Kurdish military, Peshmarga, to save Yezidis.

Around 10,000 Peshmarga are being deployed to Nineveh province to battle the extremists, who seized Mosul and other Sunni-dominated areas after the Iraqi army fled.

Community leader Kereme Anqosi called on Kurds and Yezidis around the world to advocate for Shingal.

“Today Shingal is washed in blood,” he said. “The followers of one of the oldest religions whose faith and traditions have survived through the 21st century could disappear.”

“I call on you as human beings to protect us. I call on you, politicians of democratic nations, to take action for us. I call on you, the Georgian government, to support Yezidis, because we always stand with Georgia,” he said.

Assyrian community leader David Adamov said as minority communities, Yezidis and Assyrians have been oppressed for centuries. Both communities came to Georgia 99 years ago, seeking refuge from Ottoman persecution.

“ISIS is repeating the genocide that was carried out a century ago. Now we as brothers stand together, because they are exterminating us today as well,” he said.

http://rudaw.net/english/world/070820141

Rudaw

Who Are the Yezidis Who Galvanized International Support in Iraq?

BARCELONA, Spain – In the end it was the plight of tens of thousands of Kurdish Yezidis, fleeing Islamic State (IS/ISIS) armies in Iraq and dying in their dozens of hunger and thirst on an arid mountain, that galvanized the international support behind the Peshmerga forces.

US President Barack Obama said on Thursday that the United States "could not turn a blind eye" to the IS committing likely “genocide” against the Yezidis.

Only a few hours later, US jets began military strikes against IS positions in Iraq’s northern Nineveh province, home to centuries-old Yezidi and Christian communities, allowing the Peshmerga to open a safe corridor to the Kurdistan Region, where thousands have already arrived.

European heavyweights France, Britain and Germany on Friday rallied in support of US air strikes against IS, all three pledging to aid the Yezidis.

Earlier this week, Kurdish President Massoud Barzani vowed to defend “our Yezidi brothers and sisters.”

But who are the Yezidis, whose plight has united major Western powers against IS brutalities?

The followers of this gentle community of ethnic Kurds, whose religious beliefs are traced to antiquity and the ancient Zoroastrian and Hindu religions as well as to Christianity and Islam, was even persecuted in Iraq by Saddam Hussein.

But never like it is now.

Early this week Vian Dakhil, a Yezidi in the Iraqi parliament, screamed before fellow lawmakers that the world must help because her people were dying in their dozens on Mount Shingal, where they had fled to escape being imprisoned or killed by the militants.

“We want humanitarian solidarity! Save us, save us!” she pleaded.

Her plea did not go unheard.

“Earlier this week, one Iraqi in the area cried to the world, 'There is no one coming to help,’” Obama said in a speech Thursday. “Well, today America is coming to help,” he said, authorizing airstrikes.

Until now, there are no accurate numbers of how many were on the mountain, and how many died. Estimates for the number on the mountain range from 50,000 to 100,000, with reports that some 70 had died of starvation and thirst and that bodies were seen from the air scattered among the rocks.

They had been hiding in the rocks since the town of Shingal fell to the militants more than a week ago.

There are reports that in Shingal the militants had taken 500 Yezidi women as war booty, and had posted pictures of dead Yezidis on the Internet.

Local Kurdish officials had said that 10,000 had been rescued Friday.

Iraqi human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani was reported as saying that the militants had killed hundreds of Yezidis, burying some alive and taking women as slaves. There was no independent confirmation of his claims.

IS fighters, who have already driven out Christians from their ancestral homes in northern Iraq – including Zumar -- have been especially targeting the Yezidis, whom they regard as “devil worshipers” for their religious beliefs.

The Yezidis, who follow one of the oldest religions in the world, believe in one God and seven deities, the most important of them Melek Taus, or "the Peacock Angel."

Their practices, such as the baptism of infants and the Eucharistic ceremony of breaking bread and drinking wine which are performed by Yezidis sheiks, are believed to be taken from Christianity. In addition, male children are circumcised, such as in Judaism and Islam.

