Washington Kurdish Institute
August 6, 2018
Friday, August 3rd marked the fourth anniversary of the Yazidi genocide. Most people, if they have heard of the Yazidis at all, only know them as the targeted victims of brutal attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS). But who are the Yazidis and why are they persecuted?
The Yazidi people are an ethnoreligious group in the Middle East who are close to becoming extinct. Though they mostly live in Iraq, many are found in Syria and Armenia. There is also a large diaspora population in Europe. Their population is difficult to determine, but it is estimated to be around 850,000. At least, that was the estimation before the recent genocide. Yazidis speak Kurdish and live in ethnically Kurdish areas, but they have their own unique religion, which separates them from their Sunni-majority neighbors.
The Yazidi religion is monotheistic (worshipping one god) but also reveres seven angels, the head of whom is the peacock angel, Melek Taus (King Peacock). The symbol of the peacock can be seen in many holy sites such as those found in Lalish in Kurdistan region of Iraq and within borders of Nineveh Province. Like Muslims to Mecca, Yazidis must make a pilgrimage to the city at least once in their lives. The city is 4,000 years old and filled with Yazidi shrines. The city itself is not very large but is steeped in history and lore. Unlike many religions in the world, Yazidis do not fixate on dogmatic text, but rather relate traditions and stories through oral practice.
Yazidis have been targeted for violence and oppression more than other religious groups because they are incorrectly seen as polytheists or devil worshipers because they revere an angel that fell from grace. The Yazidi faith predates both Christianity and Islam but it was formalized in the 11th century by Sheik Adi ibn Musafir, who is entombed in Lalish. The Peacock Angel that Yazidis worship was expelled from heaven, but is now reconciled with God. Still, the similarity between the stories of both the Peacock Angel and Satan being banished from heaven causes many to conflate the two and assume they are the same being. This case of mistaken identity persists, and Yazidis are persecuted for being ‘devil worshipers,’ especially by their Sunni Arab neighbors.
Yazidis, like many other religious communities, are not permitted to marry outside the faith, but many Yazidi women and girls have been forced into such marriages after being kidnapped from their families. Soon after the rise of ISIS in August of 2014, they launched a massive campaign on the area surrounding Sinjar Mountain west of Mosul near Iraqi-Syrian border. Yazidis there sought refuge on the high ground, but the Islamist forces advanced, slaughtering thousands of men and capturing thousands of women. They took these women back as sex slaves and wives for fighters or sold them in markets. What makes this particularly disturbing is the bureaucratic efficiency with which these heinous acts occurred. The Islamic State issued policy statements not only allowing the practice but also provided receipts for these women as proofs of purchase.
Yazidis today face many challenges, some that they are accustomed to and some that they are not. Massacre and persecution are not new, but the sheer scale of this conflict is pushing the Yazidi people to extremes beyond previous experience. Many families are leaving their historical homeland with little intention of returning. Other than Iraq, the largest Yazidi population now lives in Germany, and we do not yet know if the Yazidi diaspora will be resilient to assimilation. For the first time in history, Yazidis are being buried outside of Sinjar, the traditional final resting place of all Yazidis. With their historical homeland in chaos and the surrounding areas being torn apart by violence, the future of Yazidis in unknown. More distressingly, even though ISIS has technically been defeated, the fates of three thousand enslaved Yazidi women is still unknown.
Who can they turn to? What aid has come to Yazidis has been late and sluggish. And while the majority of the Yazidis may have been in favor of Kurdistan independence and identified as Kurdistani citizens, Yazidis have become more and more insular following the genocide, displaced and feeling increasingly let down by local and international governments.
“We needed a genocide to make people aware of our existence,” Pari Ibrahim, the executive director of the Free Yezidi Foundation, said on the genocide’s fourth anniversary at an event at the Hudson Institute. Not much has been done for Yazidis. While ISIS may be gone, the Yazidis still cannot go home, or bring their dead from mass graves to have a proper burial because the roads are still blocked to Sinjar, and IEDs (improvised explosive devices) still litter the area, making it unsafe and impossible return until they are cleared.
