(The Conversation) – Behind each door and gate in Sinuni, Iraq, there is a different story of trauma and resilience. The Yazidi community is still coping with the trauma and mental health burden following the ISIS genocide of 2014, where thousands of men, women and children were killed, tortured and kidnapped for sexual slavery.

Eighty-one mass graves have been discovered, the most recent of which was found in June 2022.

The Yazidi community is based in Sinjar region, which is located in Nineveh Governorate, in northern Iraq. For thousands of years, this Mesopotamian-based population was persecuted for their unique ethno-cultural and religious beliefs, which promote harmony and peace.

After the genocide of 2014, members of the Yazidi community looked for safety in countries all over the world. However, a community core still stands with resolution on the land where their ancestors were born, around the Sinjar Mount. Some by choice, some because they were not able to leave.

A study from 2015 estimated that 2.5 per cent of the Yazidi population was either killed or kidnapped over the course of a few days in August 2014. Thousands were kept as sexual slaves. As such, it is not surprising that a study published in 2022 investigating the traumatic experience of displaced Yazidis living in a Kurdistan camp estimated that about four out of five respondents had PTSD symptoms, and that women had a higher rate and score of trauma and PTSD symptoms. Resilience strengthening is a key for the treatment of those survivors, especially for the Yazidi individual, collective and transgenerational traumatization.

Link between mental health and cultural identity

Research has indicated that a positive cultural identity contributes to better mental health. Cultural identity is a concept that encompasses personal, ethnic and social self-identity, which is critical for self-esteem.

In a longitudinal study with Asian and Latino youth, cultural identity was associated with lower levels of depression symptoms. In addition, for Syrian refugees, the sense of belonging to a social or cultural community was a predictor of lower levels of depression symptoms, as well as greater life satisfaction.

Historical colonialism, oppression and marginalization have contributed to poor mental health of Indigenous Peoples in Canada and Australia. However, cultural identity seems to have a role to play in health and well-being.

For example, for Australian Indigenous people in custody, their cultural engagement was associated with non-recidivism. Cultural continuity helped Indigenous communities of Canada to thrive, and promoting the sense of collective pride might contribute to positive mental health.

As such, the idea was suggested recently that mental health programs should support the development of cultural identities, with the potential to improve psychological well-being.

Since the genocide, some Yazidis report a renewed interest in their Yazidi cultural and political identity. They have a stronger will than before to protect Yazidi holy sites, preserve oral traditions and hymns and their unique cultural practices.

Humanitarian intervention

My work is usually done in collaboration with Indigenous Peoples in North America, who deal with systematic racism, exclusion and stigma, generational trauma, awful abuses from residential schools and thousands of unmarked graves of children.

The Yazidi issues are a different type of deliberate horror, and are still very recent in the memory of survivors. Médecins Sans Frontières warned the world in 2019 of the mental health crisis and of increasing suicide rates in the region.

I was recruited by Médecins Sans Frontières in summer 2022 to support a health promotion program in Sinuni, Iraq. The role of our health promotion team was to provide a bridge between the local hospital services and the population, as well as to implement preventive initiatives to improve physical and mental health in the community. In parallel, mental health professionals were offering support to the residents.

During our outreach activities, we often got a glimpse of the depth of the trauma of some community members, and witnessed their mental challenges. These included expressions such as:

• How can I be stress-free while there are 21 members of my family who are still missing?
• My father’s house was destroyed years ago. Every time I see it, next to my house, it makes me sad.
• I think about killing myself, day after day. We don’t have skills, hobbies, hope.
• Many of us have someone we don’t let alone in the house because we fear they might kill themselves.

As part of the mental health activities, I developed the content of a series of workshops, with the aim to:

1. destigmatize mental health issues,

2. improve individual resiliency to stress by learning techniques to decrease anxiety at home,

3. increase community support, social capital and cultural identity to prevent and cope with mental health issues.

Those workshops were implemented by the team in homes and schools. As part of the last workshop, there were participatory activities on the importance of peer groups, on the role of cooking and traditional practices. One key activity was to invite participants to sing traditional songs together.

The aim of those activities was to bring awareness on the positive impact of cultural identity, and strengthen social relations between neighbours. Those activities were evaluated, with participants reporting immediate and lasting positive impacts.

Assessment of the workshops indicated increased happiness index: 58 per cent were above the threshold for depressive symptoms before the workshop while 92 per cent of participants were above the threshold immediately after. In addition, after two weeks post workshop, there were fewer participants self-isolating and meeting socially once a month or less (30 per cent versus 10 per cent post-workshop), and there was an increased average number of social activities.

Our team observed that the Yazidi are collectively strong, resilient and hopeful. However, the trauma is still acute, and the extent of the mental health issues is such that it could pass on a generational trauma.

As several NGOs cease their activities in the region, there are fewer organizations offering mental health care for the Yazidis, on the south and north side of Sinjar Mount.

However, more work needs to be done to improve mental health in the region via health promotion, counselling, therapy and psychiatry. There is also an opportunity to support cultural identity to reinforce mental health resilience.

Mylène Ratelle, Adjunct Professor, School of Public Health Sciences, University of Waterloo

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( Middle East Monitor) – After the 2014 Daesh genocide which left them reeling from the effects of mass abduction and rape, Yazidi refugee girls are rebuilding their lives with the help of boxing, art and music classes. Emma Loffhagen and Charline Bou Mansour report from Iraqi Kurdistan

In a small, dimly-lit cabin in Kurdistan, northern Iraq, 15-year-old Zhiyan Yousif takes a moment to bend over and catch her breath. After a few seconds, she is upright again, a determined look back on her face. She is here, on a warm November morning in Essyan refugee camp, to fight.

Ten or so other girls form an orderly queue behind her, chatting excitedly. They take in turns to duck and weave, dancing around one another to the steady rhythm of their boxing instructor’s shouts of “jab!”, “cross!”.

Like all the girls in the boxing class, Zhiyan is a Yazidi refugee, and has lived in Essyan camp, on the outskirts of the dusty hills of Duhok, for eight years. She was just six years old when Daesh swarmed her hometown of Sinjar, northern Iraq, in the middle of the night in August 2014. She was forced to leave everything behind and flee, along with an estimated 200,000 other members of the Yazidi religious minority.

Yazidi girls box their way to a new future after Daesh terror [Ros Russell]

Like tens of thousands of Yazidis, Zhiyan took refuge on Mount Sinjar with her parents and ten siblings, surviving for seven days without food or water in the searing August heat. Temperatures reached 40C, and many died of dehydration and exhaustion. That was the last time Zhiyan would ever see the place she still calls home.

“I would love to go back one day,” she tells me. “But it’s unsafe. For now, I will just live here in the camp. But Sinjar is still the place that I call home.”

It is here in the camp that Zhiyan has found her passion. In 2018, when a ground-breaking programme called Boxing Sisters was set up to help women and girls recover and rebuild from the trauma of Daesh brutality, she was one of the first to sign up.

“When I first started boxing I found it really difficult,” Zhiyan tells me, sitting in a small library established by the Lotus Flower, a charity that provides holistic education classes to women and girls uprooted by conflict. “But step by step it became easier. It has really helped to change my mindset and my physical health. Now I can’t miss a class.”

When Daesh overran Sinjar, their fighters carried out a pre-planned mass abduction of girls for the purpose of institutionalised rape. Initially, they were looking for unmarried women and girls over eight. More than 6,000 Yazidi women and girls were enslaved and transported to Daesh prisons, where they were sold as sex slaves, raped, tortured and killed.

While not all of the thousands of girls in the displacement camps in the Kurdistan region of Iraq were kidnapped or subjected to sexual violence, all of them, like Zhiyan, had to flee for their lives.

A 40-minute drive from the city of Duhok, Essyan camp is one of 21 camps for internally displaced people in Iraqi Kurdistan. Home to around 13,000 refugees, almost all of them Yazidi, it resembles a small village, with a school, hairdressers and shops selling clothes and gadgets. But even after eight years, most families still sleep in makeshift tents. Sheep and goats roam free, often followed by a giggling toddler hot on their heels.