Their reverence of fire as a divine manifestation and practice of not accepting converts is believed to come from Zoroastrian influence. They also have a caste system and believe in reincarnation, as do the Hindus.

Yezidis also have their own beliefs about the origins of the world.

They believe that Melek Taus, assuming the form of a peacock, descended to earth to endow it with beauty and abundance. In the Garden of Eden he met Adam, giving him a soul and teaching him to worship regularly. Yezidis consider themselves descendants of Adam, but not Eve.

In the eleventh century Yezidi culture was reformed by the great Sufi, Sheikh Adi, who oversaw the final modifications that shaped the faith as it is today, according to the Yezidi Truth Organization.

Yezidis believe it was under the unseen guidance of Melek Taus that Sheikh Adi composed a scripture, taught hymns and prayers and established the current Yezidi caste system.

The sheikh was entombed in Lalish, believed to be the ancient spot where the Peacock Angel first landed, making it the spiritual heartland of the Yezidis.

Yezidis have been brutally persecuted through centuries and falsely accused of worshiping the devil. That is because Yezidi traditions teach that Melek Taus was a fallen angel, but received the forgiveness of God and was returned to Heaven. In Judaism Christianity and Islam, the fallen angel is never redeemed and is despised.

Yezidis also suffered greatly under the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when they were repeatedly massacred.

Under Saddam's rule many Yezidi villages were wiped out as troops moved in on Iraq's Kurdistan Region. In 2007, during the height of Iraq’s sectarian bloodletting, hundreds of Yezidis were killed in car bombings in northern Iraq.

Yezidis number some 700,000 worldwide, with some 500,000 in mainly northern Iraq where IS has been capturing their towns. The rest of the community has been scattered in Armenia, Georgia, Syria and Europe, particularly in Germany.

Yezidis have mostly inhabited Nineveh province, and are some of the oldest inhabitants of Iraq, believed to descend from the Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations.

http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/100820145

The genocide 6,000 miles away: America's Yazidis watch and wait, fearing the worst
by Libby Nelson on August 11, 2014

Lincoln, Nebraska — The last night Salam Sheikh could sleep was Sunday (3 August). That was before Islamic State fighters marched into his home city of Sinjar, in northern Iraq, defeated 5,000 Kurdish fighters within an hour, and made Cheikh's family prisoners in their own home.

Now when the 28-year-old calls his three sisters and his disabled mother, more than 6,400 miles away in Iraq, they speak only in whispers. Speak any louder, they fear, and ISIS fighters might overhear and realize they are still in the city.

Sheikh and his family are Yazidi, part of an ancient religion with about 600,000 adherents around the world, mostly in Iraq. About 200 Yazidi families live in the United States, half of them here in Lincoln, Nebraska, where they began settling after the first Gulf War.

In Sinjar, tens of thousands of Yazidi have fled for their lives as ISIS advances into Kurdish territory. As many as 40,000 escaped to the nearby slopes of Mount Sinjar, where they are besieged by ISIS, stranded without food or water, slowly dying of thirst.

The United States began airstrikes against ISIS and humanitarian airdrops over Mount Sinjar over the weekend, and on Monday several thousand of the trapped Yazidi reportedly escaped to Syria. But many thousands are still trapped; it's not clear how long they can hold out.

Some of Lincoln's Yazidi can recount, in excruciating detail, what has happened to their family. When Sheikh calls his younger sister in Iraq, a 19-year-old college student, she cries on the phone, afraid of the ISIS fighters who she fears will break into the house and kill, rape, or mutilate her.

His three sisters have already survived one ISIS search of the house, thanks to a Muslim neighbor who sent the fighters away by telling them there were no young women at home.

Other Lincoln families are in no less devastating limbo. Iekhan Safar's two sisters and their newborn babies are all trapped on Mount Sinjar. They face an impossible choice: die of thirst and starvation on the mountain, or die by the militants' guns waiting for them below.

