Ali Ghaib Ali was among the thousands of Kurdish soldiers that on Friday entered Shingal, the Kurdish city that the militants stormed in August 2014, launching a genocide against its predominantly Yezidi residents.
On Saturday when the sun rose over Mount Shingal, stirring the Peshmerga from finally a night of undisturbed sleep in their military bases after more than a year of skirmishes with the militants, down below it exposed the gray, smoke-filled devastation of what was once regarded as the capital of Iraq’s minority Yezidi Kurds.
Despite the destruction and the smoking or crumbling buildings -- thick with the smell of death from dead fighters inside that security forces still had not gotten to – the atmosphere on the day after liberation was that of celebration.
“You can’t imagine how happy I am. When I came into the city I was shocked by the huge ruin. I found my house completely burned but it could not change my mood,” Ali told Rudaw.
“No matter how broken Shingal looks, it still feels like home. That is the most important thing for me.”
ISIS graffiti is scrawled on walls around Shingal. Photo by Sartip Othman (Rudaw)
Throughout the city, ISIS flags and slogans – always in black and in Arabic – caught a visitor’s attention.
“God protect Sheikh Abubakr Baghdadi,” said one slogan, in praise of the leader of ISIS. “God demolish Yezidis and Kofars (non-believers),” said another sign, summarizing the group’s narrow ideology, which accepts only Sunni Muslims as believers.
Suliman Hassan Ali, 49, commander and head of Peshmerga forces in Shingal, said the city is heavily booby-trapped, and that remains the biggest challenge for the Peshmerga.
“We were waiting for the operation to liberate Shingal for months. Now the city and some nearby villages are under the control of Peshmerga and we continue to recapture the other areas around the city,” Ali said.
“Unfortunately Daesh have destroyed all the government and strategic buildings inside Shingal and the city is a huge mess,” he added, referring to ISIS by its Arabic acronym.
But Ali was happy that a difficult operation had ended with minimal Peshmerga casualties.
“Casualties from our side are few, I can say we have less than 10 martyrs and about 20 wounded -- all by TNT and landmines,” Ali said.
Despite shattered windows and broken roofs, the homes looked like they had been recently inhabited – probably by ISIS families. Cups of tea, toys and shoes were visible through the open doors.
Muslim and Yezidi Peshmerga forces from Shingal, anti-terror special teams, young fighters affiliated with Syria’s People’s Defense Units (YPG) and the Peshmerga from the Yezidi brigade were all deployed inside the most important buildings. Kurdish flags and the flags of Kurdish parties rose from some of the buildings.
Some of the men were engaged in cleaning up the TNT and defusing landmines. Gunshots were heard once in a while as Peshmerga soldiers shot the doors before entering buildings and homes in order to trigger possible booby traps.
“Former residents of Shingal must be patient to rebuild the houses and rebuild the city and their future,” Said Ato Shamo, a Yezidi Peshmerga officer, advised.
Airstrikes by the US-led coalition forces that backed the Peshmerga in Shingal destroyed parts of the city’s former government and official buildings, used as military bases by ISIS, including the Shingal General Hospital, as well as the former offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Shingal warehouse.
Shingal’s hospital was transformed into a military base by ISIS. Thousands of documents, mostly birth certificates of residents, lay scattered on the floor.
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The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Shingal hospital. Photo by Sartip Othman (Rudaw)
The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the hospital was used by ISIS gunmen and snipers to target the Peshmerga forces on top of the mountain. Thousands of rounds of spent ISIS ammunition covered the floor.
Rasho Qasim, 40, a Yezidi Peshmerga who was deployed at the hospital, said it used to be the main facility for providing health services not only to the people of Shingal but to nearby towns and villages.
“Daesh used the hospital as a military base to attack us,” said Qasim, who added that the hospital had yet to be cleared of explosives.
“One of the rooms seemed to be a place where ISIS might have held the hostage Yezidi girls, because we found things like clothes and sheared hair,” he said.
“It is my house over there, and I came back to take whatever the terrorists left behind, which is not too much,” said Ali Barakat, 38.
The presence of YPG fighters from Syria, which has been fighting ISIS since it captured the city, was minimal. A group of very young fighters, mostly women, remained inside a red-color building of Shingal’s Directory of Education, which had remained mostly intact despite the fighting.
Darsim Shingal, a 20-year-old girl who was a YPG fighter, said their forces had been preparing for battle against ISIS.
“We were preparing ourselves for the fight since 15 days ago, but then the political disagreements among parties delayed the operation,” Shingal said.
“There were a number of rockets and weapons that the terrorists left inside the building, which was used as a warehouse for their weapons. They are all in our hands now,” she added. There were other fighters – one young man as young as 18 who said he had been fighting ISIS in Shingal for more than a year.
Amin Alias, a 50-year-old Muslim from Shingal, said: “It was a dream for us to see Shingal freed from Daesh only in two days,” adding that would not have been possible without the coalition’s support.
“The challenges are now to tighten security, cleaning up the city from landmines and TNT and finally rebuild the city,” he added.