The Lotus Flower centre is a short drive through the camp. Like its namesake, a flower that grows from the mud, the centre feels like an oasis, with classrooms in cabins centred around a brightly coloured “art garden” painted by the participants.

Forced to drop out of the small school in the camp because of difficulties in her family life, Zhiyan, whose name means ‘life’ in Kurdish, has turned to the boxing classes at the Lotus Flower as her escape, and potentially her ticket out of Essyan.

“I love sport and it has made me realise that when I’m older, I want to be a professional boxer or maybe a volleyball player.”

Her boxing coach Nathifa, herself a Yazidi refugee, has fought hard to overcome the stigma around women doing an activity like boxing within the conservative community. “I went to each of their houses and I asked their fathers: ‘why aren’t you letting your girls come to the class?'” They responded: ‘girls have nothing to do with boxing.'”

“So I said, I want to let you know that if your girls knew how to defend themselves, one Daesh fighter might not have been able to capture 10 girls at the same time.”

“I’ve noticed that during the classes some of the girls will cry,” says Nathifa, who speaks with passion about the cathartic importance of this training for her now 40 regular students. “It’s not just a sport for them, it’s a way for them to release the stress and anger of what they’ve been through.”

For women and girls who have all been through unimaginable trauma, some being captured and tortured by Daesh, it is also about being able to defend themselves in a region where remnant Daesh militants still pose a threat.

“It’s so important that the girls are not afraid, that they know how to protect themselves without anyone else needing to save them.”

For 17-year-old Parwin, the memories of the day Daesh fighters turned up at her door eight years ago are still vivid.

“I saw them with my own eyes,” she says. “They were big and scary, they had beards, long hair and black clothes. The first time we saw them, we all cried.”

“They told us: ‘we never want to see your faces again. If we do, then we’ll kill you.’ So we fled.”

Both of Parwin’s parents were killed in a blast when she was two years old. Since 2014, she has been living in the camp with her aunt, uncle and cousins, and comes to the Lotus Flower centre every day to take part in the art, yoga, music and English lessons that the charity also runs.

“I used to feel like a mental health patient. I would scream and cry for my mum and dad – I saw them everywhere. I screamed so loud the entire camp would hear me.”

When she first sits down to speak to us at the Lotus Flower’s centre, Parwin is shy, fidgeting and shifting in her seat. She is holding a notebook where she has written down what she wants to say in case she forgets.

Article continues after gallery

“Before [the Lotus Flower] there were no classes and activities like these. We were always so scared and would never leave our tents. I’m at ease here. If my head hurts or I feel tired, I come here and my mood just changes.”

With education comes empowerment. Many of the women living in the camps have seen the men in their family killed by Daesh and become the sole providers for their extended families overnight. As well as running classes, the charity helps these women to set up their own small businesses within the camps.

“Education means everything to me,” Parwin says. “I used to sell potatoes and onions to make money, and I’d have to borrow money from my friends to pay for school books and papers. Here it’s constantly noisy, it’s not a good environment to study in, so I’d get up at 3 am in the middle of the night to study until midday.”

“I study so hard every day. But as soon as I enter the class and start my exam, I panic and forget everything because of the anxiety and depression I deal with.”

Literacy rates among Yazidis, particularly women and girls, are typically low. The community has historically treated formal education with suspicion, associating it with repressive state authorities and the suppression of their language.

When Daesh arrived, illiteracy made it harder for captured Yazidi women to escape because they couldn’t read road signs or the names of unfamiliar buildings.

“We believe in a very holistic approach to education, given everyone in the camp has different needs and different ways of channelling their emotions,” says Taban Shoresh, the London-based founder of the Lotus Flower and herself a child genocide survivor of Saddam Hussein’s regime. When Shoresh saw another genocide being perpetrated in Iraq, she left her City job to establish the charity.

“Mental health and wellbeing are tied to flourishing in education and business – I don’t believe you can have one without the other.”

“For people suffering from horrific traumatic memories, they need to have a sense of how they are going to rebuild their lives,” says Dr Michael Duffy, an expert on the psychological impact of trauma at Queen’s University Belfast.

“There need to be mechanisms in place to facilitate this, like education, art, yoga, music – all of these services…are hugely important supplementary interventions.”

We follow Parwin up the dusty path leading to her home in Essyan camp. Cushions line the floor of a small room that she shares with her cousins. The facilities are basic – a cupboard serves as a kitchen, and a cracked piece of glass hangs on the wall as a mirror. In summer, temperatures in Iraq can reach 50C, and the heat in the tents is unbearable.

There is often a misconception of refugee camps as sites of emergency and temporary aid relief. But this has been life for the 360,000 displaced Yazidis for the last eight years, and returning to Sinjar in the foreseeable future is still unlikely.

“The work these charities do is wonderful and must be commended, but this is a huge problem that requires an international, intergovernmental response,” Dr Duffy says. “We can try to help someone move on from a traumatic experience, but in this case the question is: where are they moving on to?”

For Parwin, there has always been one answer to this question. When we ask her what she wants to do when she is older, her eyes light up.

“My dream is to become a lawyer,” she says proudly. “And God willing, I will be one.”

This article is part of the Let Girls Learn series from the Evening Standard in London.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Moreover, the question of heavy drinking or partying hard has been raised only with regard to confirming Blasey Ford’s account. I’d hate for us to be so puritanical that we punish people for having too good a time when they were young. The issue is coercion, making someone do something they don’t want to do.

There is another phenomenon that young men wilding and sexually assaulting young women brings to mind, and that is ISIL (or ISIS or Daesh). To the cries that it is grossly unfair to compare Kavanaugh to ISIL terrorists, I will say that I’m not making a global comparison. The Republican Party is not like ISIL and Kavanaugh is not generally speaking a terrorist. I am only comparing the sense of male entitlement in a handful of young men in the GOP to that among the ISIL fighters, and only with regard to those who believe it is all right to coerce young women. (Nor is this a problem of only one party).

Still, it is ironic that Kavanaugh should be voted onto the Court on the same weekend when the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Nadia Murad, a woman who belongs to the Yazidi religious minority among Kurds in Iraq and Syria. Yazidis are not Muslims but half a million or so have managed to survive in rugged places like the area around Sinjar.

ISIL attacked and killed a lot of Muslims, too, but it especially killed Yazidi men and enslaved their wives and daughters.

ISIL killed Nadia Murad’s mother and then enslaved and repeatedly raped her over a three month period, until she escaped from Mosul, then an ISIL stronghold.

Compelling a young woman to have sex is rape. What Kavanaugh is alleged to have attempted to do is criminal. What a young ISIL guerrilla did to Nadia Murad differs in quantity and severity, not in kind, from what Kavanaugh is accused of trying to do.

The United States has won many Nobel Prizes. But this year an Iraqi woman was honored, for her activism in saving coerced women and advertising their plight.

It is all the more shameful that the Republican Senate chose this moment to be the anti-Nadia Murad, and to put a tainted candidate on the Supreme Court.

One third of laws are now issued as executive orders by the president, with only 2/3s being passed by a legislature. If the executive orders are challenged in court, they go to the Supreme Court. If ambiguous legislation is challenged in court, it goes to the Supreme Court.

Corporations need the court to rule in favor of Capital every time, and Kavanaugh will. He is very young and very conservative. He will serve them for decades.

Democrats put in old centrist on the Supreme Court. Republicans put in young jurists who are on the far right

They’re not afraid of being unpopular or losing midterms. They’re afraid of not getting their way in the courts on issues affecting the millionaires, billionaires and the Americans who work for them. Republicans lost most of Congress in 2008, but in 2010 they came right back. Elections are ephemeral.

The rich and partisans of the rich are too few by themselves to hope to prevail in a popular election, so the GOP allied with Evangelicals, for whom Kavanaugh serves to hold out hope that Roe v. Wae will be overturned. Some
political Christianity, like some Political Islam, tends to stand for the proposition that God has given control of women’s bodies into the hands of men.