The Yazidi, who have been persecuted for centuries, say their cultural memory includes 73 attempted genocides. The Nebraska-based Yazidi fear they are watching the 74th from thousands of miles away.

"It's worse than the war," Sheikh says.

Sheikh came to Nebraska as many other Yazidi have: with a special visa for translators who worked with the US Army during the Iraq war. Yazidi began settling in Nebraska after the first Gulf War, in 1991. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam, it brought another wave of Yazidi immigration, including Sheikh, who arrived 16 months ago.

Lincoln is a city of about 265,000 people, home to the flagship state university and a state capitol that towers over downtown. Over the past 30 years, it has also quietly become home to refugees from more than 40 countries. It is now the only city in the US with a sizable Yazidi community.

In the past week, Lincoln's Yazidi have protested at the state capitol and the Nebraska governor's mansion. They have met with lawmakers and sent six vans of people to Washington, DC to try to draw national attention to the Yazidi plight.

Sheikh says he's proud of his work with the US military. So does Hayder Murad, who worked as a translator from 2005 to 2011 and moved to Lincoln in 2012. The Yazidi "welcomed the US first," Murad says. "We helped the US Army." But now both worry that ISIS might target their families as punishment for collaborating with Americans.

Now the former military translators are hoping to get back in touch with the US army, as it launches strikes against ISIS in northern Iraq. They say they want to warn them not to strike houses where Yazidi are hiding, or even to ask for transportation and weapons to go fight ISIS themselves.

When he came to the US, Murad thought he would never return to Iraq. Now he wants to go back to save his people.

"We are ready to help, to go anywhere," Murad says. "We will join the US Army or make a special team. We are all ready to die for people to save them."
Sheikh says he wishes he had a plane ticket, a weapon — anything to fight ISIS. "I swear to God I will fight," he says. "I don't care about my life. All I care about is my three sisters."

As Iehkhan Safar, 26, pours milk into a bottle for her 2-year-old son, she worries about her sister, trying to feed her own 10-day-old baby while trapped on Mount Sinjar.

Safar's nine siblings are all still in Iraq, some working with the Iraqi military, others in hiding from ISIS. She moved to the United States in 2006, after she met her Yazidi husband while he was visiting Iraq on a trip from his new home in the US. Their three children were born in the United States.

When Safar called her family Sunday, they told her ISIS was approaching and they planned to flee. Her brothers carried her mother, who has been sick for years and cannot walk due to diabetes, depression, and arthritis. Two of her sisters have newborn babies.

Her family used to picnic on Mount Sinjar. They would have gone to the highest point on the mountain, where there are some caves for shelter but little vegetation or natural sources of water.
The thousands of Yazidis who fled ISIS have been on the mountain for six days now. As the batteries in their phones fade, along with their food supplies, relatives in the US and elsewhere worry they will lose contact.

"Am I going to be one of the many people I see around me burying their babies?" Safar says her sister has asked during one of their recent calls.

In Lincoln, Yazidi families watch the war unfold on Kurdish-language television as their American-born children play on quiet suburban streets.

Safar's five-year-old daughter was reluctant to pose for a photograph during an interview. But she agreed to do it when her mother told her it would help her grandmother, who she knows is in trouble in Iraq.

Sheikh usually works two jobs, one at a manufacturing plant, the other at a landscaping firm. He hasn't gone to work all week. His work won't allow him keep his phone with him, he explains, and he can't bear to break contact with his family.

The family of Waleesa Antar, a 26-year-old Yazidi in Lincoln, is also trapped in their house near Sinjar. Antar can hardly stand to talk to them, she says, she is so afraid that every conversation might be their last.

The distress is so unbearable that she has considered suicide multiple times this week, she says through a translator. The only thing that stopped her is the realization she could not leave her three-year-old daughter alone.

"I cannot think of anything good that might possibly happen to them," she says.

