In August 2014, ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) attacked the Yazidi people, ordering them to convert to Islam or face extermination. Anyone who hesitated or raised the ire of ISIS suffered summary execution.
Town after town and village after village in the Sinjar region of Iraq were "cleansed" of the Yazidis. By late summer of 2016, 72 mass graves had been discovered, which were said to contain a minimum of 5,200 to upwards of over 15,000 Yazidi dead.
About 50,000 Yadizis fled into the Sinjar Mountains. Surrounded and trapped by ISIS, the people began to starve to death and perish from dehydration. It is estimated that over 200 children alone perished from extreme heat, thirst, starvation and dehydration.
Almost immediately, the U.S. State Department declared that ISIS was committing genocide against the Yazidis, and as a result the U.S. government commendably parachuted in desperately needed water and food. It was literally lifesaving aid.
Elsewhere ISIS captured Yazidi women and children and buried them alive, resulting in some 500 deaths. Hundreds of others fleeing for their lives were caught along roadways and murdered. In another instance, 80 men from a single village were caught and forced to convert to Islam, but when the elder of the group adamantly refused to do so, all 80 men were trucked out into the desert where they were gunned down.
Thousands (some estimate the number to be as high as 7,000) of girls and women were captured and sold as sex slaves. The older women were sold in a slave market, while the younger girls and women were either raped or turned over to ISIS fighters.
ISIS has even advertised the sale of the women and girls (some barely out of elementary school) on various social media platforms--photos are included. The jihadists of ISIS purportedly cite passages from the Koran that condone such despicable actions. More specifically, they claim that as idol-worshippers the Yazidi may be purchased and sold like cattle. An untold number of girls have committed suicide to avoid being sold or given to ISIS fighters. Others have resorted to literally and horribly disfiguring their faces in an attempt to make themselves less desirable.
Kurdish smugglers have attempted to save the girls, but when caught they have been assassinated. Kurdish regional authorities were providing funding with which to purchase the girls and women, but such funding is now but a mere dribble due to falling oil prices, etc.
Today, four years after the genocide, Yazidis are still making their way across the treacherously dangerous desert of Iraq to Erbil, Kurdistan, a safe harbor of sorts where refugee camps dot the landscape. While the Yazidi are much safer in Kurdistan than in Iraq, the treatment to which they have been subjected has been far from welcoming.
Not only are the Yazidis often taunted for their religious beliefs, but frequently assaulted. In certain cases, the humanitarian aid they've been provided has been of questionable worth, as some Yazidis have reported that the expiration dates on the canned food dated 2015 and 2016. Reportedly, aid from major international organizations has also dried up over the past year and a half.
Those currently making it across Iraq are often refused entry to the crowded refugee camps. As a result, they have settled wherever possible (including in vacant buildings), not receiving food, water, blankets, or tents from any agencies.
I am leaving for Kurdistan on Feb. 13 with the intent to help as many of the most desperate Yazidi refugees as possible. Having researched what is needed, once there I plan to purchase the following: goats for milking, chickens for laying eggs, dry goods, blankets, kerosene (for those without adequate housing/blankets to ward off the wintry weather), and medicine (especially for skin diseases).
Currently, I am in contact with the major Yazidi group, Yazada, in Duhok, Kurdistan, and a foundation in Germany that has previously helped the Yazidi refugees in Kurdistan, in regard to discovering who is in most dire need and exactly what is needed.
If at all possible, I hope to travel with the Peshmerga, the Kurdistan military, to Sinjar in order to document the massacre sites, and to haul aid to those Yazidi who, for whatever reason, have remained in the region around Sinjar.
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Samuel Totten is professor emeritus at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. For the past six years he has trucked food into the war-torn Nuba Mountains in Sudan. His latest book, out in two months, is Sudan's Nuba Mountains People Under Siege: Accounts by Humanitarians in the Battle Zone. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Editorial on 02/06/2017