To reward both their financial backers and the mass of their voters in one fell swoop, and to accomplish something that will last possibly for 30 years, is far to central to the GOP to let a little thing like a youthful attempted rape get in the way. This step is a form of extreme political corruption of the sort the Founding Generation dreaded when they denounced political parties and party spirit.

As with ISIL, ultimately patriarchy is simply one form of the will to power.

—-

Bonus video:

VOA: “VOA Interview with Nobel Peace Prize Winner Nadia Murad”

It began with an electrifying text message from a Yazidi member of a network dedicated to freeing Yazidis (an ancient people from Northern Iraq who adhere to a faith rooted in old Iranian religion and influenced by Sufi mysticism). The message was stark and simple, “We have a fourteen year old girl whose ISIL captor is willing to sell her for 17,000 dollars. Her name is Fayza Murad from the northern Iraqi town of Siber.” If we could get to Iraq with the required sum we could save one of the thousands of Yazidi girls who had been dragged off and sold into slavery by the ISIL fanatics who conquered their remote homeland in Northern Iraq in August of 2014. If we did not obtain the money there was a high probability that Fayza would never be seen again as the ISIL “Caliphate” was beginning to collapse under the assault of the Kurds, Iraqi Army and U.S coalition bombing.

Thus began a frantic search for money that led myself and a brave group of multinational volunteers led by a fiery English woman named Anne Norona from the safety of our homes to the sprawling refugee camps in the burning deserts of Northern Iraq. For me it was to be the culmination of a long journey to explore the history of a dying people whose origins lay in the mists of time.

Lailish: An Entry into the World of a Dying People

My journey to comprehend this fascinating people that had endured on and off persecution for centuries by their Muslim neighbors who defined them as, “Devil worshippers” began while researching a history of America’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria (Counter Jihad: The American Military Experience in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.). In the winter of 2016 I was invited by two prominent Kurdish generals leading the assault against ISIL, whose territory in Mosul and Northern Iraq lay perilously close to their own capital, Erbil, and their mountainous homeland known) as Kurdistan. As a platoon of brave Kurdish Peshmerga fighters (those who face death defined as a volunteer fighting force that defended the Kurdish sanctuary in the mountains of North Eastern Iraq. As we looked across the valley at ISIL positions facing them I was introduced to my first Yazidi.

He enthralled me with stories of the ancient rituals of his people who the world gravely misunderstood as “pagans” and brought to life the epic story of his long persecuted people. It was this fascinating narrative that inspired me to travel Northward from our fire base at the newly recaptured Mosul Dam to the ancient heart of the Yazidis, their remote mountain temple located dangerously close to ISIL’s frontlines in Iraq. There I was provided with a rare opportunity to access a stone temple built in a bygone era and see Yazidis solemnly praying, dipping their hands in a sacred pool of Azrael, the Death Angel, and even given the extraordinary opportunity to meet their second highest priest, Baba Chavush. As I sat with this holy man who blessed myself and my fellow companion, Adam Sulkowski, he spoke of centuries of genocide as well as his hopes for peace for his people and all of humanity. With a gold peacock next to him, the peacock being a figure that represents the Yazidi’s primary god, Malak Tawus (The Peacock Angel) he lamented the fate of thousands of Yazidi girls who had been dragged against their will from their families into ISIL captivity and forgotten by an uncaring world.

I flew back to my own safe home in Boston feeling both blessed for having been given such a rare entry into the mystical world of one of the most ancient traditions in existence, but at the same time troubled by the pain in Baba Chavush’s voice as he described the unimaginable and horrific fate of Yazidi slave girls living in the clutches of their fanatical ISIL captors. Their story moved me to write articles about the Yazidi plight, but there was not much more I could do, after all I was just one man living far away from the warzones of the Middle East.

Little did I know there was, however, another person on the planet far braver than myself, who had decided that she would make that difference. It was my discovery of Anne Norona that was to take me from Boston and once again launch me into the maelstrom of the Middle East just as ISIL’s greatest triumph, Mosul, collapsed under the assault of a vast array of armies and militias bent on revenge.

Anne Norona. Single Mother, Nurse, and “Angel of Sinjar.”

Following my field research in the embattled mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, I began to connect with a growing network of Yazidis who I had met on Facebook. They spoke of their dreams for the liberation of their homeland, a return from their refugee camps to their holy mountain haven, Mount Sinjar, and most painfully of the plight of thousands of daughters and sisters living as Sabbiya (Koran endorsed slave girls). I was even shown a horrific video some Yazidis had acquired of black clad, heavily armed, bearded ISIL fighters waving the black banner of Jihad and shouting “Allah u Akbar!” (God is Greatest) as they triumphantly dragged screaming girls as young as eleven from the pleading hands of their terrified mothers. I was nauseated when I heard that ISIL members considered raping “Pagan infidels,” to be an act of worship. I was moved by online interviews of members of this peaceful people who spoke of the horrors of enslavement by the men who had ritualistically slit the throats of their fathers and brothers, gunned down woman over the age of 40 in trenches and blown up their ancient temples with their priests still inside of them.

Some of the most impactful images I had ever seen in my life were of a Yazidi girl named Nadia Murad who had escaped captivity and told the world of the horrors she had endured during her time as an ISIL slave.

It was as I burned with a sense of helplessness, fury and desire to help that I received an unusual Facebook message from someone identifying herself as Anne Norona. Her initial messages were guarded and she wanted to know where my interests in the Yazidis came from. When I explained I was a Welshman/American who had dedicated his life to performing fieldwork amongst various persecuted ethnic minorities ranging from the isolated Kalash Pagan’s on the Afghan Pakistan border, to the embattled Chechen highlanders of the Russian Caucasus, to the dying Crimean Tatars of Ukraine/Russia, to the Kosovo Albanians and Bosnians she began to open up to me and ,in the process, I got to know someone whose life dream was to “grow flowers in my garden and save Yazidis.”

It soon became apparent that Anne was a fascinating English globe roamer of the sort that had marched out and conquered much of the world and provided us such names as Lawrence of Arabia, Gertrude Bell (wonderfully played in a recent movie starring Nicole Kidman), and Dr. David Livingston (who disappeared in the depths of Africa in the 19^th century). Anne similarly burned with the desire to get out into the world and help others, but instead of writing books and articles, as I did, she put boots on the ground and worked as a volunteer nurse in places ranging from Haiti to the Greek Island, Lesbos, located just off the Turkish coast. Having myself spent thirteen summers in Turkey living South of Lesbos with my ex-wife Feyza’s family in the beautiful costal village of Cesme, I had myself witnessed the flow of desperate Iraqi and Syrian refugees fleeing through Turkey in a desperate attempt to reach the Greek Isles and obtain asylum in the European Union. Lesbos was the frontline on the largest immigration of humans since World War II and tens of thousands of refugees were living in squalor in makeshift refugee camps on the island.

It was while Anne and a team of volunteers working as Health Point Foundation under Dr. Hadia Aslam in the medical tent in the city of Moria, in Lesbos that she came across her first Yazidis. Much of the volunteers work consisted of online communication between an amazing group of core humanitarians from around the world who worked tirelessly and remotely to ensure the refuges received help in every way, from legal to medical to boat rescue to basic assistance and supplies of food and clothes. These volunteers were doing the job that the big NGO’s were so negligently failing to do.

For Anne, a single mother who had run away from home as a rebellious teenager and explored much of the world from Africa to the Orient, her meeting with the Yazidis was in many ways a fulfillment of what the Arabs call kismet, “Fate.”

The Yazidis Anne encountered were different from all of the other Muslim Arab refugees in the Lesbos camps. They were physically smaller, were more shy, were often embarrassed to receive assistance and sadly faced continued persecution from Arab /Muslim refugees who mocked them by chanting “Allah u Akbar’’ or even attacked them. They had in many ways been deprived of much of the assistance going to the Arab /Muslim refugees as a result of their shyness and continued persecution. It was while working that it became obvious to Anne and her medical team, who she dubbed, “The Mosquitos” that the Yazidis needed special care and that is how Anne’s life was changed forever.