Most importantly, what the community needs, Ibrahim says, is education and representation. “Education is very important, that the young generation should be educated on who lives in Iraq and who lives in Kurdistan and what kind of different religions there are so that there can be peace among them and friendship instead of hatred towards each other.” She says that inequality and prejudice happen at the lower levels, and the government should end hate speech, through intervention when it is brought to their attention. “If a government hears about this, there should be action. Because If you close your eyes you give the person who is doing this more power to go on with this.” That is if they hear the complaints at all. “This is a big issue within the Yazidi community,” said Pari Ibrahim. “They’ve seen it many times. Sometimes they are unable to speak about it because they are afraid nothing will be done with them. I’ve had this conversation many times with the KRG [Kurdistan Regional Government] on how can we make sure that the Yazidis can go to officials and file a complaint against hatred, inequality or discrimination.” These are essential needs, she says, for a place like Iraq, with many religious and ethnic minorities, ensuring that the state’s institutions uphold the rights enshrined in the constitution.
Extremely important for the security of Yazidis, said Peri Ibrahim, is political representation. In 2014, they had only a single member in parliament. “Giving a voice to Yazidis will make sure that they can stress the things that are happening in the community.” There is not a strong infrastructure for minority members to access government and feel safe about that, especially in light of the recent Iraqi election debacle.
Even as NGOs are on the ground interviewing survivors, prosecuting ISIS will be difficult. While ISIS actions would count as war crimes, and has been categorized as genocide, neither Iraq nor Syria, where these crimes took and continue to take place, are party to the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC), so ISIS is largely out of the ICC’s jurisdiction.
Dawood Saleh, a survivor of the genocide now living in the United States, spoke to the Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI) about his experience.
WKI: First, where you are from and what was your life like there before ISIS? How were Yazidis treated?
Dawood Saleh: I am a Yazidi from Sinjar, Iraq. As tenant farmers, my 8 siblings and I had grown up in a small mud hut with no electricity. Having worked the fields after school each day until the sun went down, I would then have dinner and study by an oil lamp until late in the night. All was right with the world. In 2012, I left my village for the first time to attend college in Duhok University. If someone had said I would soon embark upon a very different long and difficult journey, I would have summarily dismissed the idea.
Yazidi have always been treated so badly but not as when ISIS attacked. They never had the rights as citizens of the state of Iraq even before ISIS. Yazidi students were unable to continue their education in Iraqi cities from the fear of being targeted and many were killed. Yazidi workers left their jobs after 23 of them got killed in Mosul city at once in 2007. And finally the terrorist attack on 2007 by Islamic extremist groups to 3 Yazidi communities and resulted in killing and injuring around 1200 people.
WKI: What are some common misconceptions people have about Yazidis, and what would you like people to know?
Dawood Saleh: Some of the most common misconceptions that people have about Yazidis: the claims that Yazidis are a mysterious religion, worshiping devil “Satan”. What I would like people to know is that Yazidi is a Unitarian religion. They worship only one God, God of Christians, Muslims and Jews. In all Yazidi scripts included very clearly that there is only one God and none is his partner. Yazidis don’t have term of Devil or Satan in their religious beliefs. Yazidis believe that God is only good while evil is a result of human actions. Yazidism is a whole religion and has a history of over 6000 years which indicates that all other religions driven from it. In Yazidis’ beliefs, there are seven Angels who serve God and take care of our world, the archangel is Taus Melek.
WKI: Would you tell us briefly about your experience during the genocide, how you survived if you went to a displacement camp?
Dawood Saleh: Run!! Run!! Those are words I was hearing all the night. Five years ago, I was a student at the University of Duhok, Iraq. I had a good life and was successful in my studies with no worries at all. I was the second top student and got along well with all my instructors. After I finished my third year, I went back to my family in Shingal. The situation was dire at that time as ISIS controlled Mosul city. We were so worried and knew they would eventually attack us. However, we were assured by the government that nothing would happen to us as civilians.
There were a few minor attacks in a couple of weeks but Yazidi fighters who voluntarily joined the army were able to drive them away. We felt they would always be able to protect us. One day I asked my father, “Why don’t we take some food and water to the mountain. If ISIS attacks, we have no vehicle and will have to run to the mountain.” “ The mountain has nothing to help us to survive,” My father replied, “Don’t worry son, God will protect us.”
However, on August 3, 2014, at 3:00 in the morning we received phone calls that a heavy fight was going on between the Yazidi fighters and ISIS in another village. We anxiously stayed awake until the morning light. We then discovered that all the police and the army as well had left Shingal without shooting a single bullet. ISIS soon discovered that we were defenseless and began entering some of the Yazidi villages. Many of our men were killed in the front lines.