If his family cannot get out, Sheikh says, he has a terrible and desperate wish: that the Iraqi Air Force or Kurdish Air Force or whoever is in the area will bomb the entire city and kill them all.

"I wish they'd bomb the entire city, including my own family," he says. "I would kill my own family instead of having ISIS get in close to them."

http://www.vox.com/2014/8/9/5985317/ame ... ring-worst

Rudaw

Exhausted Yezidis From Mount Shingal in Desperate Need

SHARYA, Kurdistan Region – At a hall where trains of trucks bring in Yezidis stuck on an arid mountain for 10 days, some of the men, women and children are in such shock and exhaustion that they have to be coaxed into getting off the vehicles.

These are people in dire need of aid to help settle elsewhere until it is safe to return to homes they fled in Shingal and surrounding villages, after the town fell to Islamic State (IS/ISIS) 10 days ago.

“Where are the international organizations, where are the United Nations?” asked Khidher Domle, a respected journalist who now coordinates relief efforts for his fellow Yezidis in the village of Sharya, near Duhok.

At the Lalesh Hall 2 in Sharya where they first arrive, most are in a state of shock and exhaustion.

To get off the mountain and to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, many had to walk 10 to 12 hours, going first across the Syrian border and then back to the Iraqi side, where they were picked up by the trucks and brought to Sharya.

International and local aid organizations have been trying to help the thousands still stuck on the mountain without water and food, by dropping supplies from the air. Those who manage to reach safety still have a long wait after their long walk, to be then transported in trucks that are normally used to transport sand or grain.

The total numbers who escaped to the mountain are estimated at 50,000, or even higher.

“That terrible mountain,” Domle sighs, explaining that the people coming in now are from the southern flank, which stretches over some 25 kilometers.

At the northern side, some 35,000 Yezidis are still thought to be trapped, depending on food drops by foreign and local aid organizations.

Although the United States, Britain and France have been involved in aid drops or other relief, many of the supplies failed to reach their targets, according to refugees.

“I heard of a drop on one side of the mountain, while the refugees were on the other side and did not know it was so near,” Domle says.

Many of the refugees arriving in Sharya say they did not receive any of the aid drops.

In two days, the relief effort in Sharya received over 2,500 families, Domle informs.

At the center they receive aid and medical attention. Domle has nothing but praise for the local Barzani Foundation that has been providing the refugees with some 30,000 tasty meals a day. UN aid organization UNICIF also “does a good job,” he adds.

Water, baby milk and biscuits are also provided locally. Many Kurdish businessmen have donated generously to help the refugees, Domle says.

After arrival, the families are then sent to temporary shelters in schools, government institutions and building sites, while some stay with relatives or friends. Help is desperately needed, especially for this second phase, Domle says, explaining that refugees arrive with just the clothes they have worn for days.

“We need blankets, mattresses and everything needed for a household,” says Domle, as he points to an elderly man being carried into the hall yard by some of the younger men. It is the older refugees who are in worst shape; doctors in nearby Duhok have volunteered to provide help.

At the same time aid workers are calling for more medicines for chronic diseases, as many refugees left in such haste that they did not even grab their medication.

To help the thousands who are still stuck on the mountain, with just the leaves off trees for food and perhaps some water from small lakes, Domle suggests a change in policy is needed.

“Why not get planes in from Turkey; the Incirlik (air) base is only half an hour away. It could reach there safely without the threat of the Daash,” he says, using the local name for IS.

He also calls on the help of the few hundred Turkish soldiers already stationed in Iraqi Kurdistan, at a base half an hour from Duhok. “We need all the help we can get.”

That sentiment is echoed by Tarek Khidher Seido, a refugee from Shingal who found a roof over his head in an unfinished building in Sharya. Here, blankets and mattresses are spread out on the concrete floor; the building is still open to the elements on all sides.

For days, Seido says he defended his town against IS, making sure as many women and children as possible could leave to escape the militants, who have especially targeted non-Muslim minorities like Iraq’s Christians and Yezidis.

“I fought till the end, before joining the family in the mountains,” Seido recounts.