Anne and her then Yazidi counterpart and friend Shaker Jeffery became involved in the personal cases of Yazidis, realizing that they had the best of both worlds, Anne having all the contacts in Greece and Shaker all the Yazidi contacts. It was the perfect match. With this combination they were able to help cases, such as a young woman who urgently needed an eye operation to save her from certain blindness to finding emergency rescuers to help Yazidis petrified and surrounded by violent smugglers in Macedonia, to alerting the Greek coastguards when Yazidi boats were crossing the Mediterranean Sea and encountering difficulties.

Anne’s instinct to side with the underdog and to fight in their corner propelled her determination to defend these much persecuted people. Ultimately, this burning sense of mission drove her to Iraq itself where she and a trusted team of Yazidi key workers and doctors who joined with her to provide emergency support to the most vulnerable in any given situation. She soon became known throughout the Yazidi community as someone to be contacted in moments of need and remained available 24 hours a day online. She would utilize ‘Crowd funders’ on Facebook to raise money for desperate cases, providing emergency assistance, for ISIL survivors, orphans and medical cases.

When Anne made her way back home to Britain, to her self constructed home which she calls “The Shed” situated in a flower covered field near the cliffs of Penzance in remote Cornwall, England, she continued her work to assist Yazidis in obtaining passports, supporting survivors and orphans, providing access to medical treatments, and on occasion even helping to free one of the poor Yazidi girls trapped in ISIL slavery.

While Anne would make desperate pleas for help online and among her local community her mission to provide multifaceted assistance to a people that found itself scattered in refugee camps far from their home and facing extinction went largely unnoticed by an uncaring world that was more interested in things like Donald Trump’s latest Twitter storm or Kim Kardashian’s weight gain.

Operation Fayza: A Mission to Free One Slave

The mission to free Fayza actually began in May of this year when I was carrying out fieldwork in Bosnia for the defense in a Federal terrorism case. It was at this time that Christopher Natola, one of my brightest students who had assisted me in writing my book Counter Jihad, suggested that I actually go to scenic Cornwall, England to meet Anne while I was in Europe. Spurred on by his words, I took a flight from Sarajevo to London (sadly arriving on the night of the terrorist attack on the pop concert in Manchester) and took a wonderful five hour train ride across England, down to the cliff side town of Penzance to meet the woman who so fascinated me.

I was welcomed at the train station overlooking a scenic bay and was driven by Anne to the famous “Shed” in her amazing garden. For a few days I did an “embed” with Anne and got to see her in action. Living with Anne was like being in the center of a one person global enterprise that saw her communicating via Facebook with Yazidis who had found asylum in Germany, members of her network in Iraqi Kurdistan trying to free a sex slave, hosting fundraisers in her local community, and in between taking time to tell me personal stories and showing me pictures of all of the Yazidis her and her network of “Mosquitos” ( As her team were called in their secret Facebook group) had helped.

Anne did all of this while single handedly raising a wonderful son and working as a nurse in a doctors surgery. I was in awe of her. Anne, a single English mother was making a difference in a world dominated by war, fanaticism, cynicism and apathy. Her story was almost Hollywoodesque in its beauty. Anne demonstrated that nothing is impossible, that one person can make a tremendous difference.

I flew home back to Boston inspired to tell her story and it was at this time that the now famous text message arrived, “We have a girl named Fayza, her ISIL captor is asking 17,000 dollars for her release or she will disappear into the burning black hole that is Mosul, Iraq.”

We needed money and we needed to get it to a smuggler, who would take most of the profits for going into the heart of darkness, to evacuate Fayza out of besieged Mosul. I was deeply touched by the fact that a young Yazidi girl who had the chance to be liberated had the same name as my former wife Feyza. I lost no time in contacting Feyza and she instantly offered her support to our cause. Together we collected funds to assist and with Feyza’s blessing and prayers for protection, I decided to join Anne and her team which included; K.P. a Canadian Sikh optometrist, Juliet an English woman from Devon and Baderkhan and Khairi, Yazidi friends and members of The Mosquitos.

In early June I flew from Boston to Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan with the raised funds. There I reunited with Anne, who by now I had dubbed the “Angel of Sinjar” (Sinjar being the Yazidi’s sacred mountain). With Baderkhan and Khairi as our local guides, we drove northward parallel to the frontlines of the ongoing war with ISIL towards the northern town of Duhok. As Anne’s contact kept us updated by the hour, we waited anxiously to see if the money we delivered would actually free Fayza and reunite her with her family.

While we waited for news in 110 degree heat we visited various Yazidi refugee camps where we met with girls who had been recently liberated from slavery. There I watched as Anne, Juliet, and K.P. gave each girl several hundred dollars (A small fortune for these, the poorest and most traumatized of refugees who had returned from slavery with only the clothes on their backs).

Apart from those whom we met who had literally just escaped captivity, Anne knew all of her cases and their families intimately and was greeted with hugs and tears as she met with one Yazidi woman who had the sad fate of having lost her husband to ISIL and had suffered for 3 years with a prolapsed/herniated disc in her back with 11 children to care for and no way of making a living stuck in a tented camp in Kurdistan. Anne and her team went from tent to tent reuniting with people who had become well known to them. In the process, money was given to a woman who needed surgery, toys were given to children of a former ISIL slave, Anne met with UN High Commission for Refugees representatives to discuss a Canadian resettlement program and we all awaited anxiously for word on Fayza.

Then came the news we had been waiting for; the smuggler sent a triumphant cell phone photo of himself driving Fayza, who we had only seen in ISIL photographs nervously wearing a headscarf, being driven from Mosul to her parents in the refugee camp. At the last minute, the ISIL captor had lowered his demands and we had rescued Fayza from certain death in Mosul and reunited her with her family.

Anne Norona

The images of Fayza being embraced by her weeping father and her mother were for me in many ways a rare image of joy in a land defined by death, misery, fanaticism and slavery. Our team did not probe Fayza on her personal details or the horrors she experienced, it was not our place to do so. Sadly, there is rarely consistent psychological counselling for Yazidi girls or child soldiers freed from ISIL. Depression and post traumatic stress syndrome are sadly extremely common. We knew that their lives had been shattered and picking up the pieces would take many years, but we all took consolation in the fact that our small group had made a difference. One beautiful young Yazidi girl now had something that so many other sex slaves did not have, freedom and a chance to live her life. Although Fayza is now out of the reach of her ISIL tormentors, her future is still vaguely uncertain as she is living in tent 16 of the Chem Misko refugee camp amongst tens of thousands of fellow refugees in the town of Zacho. While it is difficult to know what sort of demons, nightmares or PTSD Fayza is suffering from, I took some consolation from the last imagine I saw of Anne enveloping Fayza in her loving arms and saving one more of her “Children”.

I am now safely back in Boston once more, and I guess some of my own demons and sense of guilt that long haunted me have been exorcised by the freeing of just one fourteen year old girl from the horrors of slavery at the hands of brutal terrorists. But I, like Anne, have been touched to my soul by the plight of the Yazidis, and particularly of those young girls still languishing in captivity. I cannot help but wonder how much more we Americans or Europeans would care if we had saved one American or British girl from slavery.

It is the images of Fayza sitting in Anne’s arms smiling at the camera, still in shock, that inspire me now to make this plea. If you have long felt that you cannot make a difference in the world, overcome your apathy and doubt in order to believe that you can. And you can start by reaching out to Anne and assisting her in her mission through funds, online activism, or who knows perhaps traveling to the wind swept deserts of sun blasted Northern Iraq to help one determined English woman save Yazidis… one person at a time.

To assist Anne please be sure to visit the following Facebook group page –Y.E.S – Yazidi Emergency Support group.

Brian Glyn Williams Full Professor of Islamic History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and former lecturer at the University of London; http://www.brianglynwilliams.com

Christopher Natola Masters Degree in Education and currently studying for a Masters Degree in Homeland Security at Boston’s Northeastern University; https://twitter.com/Cnato14

On February 3, the New York Times quoted the desperate plea of a Yazidi, a member of an ethnic-religious group facing communal extermination at the hands of ISIS jihadi terrorists. In simple, but moving terms he summed up the plight of his people, whose ancestral lands in northern Iraq was conquered by the ISIS “Caliphate” in the summer of 2014, “Please help us. They are killing us and kidnapping our women and children.”