All the people from the south of Mt. Sinjar were fleeing barefoot to the mountain. Most of the cars became jammed or broke down. At that time my family managed to get into 4 vehicles of our relatives and neighbors. I had to carry a gun for protection even though I had never used one before. We traveled from our village which was northwest of the mountain to another village in the northeast. I had to quickly leave my family to check that village to make sure everyone got out. I found almost no one there except a few families who had no vehicles to escape. I called my family by cell phone explaining what was happening. However, they were jammed and could not work their way to me.
By that time, I was panicking. I tried running back to them which was about 3 miles. On the way, I encountered my Uncle who told me that ISIS was nearby and I needed to ride with them. One of my sisters was with the group as she had been visiting them. So, I jumped into the back of the pick-up and we started off. My family was able to take another road out. My battery then ran out on my phone and every minute felt like an hour. I knew nothing about my family and, yet, we were then traveling through territory that the Army had abandoned leaving only the Arabs who joined ISIS in the killing spree.
Our only options were to climb up Mt. Sinjar, cross the border to Syria or attempt to take the road through the Arab areas to relative safety in Kurdistan, Iraq. We chose the last and on the way, shooting began from both sides of us. One man got injured and I saw another hanging listlessly on a vehicle after he got shot. It had become an instant nightmare. All the good memories of my family and friends kept flashing in my head as if those were my last moments on earth. The hot dust covered all my clothing and I felt entirely exhausted and without hope.
I managed to escape safely with the rest of my family. I lived with my family for 2 years in displacement camp until I came to U.S..
WKI: Is your experience similar to what other Yazidis have gone through or are you an exception?
Dawood Saleh: I consider myself lucky to what many Yazidi have gone through. I myself documented over 100 stories of young girls who were captive by ISIS. Those stories were unbelievable. Some were unimaginable to happen in the 21st century. I had a friend from college who was slaughtered and rest of his family were killed and taken. I have relatives who are still missing. I wrote a story of a survivor who survived from mass grave after they lined them up and shot them. He was lucky that bullets only scratched his skin. What he experienced was tremendous while he was trying to reach Mount Sinjar afterwards. Every story of Yazidi genocide is a genocide by itself and from much that I know I can’t make a comparison.
WKI: How did you end up in the U.S.?
Dawood Saleh: I was invited to talk to U.S. Congress and administration.
WKI: What can be done to about the missing Yazidis in your opinion?
Dawood Saleh: In my opinion, the international community disregarded missing Yazidis. If there was a real attempt to save those “poor people” they would have done that by now. I call them poor people because the world neglected them. If those Yazidi young women and children were from U.S., Canada, UK, Russia, Israel or from any other powerful countries in the world, it would probably take 48 hours to get them back. I will not tell what it can be done about missing Yazidis because they will be missed forever unless their families try to get them back.
WKI: Has the international community helped the Yazidis? To what extent?
They didn’t help Yazidis at all. I like to be frank not diplomatic. There is nothing that I can mention about the international community regarding helping the Yazidi people. I hope they can help but I feel disappointed about that.
WKI: How about the Iraqi Government or KRG? What did they do?
Dawood Saleh: Both the Iraqi Government and KRG failed to help their own people so I can’t blame them to not helping Yazidis. All are aware of what is going on in Iraq in general. I am not trying to be negative. The Iraqi government failed in every aspects to offer a simple life to Iraqi civilians. It is better to call Iraqi government “The Thief Community” who have stolen all Iraq money and left it in the hand of terrorists. They draw Iraq 1000 years backward. KRG were about to get their chance if they knew how to use it but they also failed. The situation is driving to be worse. KRG is not united anymore. They became just political parties that compete against each other. People of Kurdistan were so kind and generous to Yazidi displaced people when they fled to Kurdistan. If KRG wants to get back they need to value diversity, human rights, freedom of religion and speech, and fight extremist religion groups.
WKI: Is there anything else you would like to add?
As a person from Iraq and lived in Kurdistan, I wish safety and peace to all people there. I wish it turn to a better place where people can have a normal life far from war. I hope that they can all live together and accept each others regardless to religion differences, race, gender, and color of skin.