Ten years of ongoing genocide against the Yazidis

The Yazidis see themselves as a community bound by suffering, with the memory of genocides forming an important part of their identity. The persecution of the Yazidis began in the Islamic era and continues to this day, based on denigration of their ‘otherness’. As they had no holy book, many Muslim neighbours did not see them as equal to Christians (with the Bible) and Jews (with the Torah). Some falsely accused them of being devil worshippers, for example, or of being descended from the Caliph Yazid, whose soldiers killed the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and his followers in 680. Discrimination, exclusion and persecution have taken various forms, from avoiding Yazidi food and shaking hands to issuing fatwas. This has led to isolation, withdrawal, secrecy, and fear of Islam.

Yazidi collective memory records 72 Fermans (decrees) – violent campaigns by local leaders and the Ottoman military that resembled modern genocides – during the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922). To the Yazidis, Ferman means ethnic cleansing, territorial expansion and genocide. The number 72 is largely symbolic and simply means ‘a great many’.

The Yazidis were always outsiders in the empire’s millet system, which granted them limited tolerance and autonomy as a non-Muslim group. Religion was not the sole reason for targeting them, however. Some large-scale military attacks were strategic; a series of campaigns in Sinjar between 1830 and 1840, for example, was carried out to protect the communication route between Mosul and Diyarbekir. Nineteenth-century attempts to centralise tax revenues and enforce conscription also affected the Yazidis, who were particularly resistant to conscription.

The Yazidis were by no means passive agents; they were autonomous political actors who negotiated, collaborated and resisted. Many Yazidi tribal leaders were appointed as local Ottoman rulers, to fight with or against Sunni tribal leaders. For example, the tribal leader in Sinjar Hemoyê Şêro, who sheltered 20,000 Armenian victims of the 1915/1916 genocide and fought against the Ottomans, ruled with British support until Sinjar became part of the new state of Iraq in 1919.

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed and new states were founded, the beleaguered Yazidis lacked political influence. During talks between the new Turkish Republic and the British Mandate Power over Mosul, Yazidi tribal leaders communicated that they would prefer a new Iraq under European rather than Turkish or Arab rule. The independent Arab-Sunni Kingdom of Iraq, created in 1932, failed to take account of the ethnic diversity in its territories.

In Sinjar, now more important geopolitically because of its new borders, there was small-scale resistance against conscription in 1935. Between 1925 and 1935, armed Yazidi movements demanded the return of Yazidi land and the repatriation of newly-settled Arab tribes. In 1960, Yazidi tribes again began to arm themselves and rebel against the state with the same demands.

In the 1960s, Yazidi support for Kurdish nationalism, a movement that demanded Kurdish rights and political status and that rebelled against the Iraqi state, was suppressed by the Baghdad government. As part of a broader Baathist campaign for Arabisation and de-Kurdification, over 400 villages were destroyed in Sinjar alone, and 11 new collective settlements (Mujamma`at) were established in the desert around Mount Sinjar. These settlements were given Arabic names and surrounded by Arab villages.

Yazidi land was leased or transferred to thousands of Arabs, who settled with their families. Only Yazidis with good contacts in Baghdad were able to live in the city of Sinjar. After a long period of persecution and massacres, a no-fly zone and Kurdish autonomy were established in Northern Iraq in the early 1990s. This divided the Yazidi settlement areas: the Şêxan district with the Laliş shrine became part of autonomous Kurdistan, and Sinjar and southern Şêxan remained under the administration of the Iraqi central government, a situation that continues to this day.

The post-2003 era was characterised by religious, sectarian and ethnic conflicts across Iraq. It became increasingly risky for Yazidis to work or study in Mosul (c. 120 km from Sinjar), then a hotbed for Sunni militant groups. The rise of radical Islam increasingly drove Yazidis to seek the protection of the Kurdistan Region Government (KRG) and its security forces. After a young Yazidi woman was stoned to death by her family and community in April 2007 for having had a relationship with a Muslim, the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) called on its followers to kill Yazidis. Two weeks later, Islamists attacked a bus in Mosul and killed 23 Yazidis. On 14 August 2007, in the worst attack in the post-Saddam Hussein era, known as the ‘73rd Ferman’, suicide attacks in the Yazidi villages of Girzerik and Sîba Şêx Xidir in Sinjar district killed over 500 people.

With 40 million inhabitants, Iraq is the fourth largest country in the Middle East. It is home to 15 million Shiite Arabs, 9 million Sunni Arabs and 4 million Sunni Kurds. Yazidis are the second largest non-Muslim minority after Christians. After the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, negotiations for a new constitution were held along ethnic and sectarian lines, with the three largest groups being Shias, Sunnis and Kurds. Only two minority representatives, one Christian and one Turkmen, were present at the drafting of the 2005 constitution, and they did not take part in the negotiations.