In case you missed the story of the ISIS fanatics’ conquest of the Yazidis’ ancient homeland in August 2014, a recap is essential for understanding the plight of this endangered community that has faced centuries of what can only be described as a genocidal assault. This assault has historically been carried out by surrounding Arab and Turkish Muslims who have falsely accused them of being “devil worshippers.” It is a tragic tale of the followers of a peaceful religion–with origins that are lost in the mists of time in Mesopotamia–whose very existence is now threatened by a combination of fanaticism on the part of ISIS, and indifference on the part of Western powers.

“Devil Worshippers” or Believers in the Peacock Angel?

To understand the secretive religion of the Yazidis, my colleague Professor Adam Sulkowski, who had previously joined me in exploring the mountain realm of the ancient Kalash pagans on the Afghan-Pakistani border, decided to journey to the holiest spot in the world for Yazidis, the stone temple complex at Lailish. Lailish is nestled in a narrow valley in the hills of the autonomous realm of Iraqi Kurdistan, a few miles from the frontlines with ISIS. Our guide for the trip was a gregarious Yazidi named Thamer Alyas who was eager to give us an insider’s tour of this sacred spot that has for centuries been closed to outsiders.

As we drove through the mist-covered hills of Iraqi Kurdistan with Thamer, he explained that his people worshipped one Creator-God, just like the surrounding Muslim Kurds and Arabs as well as Christian groups (these ancient Christians, largely known as Assyrians, have also been targeted for destruction by Al Qaeda in Iraq and ISIS and their community has dwindled since the 2003 U.S. invasion from 1.5 million to about 200,000 today). The Yazidis’ God is known as Khude and is all forgiving and merciful. God-Khude created himself and seven archangels led by Melek Tawus, the Peacock Angel. Melek Tawus was sent to earth to create life from the primordial chaos and act as an intercessor between man and God. The first human had been created without a soul, so Melek Tawus blew the breath of life into him. He then turned Adam towards the Sun, symbol of the Supreme Creator, which Yazidis, like ancient Mesopotamians, still worship.

There are many other archaic aspects of the faith that indicate it may be among the world’s oldest and their calendar dates back 6,756 years, nearly 5,000 years further than the Christian or Gregorian calendar and nearly 1,000 years further than the Jewish calendar.

So far we felt this story seemed innocuous enough. There is nothing in this ancient myth of creation that warrants centuries of repression by Ottoman Turkish authorities and now slaughter by ISIS.

But it is the sad fate of the Yazidis that the story of Melek Tawus has eerie parallels with the story of Shaytan, the fallen jinn (genie) of Islam who is known in English as Satan. According to Yazidi tradition, Melek Tawus was told by God-Khuede not to bow to other beings. Then God tested Malak Tawus by creating man out of dust and ordering Melek Tawus to bow to Adam. Melek Tawus replied “How can I submit to another being! I am from your illumination while Adam is made of dust.” After forgiving him, God made him the ruler of earth after he cried for 7,000 years to extinguish hell with his tears.

Unfortunately, in the Islamic tradition, Shaytan or Iblis was a jinn who similarly refused God’s order to bow down to Adam. For this sin of pride, God-Allah cursed him and expelled him from heaven to earth. Starting in the fifteenth centuries, surrounding Turkish and Arab Muslims came to equate Melek Tawus, the primary being worshipped by Yazidis, with Shaytan the Tempter. Thus began centuries of slaughter and persecution that saw the Yazidis flee to the mountains of northern Iraq.

There, this people, who are ethnically Kurdish and speak the Kurdish dialect of Kurmanji, have long been protected by fellow Kurds who have a tradition of moderation and hospitality towards repressed minorities. Kurds believe that they were all once believers in the ancient Yazidi faith and see this minority as the living memory and conscience of their people. In essence, they feel that Yazidis are repositories of their pre-Islamic traditions. There is some truth to this as many of the Yazidis’ customs, such as their belief in angels, sacred trees, and the purity of earth, air, fire and water, come from ancient Mesopotamian and Iranian-Zoroastrian belief systems.

But the Yazidis’ sanctuary among the Kurds was to be threatened by the rise of fanatical Sunni Arab jihadist groups which rose up to resist the overthrow of their sectarian group by the Americans in 2003’s Operation Enduring Freedom.

ISIS Declares a Total Jihad on the Yazidi “Infidels”

Like most Iraqis who suffered under Saddam Hussein, the Yazidis celebrated the overthrow of this hated dictator but, like the ancient Christian communities of northern Iraq, they soon became the target of fanatical Sunni jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) which rose up to fight the Americans. In 2007 AQI targeted the northern Iraqi Yazidi communities of Kathaniya and Jazeera with the deadliest suicide bombing in the world since 9/11. As many as 796 Yazidis were killed and another one thousand five hundred wounded in this massive bombing that involved a fuel tanker and three cars carrying two tons of explosives.

But worse was yet to come. AQI morphed into ISIS and, in August 2014, launched a blitz on the Mount Sinjar region in northwestern Iraq. Mount Sinjar had been protected by the legendary Kurdish Peshmergas (literally “Those who Face Death,” a famed fighting force), but these fighters fell back before the ISIS attack leaving this region to the mercy of the fanatical ISIS fighters. As it transpires, Mount Sinjar is the primary geographic focus of the Yazidis who consider it to be a holy mountain (they believe that this mountain, which rises spectacularly out of the flat desert, is the spot where Noah’s ark first touched ground after the flood and have seven temples there with eternal flames).

As the ISIS fighters stormed the town of Sinjar, which lies at the foot of the mountain of the same name, they killed as many as 5,000 Yazidis in an act that the U.N. labeled “genocide.” One report of this massacre stated “Some of the killing were brutally simplistic, with people being lined up at checkpoints, shot dead, then bulldozed into mass graves. Others were herded into temples which were late blown up.”

The jihadists also captured hundreds of Yazidi women as sabiya (Quran-legitimized sex slaves) and sold them like chattel in markets to ISIS fighters. These women, many of them young girls, were systematically raped and abused by their ISIS masters and most still remain living in misery as sex slaves for fanatics who legitimize their abuse by labeling them “idolaters” and “infidels” (their plight did not garner as much attention as the kidnapping of schoolgirls by Boko Haram jihadi terrorists in Nigeria). Older women who were not deemed worthy to be sabiya were dragged away and systematically murdered en masse in cold blood.

As many as 50,000 panic-stricken Yazidis fled to Mount Sinjar’s bleak, inaccessible heights to escape the ISIS slaughterers. To prevent their genocide, President Obama launched a bombing campaign that halted ISIS’s advance and an airlift that provided food and water to the starving Yazidi refugees trapped on the mountain. Kurdish Peshmergas later broke through ISIS lines creating a corridor allowing most, but not all, of the refugees on Mount Sinjar to escape.

But by then it was too late, the heart of the Yazidi population and culture had been obliterated and many distinctive Yazidi shrines, with their conical, fluted towers, were destroyed. Fortunately, in December 2015, Kurdish forces backed up by the U.S. Air Force, defeated the ISIS force occupying the town of Sinjar and some of this scattered community are tentatively returning home. But most have been scattered far and wide from their sacred lands and many have joined in the movement of refugees to Europe. The Yazidis’ exile from the ancient shrines of their people threatens to dilute their identity as a distinct people.

This was the background for our visit to the holy shrine of Lailish located to the east of Mount Sinjar safely behind Kurdish Peshmerga lines in northwestern Kurdistan.

A Visit to Yazidi Shrine at Lailish.