He says the main problem of men like him who had guns was a shortage of ammunition, and the fact that their call for support from the outside remained unanswered.

He wants to go back, now that his family is safe, and calls for the formation of a Yezidi militia to reclaim the areas captured by IS.

“We need weapons and ammunition to defend our people, and to get our city back.”

http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/120820141

BBC News Middle East

Thousands of Yazidis 'still trapped' on Iraq mountain

Tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped by militants on a mountain in northern Iraq and need "life-saving assistance", the United Nations warns.

Members of the Yazidi sect fled there 10 days ago after fighters from Islamic State (IS) seized the town of Sinjar.

US air strikes continued on Tuesday, with a drone targeting an IS mortar near Kurdish troops, the Pentagon said.

On Monday, Iraq's president asked MP Haider al-Abadi to form a new cabinet, snubbing the incumbent PM Nouri Maliki.

Mr Abadi's appointment came after months of political infighting, which analysts say is partially to blame for Iraq's inability to effectively fight the IS threat.

Politicians had been unable to form a government since April's parliamentary elections, which were won by Prime Minister Maliki.

IS fighters have seized large swathes of northern Iraq and Syria in recent months, forcing tens of thousands of people from religious minorities to flee their homes.
'A genocide'

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon urged countries to do more to help Iraqi civilians.

"The plight of Yazidis and others on Mount Sinjar is especially harrowing," he said.

An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people remain trapped on Mount Sinjar without food, water or shelter said the UN's Adrian Edwards in a statement.

There are now an estimated 1.2 million internally displaced Iraqis, he added.

Keiran Dwyer, who works for the UN's office for humanitarian affairs in Irbil, told the BBC that some Yazidis had managed to escape from the north side of the mountain in the last 72 hours and cross the River Tigris into Syria, where they were receiving help.

But a Yazidi relief worker, who was on board an Iraqi Air Force helicopter evacuating the trapped refugees, described the situation as "a genocide" and said that he had seen what looked like "hundreds" of dead bodies on the ground.

"You can imagine what it's like when you land amongst 5,000 people and can only take 10 or 20, and everybody tries to get on the helicopter," Mirza Dinnay told the BBC.

In other developments in Iraq on Tuesday:

Iran has officially announced its support of the new Prime Minister designate Haider al-Abadi.

A Kurdish government helicopter delivering aid has crashed on Mount Sinjar, killing the pilot and injuring a journalist for the New York Times. The survivors were taken to Irbil, the paper confirmed. There are also reports that an Iraqi MP was injured.

US Vice-President Joe Biden has urged the leader of Iraq's Kurds, Massoud Barzani, to work with Mr Abadi.

The Vatican has urged Muslim leaders to condemn the actions of IS fighters in Iraq. They have persecuted many of Iraq's minorities, including Christians.

The US, Britain and France have been delivering humanitarian aid to the Yazidis.

Over the last five nights, US and UK air crews have air-dropped more than 310 bundles of food, water and medical supplies, and delivered almost 72,740 litres (16,000 gallons) of water and 75,000 meals, the US government says.

The US has also reportedly begun supplying weapons to the Kurdish forces, known as Peshmergas, who have been fighting IS in the north.

Earlier, US President Barack Obama described the nomination of Mr Abidi as "a promising step forward".

But he also said the new leadership had a "difficult task to regain the confidence of its citizens by governing inclusively and taking steps to demonstrate its resolve".

The US has been reluctant to mobilise support while the government was led by Mr Maliki, a Shia seen by many as fuelling ethnic and sectarian tensions that boosted support for the Sunni militants, the BBC's Barbara Plett reports from Washington.

Mr Maliki has condemned the move to replace him, saying it would lead the country into a political crisis.

Mr Maliki called the nomination a "violation of the constitution" and vowed to "fix the mistake", but on Tuesday ordered security forces not to intervene in the political crisis.

In a statement published on his official website, Mr Maliki said security forces should instead focus on defending the country.