On 16 June 2014, IS fighters advanced to Tal Afer, 50 km from Sinjar. Many of the fleeing Shias, who made up almost half the population of Tal Afer, were taken in by Yazidis in Sinjar. The Yazidis asked the Iraqi central government and the KRG to give them weapons to defend themselves against a possible attack by IS. They received assurances from the KRG that the Peshmerga would protect them. Some villagers in Sinjar created defensive trenches with the small arms they had, and their men kept a 24-hour watch. According to survivors, days before 3 August 2014, Yazidis were prevented from escaping Sinjar by the Peshmerga.

In the early morning of 3 August 2014, IS began attacking southern Sinjar simultaneously from Tal Afer and Mosul in Iraq, and al-Shaddadi and Tel Hanis in Syria. The Yazidi villages of Girzerik and Sîba Şêx Xidir fought back until their ammunition ran out. The resistance enabled many people to escape. The approximately 8,000 Peshmerga stationed there withdrew their forces and their equipment without informing the population. Within a few hours, 400,000 people had become refugees.

Between 1,000 and 5,000 people are estimated to have been killed on 3 August, some of them in front of their relatives. Those who did not manage to escape to Kurdistan Region in time fled to Mount Sinjar, the heart of Sinjar district. There they had to endure seven days surrounded by IS, in temperatures of 40-50 degrees and with no water or food, until Kurdish units from Rojava (northern Syria) YPG/YPJ and the PKK created a corridor to Rojava with the help of Yazidi volunteers. This saved the lives of around 50,000 people. On 7 August 2014, US, British, French and Australian forces carried out airdrops on Mount Sinjar, and some Yazidis were rescued by helicopter. Dozens of small children and elderly people died of thirst on Mount Sinjar. An additional 6,417 Yazidis (3,548 women and 2,869 men) did not manage to escape in time and were abducted and enslaved by IS. Over 2,700 children were orphaned.

The Yazidis call this attack by IS the ‘74th Ferman’, while 3 August is known as the ‘black day’.

The IS attack on Sinjar was well prepared; not just militarily, but also religiously, socially and culturally. In an article in the official magazine Dabiq in October 2014, entitled ‘The Revival of Slavery before the Hour’, Yazidis were described as devil-worshippers and infidels. They should be offered an opportunity to convert to Islam, but anyone who refused should be punished with death. Converts were to be kept as slaves, because their conversion had taken place under the sword. Drawing on religious and historical justifications, the text warned that doubting these rules was tantamount to opposing Islam. Other publications likewise justified the taking of slaves as part of the spoils of war.

IS also had strategic reasons for attacking Sinjar. Highway 47 runs through Sinjar, directly connecting IS´s two capitals of Mosul and Raqqa. IS had already attacked Kurdistan Region in Iraq and the Kurdish-administered areas of northern Syria (Rojava), both of which border Sinjar. Sinjar was therefore important for IS’s territorial expansion.

Politically, too, the Yazidis played an important role in the power struggle between the Kurds and Arabs and the Iraqi central government in Iraq. Both the Iraqi central government and the Kurds were considered enemies of IS.

The enslavement of the Yazidis was systematic. First the Yazidis were assembled in small groups, then deported in large numbers by bus to Mosul, Tal Afer, Baaj and later Syria, and sold in markets in Raqqa or Mosul. Contact with the outside world, for example via cell phone, was strictly forbidden and punishable. IS separated the Yazidis by gender and age.

Men and boys aged over 12 were usually killed by IS, sometimes immediately, sometimes after they refused to convert to Islam or if they were carrying a weapon. Pre-pubescent boys were sent back to their mothers or to enslaved women. Enslaved Yazidi men were often exploited as labourers. They had to tend cattle, do manual labour or work as drivers. Boys between the ages of 7/8 and 14 were separated from their families. They were first ideologically indoctrinated in schools and then trained to fight alongside Arab Sunni boys, and later deployed. They were given Islamic names. Videos of these boys calling for the killing of Yazidis were intended to break the community. At a later time, boys between the ages of two and seven were also taken from their mothers.

Women and girls as young as eight, sometimes younger, were abused as sex and domestic slaves. According to a pamphlet published in October 2014, it was considered permissible to have sexual intercourse with a girl who had not reached puberty and to enslave her. She was her owner’s property and would become his inheritance after his death. Yazidi women were separated into married and unmarried and distributed accordingly. Many women and girls were sold to several men and raped in succession. Around 60 older women were killed and buried in a mass grave in Solax (Sinjar), apparently because they were considered ‘useless’ as slaves. Women were held in old school buildings, in Badush prison, in the Galaxy Wedding Hall in Mosul or in private homes, changing locations due to resale or the war. In addition to being raped, the women had to wash clothes, prepare food and look after the children of the IS men who lived with their families. There was little to eat and limited space to sleep.

The destruction of cultural heritage is one aspect of genocide. IS destroyed 68 Yazidi sites, including temples, statues, tombstones, graves and shrines in northern Iraq. At least 14 elderly men who were left behind at the Şêx Mend shrine in the village of Jiddal (Sinjar), because it was physically impossible for them to escape into Mount Sinjar with their families, are said to have been killed by IS before the shrine was blown up with the bodies still inside.

