Yezidi survivors say they cannot forgive Arab complicity in ISIS atrocities

SHARAFADIN, Kurdistan Region – Rasho and Salim, survivors of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) unmitigated violence against the Yezidis, are the two faces of a community struggling with the aftermath: one regards all Arabs as enemies fit to die, and the other sees them as fellow victims.

As Kurdish Peshmerga forces fight to clean up remaining ISIS fighters from Shingal and the surrounding Yezidi areas the jihadis captured in an assault last August, many Yezidis cannot forget how their own Arab neighbors had turned against them and sided with the militants.

Anti-Arab sentiments are so deep rooted among Yezidis that most of their religious men refuse even to wear the Arab headbands, or “agals,” that used to be part of their traditional costume.

Rasho and Salim have both returned to see if their homes still stand in Sinune, a Yezidi Kurdish town near the Syrian border that the Peshmerga recaptured from ISIS just a few days ago.

“If I see an Arab right now, I will kill him,” says Rasho, a 20-year-old in the Kurdish Yezidi town of Sinune near the Syrian border who has joined the Peshmerga forces and sports a beret in the style of the late Argentinian revolutionary, Che Guevara.

Whenever he sees Arabic writing on the walls of Sinune he turns away in anger: “I used to have so many Arab friends, but they betrayed us.”

For Salim, who works as a laborer and lives in a camp near Duhok, all Arabs “are not the same.”

He adds: “I still have Arab friends. Just like us, they have left their hometown and now they are sheltered in Erbil. They call me regularly and ask about my situation. As a matter of fact, during the Eid they called me.”

The village of Hardan, just a 10-minute car ride from Sinune, used to be populated by Arabs, Turkomen and Yezidi Kurds.

Although there has been no fighting there for several days, plumes of smoke are still seen rising from the village. One villager, Rashid, whispers that the smoke is from Arab homes being secretly burned in revenge.

“Some Kurds, without the knowledge of the Peshmerga, go and set those houses on fire,” he explains, confiding that he agrees with the practice.

He and others in Hardan testify that, before the arrival of ISIS, the Arab residents closed the villages gates to prevent anyone from escaping. As a result, ISIS captured and massacred 500 Yezidi Kurds.

The brotherhood that once existed among the Yezidi and Arab residents is gone forever, one villager says: “There is no brotherhood after betrayal. They insulted our honor; they are no longer our brothers.”

Tensions seethe in villages like Awinat, where many Arabs have remained put in their homes, despite efforts by some Yezidis to force them out – which has been prevented by the Peshmerga.

“I saw Arabs with my own eyes when they tied our children to the trees, cut off their legs and executed them,” says Ageed, a Yezidi Kurd who has joined the Syrian-Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) that have joined forces with the Peshmerga in the fight against ISIS.

He says that the Arabs should pay for what they did, and he is more than willing to fight them out of the village.

“The price is that they should leave us, we don’t want them to live among us,” says Ageed, who tries to convince a Peshmerga commander for permission to enter one of the Arab villages.

But the commander warns: “We have orders from the president of the Kurdistan Region that no one should attack them.”

In the village of Sharafadin Sheikh Ismael Bahri, guardian of the second most important shrine for Yezidis after Lalish, shares the anti-Arab sentiments of much of his community.

In his guesthouse, the photos on display show him with an agal on his head, though he says he no longer wears one.

“The Arabs in our area betrayed us, that is why we decided to throw away our agals. Now you can rarely see a Yezidi wearing an agal, even if someone does, he is looked down upon,” Bahri explains.  

In four mass graves found in Sharafadin, many of the agals mixed in with flesh and decayed body parts are shot through with bullet holes.

Bahri calls upon the international community “to help Yezidis establish an independent Yezidi Region which would be part of the Kurdistan Region and under the supervision of the United Nations.”

He warns: “there will be no place for Arabs in that Region.”