Mr Ban also urged Iraqi security forces not to intervene in the political dispute between Mr Maliki and the new nominee.

"It is imperative that the security forces refrain from intervening in the political process," he said.

On Monday, IS militants seized the town of Jalawla, north-east of Baghdad, after weeks of clashes with Peshmergas.

The rebels already control a number of strategic northern places including Iraq's largest dam, located near the city of Mosul.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28756544

The Guardian

US troops land on Iraq's Mt Sinjar to plan for Yazidi evacuation

US marines and special forces to assess options for rescue of refugees stranded on mountain by militant group Isis

A team of US marines and special forces landed on Mount Sinjar in Iraq on Wednesday to assess options for a potential rescue of Yazidi civilians threatened by Islamic extremists and worn down by lack of food.

The personnel flew in on V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft that can land vertically, joining a small number of American special forces who, the Guardian has been told, had been on the mountain for some days. That team had been assessing the military and humanitarian situation and guiding US air strikes against Islamic State (Isis) fighters encircling the mountain.

A handful of British SAS soldiers were also in the area to “gather intelligence”, a British official said. The developments were the first confirmation that international forces were on Mount Sinjar.

Fleeing Yazidis have reported seeing small teams of American soldiers high on the northern flank. “We weren’t allowed to go near them,” said a man from Sinjar who was airlifted from the former base. “They were being guarded by the Kurds.”

The team that landed on Mount Sinjar on Wednesday conducted a reconnaissance mission before returning to the Kurdish regional capital, Irbil, officials said. “Today a team of fewer than 20 US personnel conducted an assessment of the situation on Mount Sinjar. All personnel have returned safely to Irbil by military air,” a US defence official said, on condition of anonymity.

The US later announced that a drone strike destroyed armed truck operated by Islamic militants in the area, the latest of several strikes conducted against Isis positions in recent days.

In Washington, the Obama administration was forced to defend itself against accusations of mission creep after admitting that it was considering a direct role for US forces in creating a “humanitarian corridor” for an evacuation of the Yazidis.

“[The president] is open to recommendations in which the United States is helping to facilitate the removal of these people from the mountain,” said the National Security Council spokesman, Ben Rhodes.

“If there are additional things we can do as part of an effort to move people off the mountain he will certainly review those options,” he added.

Pressed on whether this would contradict Obama’s promise to avoid a combat role for US ground troops if this evacuation mission came under attack, Rhodes added: “There are dangers involved in any military operation … but [the president] is confident that we can have a limited military objective.”

The US on Tuesday announced the deployment of an additional 129 forces to Iraq to assess the crisis and provide a report to Obama. That team arrived in Irbil on Wednesday, a day of sharply increased western commitment to the Kurds to help them fight off the extremist Isis movement.

France’s president, Francois Hollande, said that his country would send arms to the Kurdish peshmerga “within hours”. Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, returned from holiday in Portugal to announce that the UK would help transport Soviet-era ammunition from eastern Europe to the Kurds.

The US, UK and Kurds have been conducting air drops of food and water for the besieged civilians, mostly ethnic Kurds of the Yazidi faith, who fled to the mountain 12 days ago to escape Isis militants who see them as non-believers. The UK is also contributing Chinook helicopters to help airlift some of the trapped population, which includes large numbers of women and children.

One of the issues the US marines will have to decide is whether the escape route should be by land or air.

Aid officials in the region said that any operation to open a land route would probably require significantly greater number of soldiers, American and peshmerga than are currently available in the region, as they would have to fight their way across Isis controlled territory to reach Mount Sinjar. That would represent a political problem for Washington. US officials have stressed that the American troops in Iraq will not be involved in combat.

An airlift would be safer but would take a considerable time to remove all the endangered civilians, and time is short. The US navy’s Ospreys can only carry a small number of people at any one time. Aid and human rights officials say they stranded population, estimated at being between 20,000 to 30,000 cannot survive on air drops alone for much longer.