As our SUV paralleled the nearby ISIS front lines through the mist-covered hills of Iraqi Kurdistan, we peppered our Yazidi guide Thamer with questions on the beliefs and rituals of his people’s ancient faith. But he told us to wait until we got to the shrine since he had to show them to us. As we arrived in the narrow valley covered in mulberry trees that cradles the shrine, Thamer told us we had to take off our shoes as the ground we would be walking on was holy. This was the spot where Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel had first de scended to the earth to bring order from chaos.

With undisguised excitement (and feet that were numb from the January cold) we entered the outer courtyard of the Lailish complex and approached the main gate. On the stone wall was a talisman of a black snake that was said to have tried leading the Yazidis to abjure their faith and convert to Islam centuries ago. Black snakes, we were told, had magical powers and were not to be killed. We were then asked to reverently kiss the stone sides to the inner shrine’s door and step over the sacred threshold without stepping on it.

As we entered the ancient complex we noticed a dark pool built into the stone floor on our right. This was the Lake of Azrael, the Angel of Death. Yazidis believe that Azrael washes his sword in this pool after taking a soul. Beyond the pool we found a stone hall of tombs with scarves hanging from it with some Yazidi women tying knots in them. Thamer told us that when you tie a knot and make a wish it comes true when the knot is later untied by another worshiper.

From this hall we passed a stone staircase winding down to a subterranean cave. We could hear the sound of running water from below, but we were told we could not go visit this holy spot, known as the Spring of Zamzam, since it was off limits to non Yazidis. Here Yazidis, who must make a pilgrimage to this spot once in their lives, are baptized. From there we passed through a stone arch and entered the sacred heart of the shrine, the nine hundred year old tomb of Sheikh Adi. Sheikh Adi codified the Yazidis disparate beliefs and is worshipped as a saint and avatar/incarnation of the Peacock Angel. He is also one of the principal judges of men’s souls.

From the crypt of Sheikh Adi we passed into a long dark stone chamber where olive oil was stored in ancient clay amphorae. The olives for the oil are picked from the surrounding hills and are pressed in Lalish; the oil is used for religious rituals and for burning in lamps. We were also shown to holes in the stones that were said to represent the entrance to both heaven and hell.

Having toured the subterranean stone catacombs, it was now time to meet their sacred guardian, a eunuch who dedicated his life to the shrine and the second most important priest in the Yazidi faith, Baba Chawish (literally Father Guardian). We entered his chambers reverently and found the white turbaned holy man sitting with several acolytes. He warmly invited us in from the cold to his warm room and offered us sweets from a golden peacock dish.

In the past, meeting with such a figure would have been difficult and the mysteries of the faith would have been kept secret. In fact, most of the Yazidi traditions are passed on orally to keep them secret. But Baba Chawish was a kindly soul who shared with us the inner workings of this ancient faith that has been for so long misunderstood by, and kept hidden from, outsiders.

The Secrets of the Yazidi Faith.

As it transpired, Baba Chawish was a member of one of three castes that all Yazidis belong to, he was a holy man from the highest sheikh (priest) caste. He led a life of piety and celibacy and had authority over the shrine. He was assisted by the feqrayyāt, (celibate ‘nuns’) who are unmarried or widowed and also care for the sanctuary. The other Yazidi castes consisted of pirs (elders) and murids (disciples), with most Yazidis belonging to the latter caste. Membership in both the sheikh caste and the pir caste is hereditary and is said to often come with special abilities. Each sheikh and pir family, for example, posses ses some healing ability and some families are said to be able to cure snake bites, others madness, fever, headache, arthritis, etc.

Within the sheikh caste one finds kocheks or “seers” who are blessed with spiritual gifts, such as clairvoyance. The kocheks can psychically diagnose illness and they are even said to know the fate of a soul after it leaves the body of the deceased. There are also kawwals or reciters who specialize in the playing of religious music on sacred instruments, such as the daf (frame-drum) and šebāb (flute), and in the recital of the sacred hymns known as kawals.

At the top of the Yazidi community one finds the Mir (Prince), the temporal ruler of the Yazidis, and the Baba Sheikh (Father Priest), the religious head of the community. Both of these leaders belong to the sheikh caste whose members are descended from the Six Great Angels who assisted Melek Tawus. The sheikhs officiate at circumcisions, weddings, funerals, baptisms and religious festivals. Religious holidays play a key role in the Yazidi faith and several of them have roots traceable to antiquity.

The most important Yazidi festival is the Feast of Seven Days which takes place in the beginning of October. During this festival the seven archangels, including Melek Tawus, are believed to visit the shrine of Lailish. Yazidis attempt to make a pilgrimage to Lailish at this time in order to rekindle friendships, affirm their religious identity and partake in the seven day festival. The two most important events of the Feast of Seven Days are the Evening Dance and the Sacrifice of the Bull. The Evening Dance is performed by sheikhs every evening just after sunset in the courtyard of the temple complex. Fourteen priests dressed in white, the color of purity, parade to the music of kawals (the reciters). They proceed in procession around a sacred torch that represents both the Sun and the Supreme God Khuede.

The Sacrifice of the Bull takes place on the fifth day of the festival. It signifies the arrival of Fall and carries with it the Yazidis’ prayers for rain during the coming winter and a bountiful Spring. After guards fire a special gun salute, a small bull is let loose from the main gates of the Sanctuary. The bull is chased by men of the Qaidy tribe up a nearby hill to the sanctuary of Sheikh Shem. There, the bull is caught and subsequently slaughtered. Afterwards, the meat is cooked and distributed among all the pilgrims present at Lalish. The sacrifice of a bull harkens back to the worship of the Iranian sun god Mithras who was worshiped with the sacrifice of a bull.

As for their beliefs, Yazidis do not believe in eternal damnation. Instead they believe in reincarnation or transmigration of souls through a gradual purification cycle. The souls of sinners are reborn as animals for a probationary period before passing into human form again. Ultimately, their souls ascend to heaven. Yazidis do not accept conversion into their faith and those who marry outside of the community are banned. Yazidis are also forbidden from wearing the color blue, eating lettuce, and saying the word Shaytan. In addition to venerating the sun, Yazidis, like Zorastrians, consider fire to be sacred and are not allowed to extinguish it with water or to speak rudely in front of it. They celebrate the new year in April with colored eggs and also have a Feast of Sacrifice, when a sheep is slaughtered by the Baba Sheikh and torches are lit throughout the valley of Lailish.

There are many more aspects of the faith that we did not have time to learn during our visit to the shrine at Lailish, but the window we were given into this secretive religion that has recently opened its doors to outsiders was fascinating. As we said our farewells to the protector of the shrine, Baba Chawish, and left this enchanting place that was the “Mecca” for the estimated 700,000 Yazidis in the world, we had a newfound appreciation for this beautiful belief system that seemed to belong to a different age.

The valley shrine of Lailish had been a place of calming meditation, serenity and contemplation and we were touched by how welcoming and eager to interact with outsiders the Yazidi worshippers had been. In a part of the world where the mindless destruction of pre-Islamic communities and pagan antiquities seems to be the norm, it was a reminder that there are still living remnants of ancient faiths in the Muslim world, such as the dwindling number of Parsi Zoroastrians in Iran, Kalash pagans in Pakistan’s mountains, and Yazidis, Mandaens, Shabaks, and Assyrians in Iraq, who face the very real risk of extinction in our time. Having made a life-changing pilgrimage to the holy sanctuary of one of these endangered faiths and seen for ourselves the beauty of this timeless belief system, we can safely say that the world would be a less colorful place should the ancient Yazidi people disappear from the pages of history as so many other ethnic-religious groups in the region have over the centuries.

Professor Brian Glyn Williams worked for the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center in Afghanistan and is author of The Last Warlord. The Life and Legend of Dostum, the Afghan Warrior who Led U.S. Special Forces to Topple the Taliban Regime. For further photographs from his journeys in the mountains of Kurdistan among the Yazidis and Kurdish peshmerga fighters, see his website.

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Thomas Reuters Foundation: ““Our future and dreams have been taken”: Yazidi slave survivor urges leaders to act”

In an interview, Raad Jabar al-Khamis, a representative of the Christian Sabean-Mandaean minority, talks about why all minorities in Iraq will leave the country over the next decade.

