Kurdish officials and commanders met in Sihela on Saturday, discussing a mechanism to reopen of the Zummar-Sihela road which followed by the reopening of the road to traffic from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
“We discussed the possibility of availability of traffic during night and for business affairs,” said Saeed Safwan Gargari, a Kurdish MP in Baghdad.
The road was closed when the Iraqi Army supported by Iran-backed militias and paramilitias took control of the disputed areas including Shingal in October 2017.
Murad, a Yezidi activist who survived ISIS atrocities, visited Shingal on Friday. She encouraged both the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Iraqi federal government to reopen the roads.
A Kurdish security official said Iraqi forces alone “cannot provide security to the whole area, but if Peshmerga re-control the areas we can provide full security on the road.”
Ashti Kochar, the head Asayesh (Kurdish Security) in western Dijlah, also claimed that the Iraqi forces cannot fully secure the road. “Therefore, we warn our people to only use the road during the specified time.”
Mohammed Arak is an Arab resident of Zummar who has not been able to use the road for more than a year.
“I am very happy to be the first person to go from Rabiya to Duhok,” he said.
Salih Tamo is also a resident of Rabiya.
“Iraqi authorities allowed us to pass [through their checkpoints] to Duhok and Zakho, and Peshmerga forces gave us access as well,” he said.
Peshmerga officials say 85 percent of the traffic will be for humanitarian affairs.
It takes people about 2.5 hours to drive from Sihela to Sinjar city which previously took about six hours via a more western route that roughly ran along the Syrian border. There were 32 checkpoints by Peshmerga, Hashd and Iraqi Security Forces before the reopening.
The Sihela-Shingal road was officially and formally reopened on Monday by Peshmerga forces.
Since the proclaimed defeat of ISIS by Baghdad in December 2017, Yezidi activists have urged for the road to be reopened. Although Shingal is not fit for return for more than half of its residents displaced in the Kurdistan Region’s Duhok province, work by humanitarians to stabilize Shingal has increased.
Murad also has announced she is donating her Nobel Peace Prize award funds to build a hospital in Shingal that will provide much-needed psychosocial care.
Additionally, legal teams have not been able to access much of Shingal to fully document ISIS’s genocidal campaign against the Yezidis. A UN team is set to begin documentation work in the new year.
Shingal is a constitutionally disputed or Kurdistani area claimed by both by Erbil and Baghdad.
