Shingal offensive too late for some Yazidi Kurds

[Sally]

The Kurds should have been given modern weapons much sooner, and things like this wouldn't have happened.

Shingal offensive too late for some Yazidi Kurds

Kurdish Yazidi fighters gather on the summit of Mount Sinjar as they head to battle Islamic State militants, in Iraq, Dec. 21, 2014. Photo: AP •See Related Articles
December 27, 2014
MOUNT SINJAR, Kurdistan region 'Iraq',— Latif Alo is a Kurdish fighter in his early 40s heading toward the town of Shingal (Sinjar in Arabic) to fight. Driving along the only road leading to the town, Alo has become restless to reach the front line, where fierce fighting is continuing between Kurdish forces supported by US-led coalition airstrikes and Islamic State (IS) militants. He's on a mission, with an old BRNO rifle inherited from his father and a leather bullet vest around his waist.

"I have come here to fight Daesh," said Alo, as smoke rose from the town at the southern foot of the mountain over which the boom of airstrikes reverberated. “They took many of our girls. Our honor has been violated. I have come back here to free them." continue reading at:

Continue reading at:

http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2014/12/kurdsiniraq302.htm?

 

[waltky]

Traumatized and then stigmatized...

Yazidi women, girls suffering stigma, trauma after IS kidnapping
May 3, 2016 - Nadi was just 15 when Islamic State fighters invaded her village in Sinjar, northern Iraq. She was kidnapped, along with 29 members of her extended family, all members of the Yazidi religious and ethnic group that was targeted by IS from August 2014 onward.

"They were hard days. The Daesh fighters raped us and attacked us, took our children and our women and killed our men," Nadi said, using the Arabic name for the IS group. Her full name is being withheld to protect her identity. She held back tears as she related the story of her 15 months in captivity. "They took us to Syria for a week, converted us to Islam then brought us back to Mosul. The worst torture we experienced was in Mosul. They gathered all the girls, raped them and then distributed them to senior Daesh fighters. They took the children away," she said. Nadi was handed over to a fighter called Salam Hamdu Ubaid, who regularly beat and raped her. A month later, she was pregnant. "I felt that a Daesh criminal was in my body," she said. "I tried many times to abort the fetus but that wasn't my fate."

Shortly after giving birth she managed to contact her family, who organized a smuggler to help her escape Mosul, a city in northern Iraq that has been held by IS since June 2014. Two of her brothers, their families and two sisters are still trapped in the city. Nadi was one of an estimated 5,000 Yazidi women and girls kidnapped by IS – the largest single mass kidnap of women this century. Based on Yazidi officials' estimates, the United Nations has cited allegations that as many as 3,500 people remained in IS captivity as of October 2015. Human Rights Watch says IS's systematic abductions and rapes constitute war crimes, and may be crimes against humanity. While some of these women, like Nadi, managed to escape, reaching safety has not ended their suffering. The horrors have left many deeply traumatized, suffering both mental and physical reactions to their harrowing ordeals. Some could not live with their memories and have committed suicide.

Years of brutal dictatorship, followed by foreign invasion and ever more brutal sectarian violence have left millions of Iraqis psychologically scarred. The cumulative impact is of staggering proportions. More than 3 million Iraqis are internally displaced, with many having fled unimaginable violence. Syria, next door, hosts more than twice that figure. In northern Iraq, which hosts more than 1 million people who have fled from other parts of the country, there are just 17 psychologists and psychiatrists on the ground. The local government, U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations have set up a range of pyscho-social programs, but the need is vast. "These camps are more in need of psychological support than anything else, because of this pressure. Every family, if not half, three-quarters of them [still] are in the hands of Daesh," said Ruwaq Fadil, who runs programs on women's empowerment for a British charity, Amar.

Amar runs group sessions, clinics and social centers for women in the camps, along with courses in sewing, hairdressing and handicrafts. There also have health volunteers who visit people in their tented homes to provide psychological support and health education. "The idea is to take away the pressure they are living through in the camps," Fadil said. Yet a lack of understanding about psycho-social support, along with the stigma attached to rape in a largely conservative Yazidi society means that few Yazidi women actually access any sustained psycho-social support or mental health care, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch.

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Granny says, "Oh, whatever is gonna happen with dem poor Yazidis...

The future of the Yazidis in Iraq
Fri, 04 Nov 2016 - As so-called Islamic State militants are driven out of Mosul, Paul Moss reports on the continuing plight of the Yazidis, the Iraqi religious group who the United Nations says has suffered more destruction than any other at IS hands.

First one of the Yazidi women started crying, then one of her friends. And then one of the visitors could be heard stifling a sob. We were listening as a group of Yazidis recounted the now horribly familiar story of how IS came to their homeland on Mount Sinjar in 2014, killing thousands and driving many thousands more into exile. "Some of our neighbours were running away, but before reaching the mountains, Islamic State gangs captured them and took them," one of the women said. "The men were killed, and the women and children taken. "So many died."

The long road ahead

None of these women wanted to give their name. The experience of two years ago has apparently left them with a deeply ingrained sense of fear - of other people, and of the future: "They might be able to drive Islamic State out of our area, but it would be very difficult for us to return to where we came from, because we're scared something might happen," one of the women said. "They might come back." The possibility of returning is on the minds of many Iraqis, as IS comes under sustained attack in Mosul and is defeated outright elsewhere.

Displaced Yazidis cross the Syrian-Iraqi border along the Fishkhabur bridge​

But even Yazidis not scared to go home would find it extremely difficult because the city of Sinjar and the villages that surround it have been so thoroughly destroyed. "From houses to roads to bridges, the area is raised to the ground," says Dara Yara, a minister in the Iraqi government, with responsibility for housing and construction. He makes no bones about the long time it will take before they can even start proper rebuilding in the Yazidi areas. "This kind of situation needs peace, stability. This is a long process," he says.

No return

For now, many Yazidis languish in refugee camps, contemplating another winter under canvas. Others have given up on the idea of returning home, and have sought asylum in Europe and North America. It is a trend that worries Luqman Suleiman, a teacher, who also takes people round the Yazidis' most holy temple, in the town of Lalish. "They want to go to Germany, to France, to Australia," he says. "There is no future for the Yazidis in Kurdistan." As far as Mr Suleiman is concerned, the problem is not a matter of houses and roads.

What will ultimately dissuade Yazidis from returning to their homes and lives on Mount Sinjar, he says, is the fact their own neighbours helped IS. He is one of many Yazidis who insist that Sunni Muslims already living in Sinjar told IS who was Yazidi and who was not. "The people in the villages helped Islamic State kill the men, kill all the men, and take away the girls," he says. "How can people live again together?"

The future