The US ran a military and intelligence base on a now disused-airfield in the area for much of the Iraq war and the terrain of the rugged 45 mile ridgeline is well known to special operations units. The airfield could be used as one end of an air bridge to fly refugees to safety, if it was impossible to open a land route.

Kieran Dwyer, a spokesman for the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs, said: “It’s really hot up on the mountain. It’s pushing 45 degrees [C] in the shade, and there is very little shade up there. The people are really exposed, and they ran there quickly without taking much with them, so they are in a really tough situation.”

Dwyer, speaking from Irbil, the main city in Kurdistan, said that the Yazidis were spread over multiple locations across the bare mountain. Those towards the north had a means to walk towards Syria to escape, but he said the walk of at least seven hours was gruelling and dangerous as militants could reach part of the route. Those on the south side were more completely hemmed in by Isis militants.

The White House insists that defending its forces against attack from Isis during an evacuation mission would be different from seeking out an engagement with the militants, which it is leaving to others.

The Yazidi refugees who have managed to escape the mountain on their own continue to stream across the northern border into Syria, and then into Iraqi Kurdistan. The vast majority of those who have made it to safety have endured a seven-hour trek in grueling heat. Nearly all those to have escaped have done so from the northern flank of Mount Sinjar, which was cleared of Islamic State jihadists over the weekend.

The south, though remains besieged, with diplomats in Irbil and senior Kurdish officials acknowledging that efforts to clear the road of jihadists has failed. Masrour Barzani, the chancellor of the Kurdish region security council told the Guardian that 170 peshmerga forces had been sent towards the area in an attempt to reach entrapped minorities, however many more would be needed to safely bring them down from the mountain.

Officials at the Feshkhabour crossing from Syria say at least 1,000 Yazidis crossed into Kurdistan on Wednesday, adding to the estimated 40,000 who have made the journey since Sunday. Nearly all are now sleeping rough between the border and the city of Duhok, around 100km away.

Exhausted families sheltered in hedge lines just over the bridge that led them to safety, some sobbing and others clinging to infants and elderly men and women who collapsed onto whatever grass they could find. Local officials handed out water to the new arrivals. Some were carrying bread handed out by NGOs.

“At least six people have died in transit due to dehydration and exhaustion in the last three days, and many more have reportedly passed away in the besieged areas of Sinjar,” said Dr Gustavo Fernandez, programme manager from Médecins Sans Frontières. “With the situation increasingly critical throughout the country, access to people who are trapped in conflict areas is impossible.”

• This article was corrected on 13 August 2014. The original said more than 100 US forces landed on Mount Sinjar; in light of later information this was amended to state that the team was smaller.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... zidis-iraq

Rudaw

Girls Raped by ISIS Jump to their Death on Mount Shingal

Among the Yezidi Kurds the fear of death is still looming. They know how real that fear is.

This man has managed to save himself and Peshmerga soldiers are now helping him to reach safety.

The difficulties for these refugees haven’t ended yet. This woman was praying for death to come.

Woman talking to Hevidar:
“Another Halabja is happening to us. We are disabled, we can’t walk anymore. No food, no water, our children have all died.”

A woman told Rudaw that three of her daughters committed suicide after they were raped by ISIS militants and were later allowed to join their family on Mount Shingal.

The mother said: My daughters were calling on people to kill them, but no one wanted to do that. So they jumped from the mountain and ended their bitter life.

The mother recounted her daughters’ story on camera, but YPG fighters on the mountain seized the Rudaw camera and erased the tape.

This woman tells the story of the Yezidi girls who committed suicide.

“They took the girls by force and raped them, and after they returned they killed themselves.”

This war has claimed everyone its victim: men, women, young and old. This man has grown old among his people, but he had never expected to see a day like this.

“In my whole life I have never seen something like this. Our world is destroyed. I can’t say anything.”

The Peshmerga have now opened a road to save the Yezidis.

“There was spot that was occupied by the ISIS. The Peshmerga came and took over it. As soon as our people saw the Peshmerga had arrived, they began descending the mountain.”