Raad Jabar al-Khamis has held many senior political positions on behalf of Iraq’s Sabean-Mandaean minority. The Sabean-Mandaeans are a tiny Christian minority in Iraq, characterised by ancient rituals that cross between Christianity and Islam. Despite the fact that this minority has been able to secure one of the quota seats, dedicated specially to the country’s minorities, in Iraq’s Parliament, al-Khamis says that this is largely symbolic and that Mandaeans have no real political power thanks to power sharing deals between the country’s larger ethnic and sectarian groups. As it is, it probably doesn’t matter anyway, he says. The way things are going all members of Iraq’s minorities, and especially the Christian ones like his, will have left the country during the next decade.

NIQASH: The Mandaeans are well known for running the minority’s affairs in a particularly democratic way. Can you tell us more about this?

Raad Jabar al-Khamis: This is true. In fact, we have three different leadership organisations. These are the Mandaean Spiritual Council , the Mandaean General Assembly and the Community Affairs Council. All of these were originally formed in the 1980s and each one represents the different social groups within the minority. For example, the Spiritual Council is composed of clergy and headed by the Mandaeans’ spiritual leader, Satar Jabar Helo. Meanwhile the General Assembly represents members of all the different family groups or tribes and these representatives have been elected by their own families. This council is like the Mandaeans’ own Parliament, of sorts. And finally the Community Affairs Council is another kind of authority, with members coming from the General Assembly. This body manages the more general, custodial affairs of all Mandaeans

Many religious and social leaders have already left Iraq. That makes every other Mandaean want to leave too.

NIQASH: In terms of these democratic processes, how did you end up being elected the Mandaean representative on Baghdad’s provincial council?

Al-Khamis: We hold other internal elections inside our community to select the candidates who will take up the special minority quota seats. I competed and won, which is how I got the job as Mandaean representative on Baghdad’s provincial council.

NIQASH: It doesn’t seem like the interests of the Mandaean minority are particularly well represented by any of Iraq’s political parties. Have you thought about starting your own party?

Al-Khamis: We haven’t done this as yet. Some Mandaeans have joined left wing parties, as have members of other Iraqi minorities. But we did start a committee composed of between nine and 15 members, whose job was to try and build bridges and to encourage cooperation with decision makers in other parties, as well as to represent the Mandaean people in any political forums. We believe this fills the political gap.

NIQASH: Do these different groups work together at all?

Al-Khamis: There’s a lot of coordination between the religious leaders and the political committee. The clergy try not to get involved in the details of daily political affairs. Still the religious leaders have an important role to play when it comes to any candidacies. While the final decisions should be made democratically by the Mandaean General Assembly, there’s no doubt that if the clergy accept a candidate this is seen as an endorsement.

NIQASH: The Mandaeans have had a quota seat – one that is automatically given to a Mandaean politician – in the Iraqi Parliament for several elections now. How do you feel about the minority’s participation in Iraqi politics?

Al-Khamis: In reality our participation is symbolic. It has no significant political weight and there is no real or active participation in the political process. The Mandaeans are not represented in any of Iraq’s federal ministries, we don’t even have one general manager. The only high-ranking position we can get is as the general manager of the endowment for Christians, Yazidis and Mandaeans [the body taking financial care of the minorities’ religious buildings]. This is really disturbing because the Mandaeans are one of the oldest religious groups in Iraq.

NIQASH: So what would the Mandaeans like to see happening?

Al-Khamis: We would like to participate in the political process without marginalization or exclusion. However the power sharing deals between the major political groups in this country – the Sunni Muslim parties, Shiite Muslim parties and the Iraqi Kurdish – don’t allow minorities to make any real progress or to participate.

Personally I believe that giving Mandaeans responsibility for a service- provision ministry would give us an opportunity to serve our country. But I also think this is impossible at this stage.

NIQASH: What do you think the future holds for Mandaeans in Iraq?

Al-Khamis: In the past we were just worried that all Mandaeans would leave Iraq. But now we think that Iraq will actually lose all of its minority groups within the space of ten years – and ten years is optimistic. Many Mandaeans have already left the country and this includes religious and social leaders. That makes every other Mandaean want to leave too. Immigration is no longer a matter of choice. It is an inevitable reality.

Via Niqash.org

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

VOA from last August: “Minorities in Iraq’s Kurdistan Push for Greater Political Voice”

Baghdad was shaken by the news that the Iraq army and police in Ramadi ran away from the advancing forces of Daesh (ISIL, ISIS). As a result, good American weaponry again fell into the hands of the extremists.

Diya’ al-Wakil, former Iraqi military spokesperson, has the same question, and he attempted some answers.

He asks: Why did the army and police and counter-terrorism forces retreate before the advance of the Daesh fighters?

Was the retreat a result of strategic or tactical errors?

What about psychological warfare?

Why would forces supported by close air support and heavy artillery retreat before small guerrilla groups?

Al-Wakil explains that Daesh takes cover in densely populated urban alleyways and fights from them, so that it is impossible to bomb them. This technique, he says removed the advantage the regular army has, since it becomes impossible for the the coalition air force to strike the enemy or for heavy artillery to be deployed.

Next, there is poor coordination between units. The coalition’s air forces were not effective because thy did not give the required support to the fighters on the ground because of poor integration.

The political divisions in Baghdad over whether to arm Sunni tribal levies properly and over whether to allow Shiite militias from Iraq’s south to deploy in Sunni al-Anbar province took these ancillary forces out of the fight.

Poor morale in the Iraqi army and effective psychological warfare by Daesh. This must be effectively countered if the army is ever to make progress. (He means that Sunni troops and police in al-Anbar Province are targeted by Daesh as “apostates,,” playing on the guilt some of them feel because they are serving a Shiite government.)

Ahmad al-Shamari argues that the Shiite militias or popular mobilization forces are not nearly as undisciplined and sectarian as they are depicted in the press.

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related video added by Juan Cole:

Reuters: “Islamic State takes Ramadi, thousands flee”

Bayan Nouri has a tough job over the next four years – the new Minister for Women’s Affairs in Iraq must try to improve the economic lot of Iraq’s women, prevent systemic domestic violence against females and work on problems like female genital mutilation and underage marriage as well as somehow help the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women affected by the current security crisis. One thing she won’t be doing though is banning polygamy.

Iraqi Kurdish politician Bayan Nouri is the new Minister for Women’s Affairs in the government headed by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi

She talked to NIQASH about whether her Ministry can do anything to help women affected by the extremist takeover of some parts of the country, including what it can do for the women that the extremist group known as the Islamic State, had abducted.

Nouri also explained her thoughts on Iraq’s controversial personal status law and her positions on female genital mutilation, women being forced to wear the full veil, or niqab, and the important difference between being married by a cleric and being married in a civil ceremony. She also spoke about why it would be a bad idea to ban polygamy – where a man has several wives – altogether in Iraq

NIQASH: Most international studies are critical of the status of Iraqi women. What plans does your Ministry have to improve this situation? 

Bayan Nouri:   We have a strategy with six different platforms and these are legal, educational, health-related, professional and leadership-related as well as assisting institutions that work on women’s issues.

There is no doubt that the situation for women has worsened over the past four years and it certainly cannot be repaired in four years. However, we will continue to try, in all areas, to improve the situation by paying more attention to family protection units, assisting them to reduce domestic violence. We also want to improve the economic status of Iraqi women by granting small loans in coordination with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. We will also coordinate with the Ministry of Education in order to look more closely at the education of females because there is a big gap between the number of females and males who complete middle and secondary school. We are also coordinating better with the Ministry of Health, paying better attention to women’s health and to infant mortality rates. We also care about female participation in decision making.

NIQASH: After decades of conflict, Iraq has a huge number of widows – an estimated one million. Can your Ministry help them?

Nouri: … We do have plans for 2015 though and these involve seeing a percentage of these widows employed or to have them improve their own financial situation through small business loans. We also want to provide residential units at discounted prices

NIQASH: At one stage, you said that domestic violence was actually the most common kind of violence in Iraq – despite all of the fighting that is going on.

