Six years after genocide, displaced Yezidis stuck between home and a hard place

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Six years since the Islamic State (ISIS) tried to eradicate their community, many Yezidis are stuck in a life of limbo between displacement camps and their ruined homeland of Shingal, near Iraq’s border with Syria.

Among them is Khalaf Dakheel, who has lived in a Duhok province camp for the internally displaced for the past six years. He lives with ten other family members in a cluster of tents.

Years of flooding, fire, and ice cold winters have worn Khalaf and his family thin.

"My parents are wide awake many nights, scared our tents will catch fire," he told Rudaw English.

So the family are considering a return to their village of Wardia, 13 kilometers from Shingal, where their home,"completely destroyed" in a coalition airstrike in 2015, was used as an ISIS headquarters.

According to the latest estimates from a Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) office on Yezidi affairs,  upwards of 6,000 people were kidnapped from Shingal, Nineveh province when ISIS launched a genocide against the ethnoreligious group. The men were killed, and women and children sold in slave markets across the so-called caliphate. More than 360,000 people were displaced. To this day, thousands of Yezidis remain missing.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has pushed hundreds of families to return to Shingal in recent months, with displaced Yezidis fearing either a heightened risk of contracting the virus at camps, or prolonged separation from relatives due to related lockdowns and other movement restrictions.

Khalaf’s family have been contemplating their move for over a year, he said, but a lack of educational opportunity back home is holding them back.

"In my village, there is only one elementary school. The nearest high school is in Shingal city; it's a problem for me and my siblings," he said.

But the challenges of return are increasingly being outweighed by the dangers, physical or otherwise, of staying put.

Suicide has plagued the deeply vulnerable community as survivors handling severe psychological trauma await an uncertain future with limited available help. A report by Amnesty International last week revealed that Yezidi children are in the midst of a "mental health crisis."

"We're tired of the camps. Year after year our psychological situation gets worse," Khalaf said.

The return journey from the camps to Shingal is long and mentally arduous, running through Mosul, a city where Yezidis were once sold in markets by ISIS militants. Dozens of Yezidi families were left stranded at checkpoints in early June as they tried to head home, caught up in the sticky web of the KRG and federal Iraq’s administrative battle. 

Calls to open the Sehela Road - a quicker, less traumatic route that connects the Kurdistan Region with Shingal - appear to have gone unheard.

For many Yezidis, there is little to return home to. Much of Shingal and its southern villages are riddled with mines, and only two hospitals and a dozen health centers serve some 120,000 returnees to the area. Access to the most basic of services, including water and electricity, is far from guaranteed. 

Reluctance to return home has been exacerbated by the presence of a host of competing military forces, including the Iraqi Army, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi in Arabic), the PKK-affiliated Shingal Protection Units, and others. 

Nasreen Gharbi Nasir grew up in the village of Zorava, on the north side of the Shingal Mountains, where thousands sought refuge in August 2014. She lives with her cousin in a camp near the city of Dohuk.

She is waiting for the road to Shingal to reopen, so she can rejoin her parents and her sister's family, who returned home four years ago. More of Nasreen’s relatives returned to her village last month, but she stayed behind with her cousin at the camp, where life is marginally better.

"I want to go back to Shingal…but I can't stand living in an abandoned village," Nasreen said. 

"The young people haven't gone back because there are no reliable services. The government doesn't provide any humanitarian services, no hospitals, no schools, no water. Life is more difficult than the camps."

For Nasreen, it's not just the poor services that are stopping her from returning home. A mass grave lies outside the nearby village of Hardan; another harrowing reminder of the tragedy her people have faced.

"How can we go back to Shingal and guarantee a future?" Nasreen asked. 

A young university graduate, Nasreen said her real dream is to leave Iraq - a wish she doesn't expect to be fulfilled, leaving her despondent.

"My country is burning, my family and people are dying. I don't want to get married or have a son in this country after what I saw on the 3rd of August [2014]. I lost my life in Iraq."

Saad Hamad Alazawi, a Yezidi former resident of Khanke camp in Duhok province, was the first person to return to his home village of Tel Banat, on the southern side of Shingal.

Newly instated as Shingal's Director of Education, Saad said 143 families have returned to the village in recent months.

Saad's home was left almost entirely destroyed during the ISIS occupation, but he remains committed to rebuilding a life in Shingal, where he presides over the 40 schools operating in the district.

"Life comes back step by step. It's better to live at home and among your clan," he said.