These people are running towards life, but hunger, thirst and searing heat is following them.

These refugees have paid a high price to reach safety. They have been walking for three days and three nights to reach Zakho, but that is not their ultimate goal. They wonder what their fate would be in the midst of this war.

Hevidar Ahmed, Rudaw, Mount Shingal

http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/140820142

$100 for a Yezidi girl - 100s now being sold in village near Mosul

4,000 Yezidis killed in villages recently

Another 90 Yezidi men killed today for refusing to become Muslims

We need more information and more publicity URGENTLY

BBC News

Iraq crisis: Yazidi villagers 'massacred' by IS

Containing around 20 Iraqi families two weeks ago, a refugee camp in Syria has now swollen to hold around 15,000 people, reports the BBC's Paul Wood

Militants in northern Iraq have massacred at least 80 men from the Yazidi faith in a village and abducted women and children, reports say.

Islamic State (IS) fighters entered Kocho, 45km (30 miles) from Sinjar, on Friday afternoon, reportedly telling men to convert to Islam or die.

The group's atrocities against non-Sunni Muslims have shocked the international community into action.

In New York, the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on IS members.

In another development, the US military said two of its drones had attacked and destroyed two vehicles identified as belonging to IS near Sinjar on Friday morning, after receiving reports from Kurdish forces that the militants were attacking civilians in the village of Kawju.

'Convert or die'

Kurdish officials confirmed the attack on Kocho after it was reported by Yazidi activists based in Washington.

"They arrived in vehicles and they started their killing this afternoon," senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters news agency.

The Yazidi community talks to the BBC about their escape from Mount Sinjar

The killings took place over the space of an hour, said a Yazidi MP, Mahama Khalil, who reportedly spoke to survivors.

A resident of a nearby village said an IS fighter from the same area had given him details of the bloodshed.

"He told me that the Islamic State had spent five days trying to persuade villagers to convert to Islam and that a long lecture was delivered about the subject today," said the villager.

"He then said the men were gathered and shot dead. The women and girls were probably taken to [the city of] Tal Afar because that is where the foreign fighters are."

Hadi Pir, a Yazidi activist and member of the Yazidi Crisis Management Team in the US, also said a deadline to convert had been given to the villagers.

The villagers were assembled at Kocho's only school, after which the men were shot, the activists said. Remaining villagers were then put on buses for an unknown destination.

IS-led violence has driven an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis from their homes. Whole communities of Yazidis and Christians have been forced to flee in the north, along with Shia Iraqis, whom IS do not regard as true Muslims.

Separately, fighting flared up on Friday in the mainly Sunni Anbar province, west of Baghdad, parts of which have been under IS control.

Sanctions

Some leaders of Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority have said they may work against the militants in cooperation with Iraq's new Prime Minister, Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is tasked with restoring order.

The mainly Shia Muslim government is locked in a fight with IS since the group led an insurrection in the north this summer, making the city of Mosul the capital of a self-declared state which extends into Syria.

RAF crews gather intelligence in a mission over Iraq, as Jeremy Cooke reports

Yazidi and Christian people in northern Iraq have faced persecution by the jihadists, prompting US-led air strikes and aid drops and calls for other Western states to arm opponents of IS.

Meeting in New York, the UN Security Council made six people associated with IS or the Syria-based Nusra Front subject to an international travel ban, asset freeze and arms embargo.

Backers of the two groups may also face sanctions, they said.

At an emergency EU meeting in Brussels on Friday, the 28 member-states were left to decide individually whether they would arm Iraq's Kurds, the main opponent of IS in the north.

The UK said it would "consider favourably" any request to send arms to the Kurds, while the Czech government said it would be in a position to start deliveries of munitions by the end of the month.

Germany is legally prevented from arming countries involved in conflict, but Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he would go to the limit of "what is legally and politically possible" to help the Kurds and he will travel to Iraq shortly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28814633

RIP