Nouri: We’re trying to hold training courses in this area, we have established family protection units and we also have draft family protection law before the Cabinet. When this law is passed, it’s going to have a big impact.

NIQASH: And what are your thoughts on the rather controversial personal status law that says girls as young as nine years old can be married?

Nouri: We don’t support early marriage at all, especially not for girls who are only nine. This version of the personal status law has already been rejected by my Ministry. But we do need to find another legal solution

NIQASH: Do you believe the personal status law should be amended?

Nouri:  I have yet to work with women in central and southern Iraq as much as I have worked with women in Iraqi Kurdistan. However the experience I’ve had in Iraqi Kurdistan cannot be the basis for working in other parts of Iraq. So to begin with we will do some more research, on discrimination and on any laws that have encouraged discrimination. The second study will look at similar laws in neighbouring countries. Once that’s been done we will be able to take some definitive steps towards making changes to the law

NIQASH: What about the issue of polygamy? In Iraqi Kurdistan, where you’re from, it’s virtually been banned. Yet men will simply cross the border into Iraq to marry a second and even a third wife.

Nouri:  We don’t have any plans to forbid it completely but we’re going to try and restrict it further. That is because we are not absolutely sure that banning it won’t actually have a negative effect on women under current conditions in Iraq. It might lead to an increase in divorce rates

NIQASH: If there was a law that banned female genital mutilation, that banned any marriages that were not concluded in a court of law and that banned the enforced wearing of the niqab, would you vote for it?

Nouri:   In terms of the issue of female genital mutilation I highly doubt whether such a law would ever be submitted because it’s not really something that happens in central and southern Iraq. But if it was submitted, we would certainly vote for a ban because of the lasting physical and psychological damage such a practice does.

In terms of marriage that isn’t ratified by a court, I’m against it [Editor’s note: in Iraq, clerics can conclude various types of marriage, including very short term marriages between a man and a woman who is working as a prostitute, as well as longer term, more conventional marriages that are adjudicated only by clerics and family members]. It’s a widespread practice but it causes a lot of problems for anyone who gets divorced; their children are then unable to get official documents they require. 

And as for the niqab, I believe that women should have the freedom to wear the clothing they want without restriction

NIQASH: Let’s move onto the security crisis that is currently affecting Iraq, where extremists from the group known as the Islamic State are trying to claim parts of Iraq as their own. This has certainly affected many women. Does your Ministry plan to help them at all?

Nouri: Any practical, physical help provided would come through the Ministry of Displacement and Migration. Our own ministry doesn’t have its own budget; it’s basically linked to the Iraqi Cabinet and it can only implement projects when coordinating with other international or local organisations.

So in terms of these women, we can only support them psychologically – we can make sure their voices are heard by international aid organisations.

NIQASH: What about the women that the extremists have kidnapped?

Nouri: Getting these women released is a very difficult thing. That is the same when any crimes like this are committed, anywhere around the world, during times of conflict. Together with any other related parties, our ministry is trying to help in any way that we can

NIQASH: What about the kidnapped women that have already been released?

Nouri: We have discussed the provision of psychological and health care as well as housing with corresponding international organisations. There’s also a draft resolution before the Iraqi Cabinet about social welfare payments of up to IQD10 million [around US$8,300] per person.

NIQASH: The Kurdish women soldiers who are fighting in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani have become the focus of the international media attention. As a Kurdish woman yourself, how do you feel about that?

Nouri:  We are so grateful for what they – and any other women who sacrifice their lives for their own countries – are doing.

Via Niqash.org

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Iraqi girls as young as 12 raped, sold at prices from $25 to $1000 by ISIL

Among the many victims of the barbarous Daesh (what Arabs call ISIS or ISIL), none has suffered more severely than the Kurdish Yezidis. After overrunning a number of Yezidi villages in Northern Syria and Iraq during the summer of 2014, Daesh extremists – who consider Yezidis to be “devil-worshippers” – systematically executed Yezidi men, while taking thousands of Yezidi women and girls as sex slaves. Thousands more Yezidis who were fortunate enough to escape the Daesh onslaught became refugees in Iraqi Kurdistan or Turkey, or even worse, remained trapped up in the Shingal (Shinjar) mountains of northeastern Syria after their villages below were seized by Daesh. In recent days the Kurdish Peshmarga militia have succeeded in breaking the Daesh siege of Shingal and opening a corridor to the refugees there, but with winter now upon them Yezidi refugees face additional hardships and challenges to their very survival. The Kurdistan Regional Government is doing what they can to supply food, blankets, and winter coat, but much more is needed.

Entrance to Shaykh Adi Shrine

For the Yezidis, Daesh are merely the latest in a long history of Muslim persecutors that have waged campaigns aiming to bring about their extinction. Yezidis speak of “the genocides” (they count 72 over the centuries) as watershed events marking their collective history. And while Daesh have shown themselves to be hostile to Christians, Jews, Shi‘ites, and indeed other Sunnis who don’t share their extreme views, they have reserved a special hatred for the Yezidis, a non-proselytizing sect who seek nothing more than to live at peace with their neighbours. What is it about the Yezidis that has made them such a target?

Until the events of last summer few people in the world had ever heard of the Yezidis, and experts on them are few and far between. The news media, hard put to provide reliable information on this little-known community, has typically characterized them as “members of a four-thousand-year-old sect, blending Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity”. Virtually every aspect of this description is inaccurate and misleading.

The Yezidi religion began to assume its present form during the twelfth century, under the inspiration and guidance of a Lebanese Sunni Sufi master by the name of Shaykh Adi ibn Musafir al-Umawi (d. 1162). Shaykh Adi, like many Sufi missionaries, made an attempt to accommodate the ancient folk beliefs and rituals of the local Kurdish population by nominally Islamicizing them. The Muslim authorities of the time, however, saw this “re-branding” as superficial, and took to persecuting the Yezidis as apostates.

Inside the Shrine

The Kurds speak an Indo-European language close to Persian. Much of their pre-Islamic culture is Iranian, and as such, their myths and rituals contain many parallels to those found in Zoroastrianism. However, despite the efforts of some modern Kurdish intellectuals to equate the two religions, they are in fact rival versions of ancient Iranian religion. Classical Zoroastrianism is a dualistic religion with an extensive body of texts to support it, whereas Yezidism is an oral tradition that is essentially monotheistic. The ethical division between good and evil is starkly drawn in Zoroastrianism, but ambiguous among the Yezidis, who consider them as necessary complements to each other.

The respect accorded by the Yezidis to Iblis, or Satan, which mirrors that found in Sufi Islam, has led them to be falsely characterized as “devil-worshippers”. In fact the focus of their worship is the sun, which they greet upon rising each day. The Yezidis believe in a Divine Heptad, called by them the Seven Mysteries. The most important aspect if this haptad is Malak Tavus, the Peacock Angel, who is frequently depicted in their religious art. The most holy Yezidi site is the shrine of Shaykh Adi at Lalish, a small valley close to the city of Duhok in the northern part of Iraqi Kurdistan which is now overcrowded with refugees living in tents.

Refugees at Lalish

Despite the hardships currently faced by thousands of Yezidi refugees in the mountains of Shingal, Lalish and elsewhere, their spirit remains undiminished by the tragedies they have experienced. Vian Dakhil, the sole Yezidi member of the Iraqi parliament, was in Washington recently lobbying for recognition of IS’ attacks on the Yezidis as genocide, but her efforts have received little media attention.

Thanks to the diligence of the Peshmarga and YPG forces, supported by coalition airstrikes, the tide now seems to be turning against Daesh at least in northern Iraq, but it will be some time before tens of thousands of displaced Yezidis can return home and resume normal lives. For now, their story continues to unfold as another chapter in their collective history of surviving genocide.

Richard Foltz is Professor of Religion and Director of the Centre for Iranian Studies at Concordia University, Montréal. A chapter of his most recent book, Religions of Iran: From Prehistory to the Present (London: Oneworld, 2013), discusses the Yezidi faith in the historical context of ancient Iranian religion.