Yazidi holy places play an important role in rituals and social life; they form the heart of annual pilgrimages and communal events. Shrines mark the traces of key events; they are places of remembrance that have developed historically and are supported socially, and are believed to have supernatural powers. They are often located in the mountains where Yazidis traditionally lived, surrounded by their graves.

According to statistics from the Iraqi Mass Graves Directorate, 94 mass graves and 49 individual graves have been found in Sinjar. To date, 61 mass graves have been exhumed and 696 people have been recovered. As the process of identification is slow and complex, only 243 victims have been identified so far. Relatives want to be certain about the fate of their loved ones, and to be able to bury them according to their religious customs. What is more, families can only make claims for reparations once a person's death has been confirmed.

The first exhumations began in Koço and Solax in 2019/2020. Until then, most of the mass graves had been left unprotected. For various reasons – animals, weather erosion, and local journalists or relatives looking for traces – not all parts of the mass graves had been preserved when the exhumations began. IS also burned mass graves. The mass grave in Alo Antar near Tal Afer is said to be the largest, with up to 1,000 victims of IS.

Post-traumatic stress and depression among Yazidis from Sinjar has been documented on a large scale, both individually and collectively. Yazidi suffering is experienced collectively, based on belonging to the Yazidi group. There is also intergenerational trauma that is inherited as a result of centuries of persecution. As Jan Ilhan Kizilhan (2017) and Michael Noll-Hussong explains, ‘In addition to representing a source of traumatization by itself, the genocide perpetrated by IS has resur faced memories from past genocides and massacres of the Yazidis’ ancestors. Thus, current Yazidi victims are (re)experiencing multiple traumatization, as well as feelings of helplessness through repeated Islamic terrorization.’

The Yazidis have become resilient in the course of time, drawing strength from rituals and storytelling traditions and their ability to adapt. The healing process depends on several aspects, such as creating security and stability, mourning and remembering, and the start of a new life in which the experiences and memories find a place. The Yazidis are currently far from achieving this, however. If a community is marked by its memories of genocides, as is the case for the Yazidis, forgetting in order to overcome trauma could potentially mean the end of the group. Collective healing will only be effective and successful when the roots of the trauma are addressed; and in the case of the Yazidis, this means tackling discrimination, coming to terms with their situation and rebuilding.

Yazidis mourn both individually and collectively. As early as 3 August 2014, Yazidis and Kurds used social media to distribute digital versions of traditional mourning songs, so-called dengbejî, as well as poems, drawings and pictures addressing the genocide by Yazidi artists such as Yazidi Sinjari´s Hecî Qîranî, Ravo Osman and Cemîl Reşkanî. The focus is both on suffering and on Yazidi resilience. On 3 August, the anniversary of the attack on Sinjar, mourning events organised by NGOs, groups and individuals were held place in person and online all around the world.

I can swear that nobody was braver than you

As the brave one, you remain in our thoughts

The spear of resistance and defence

Your monument at the Skeniye water source will one day

Become the pilgrimage for the youth and be a symbol of heroic deeds.

Excerpt from Hecî Qîranî’s poem ‘Şêrê Skêniye’ (‘Lion of Skêniye’), in memory of Şêx Xêrî, who fought against and was killed by IS. Freely translated from Kurdish.

IS disseminated extensive video footage and written propaganda via the group’s media channels and members. Due to this and numerous survivors’ reports, the nature and extent of the crimes committed against the Yazidis are well known. They include forced displacement, forced conversion, abduction, sexual violence, deprivation, inhuman and degrading treatment, systemic widespread killings, and killings during escape attempts.

Genocide is not a criminal offence in Iraq. War crimes and crimes against humanity are not covered by Iraqi law, nor has Iraq signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which allows for international criminal proceedings in line with the complementarity principle. Iraq (Law No. 13/2005) and Kurdistan Region (Law No. 3/2006) have brought charges against IS members under different anti-terror laws that do not mention rape or slavery. Rape is dealt with solely under civil law. Moreover, only Iraqi citizens or crimes committed in Iraq can be tried in court. The legal treatment of (alleged) IS perpetrators has thus been criticised for being unfair, for failing to address all of the crimes committed and for not involving survivors. There is a lack of coordination and overall strategy between Kurdistan Region and the central state, neither of which has prioritised these trials. Yazidis have repeatedly called for an international tribunal and for the prosecution of non-Iraqi Arabs, but their calls have been ignored.

In March 2021, the Iraqi government passed the Yazidi (Female) Survivor Law, which many observers and activists describe as ground-breaking but insufficient. Its provisions include monthly financial compensation, a plot of land with a government loan or free housing, medical assistance and educational support. The law describes the atrocities committed by IS against Yazidis, Christians, Shabak and Turkmen as genocide and crimes against humanity. Female survivors from these groups can only apply in Baghdad, however, and must travel there at their own expense. Survivors have reported that their experiences in captivity had to be related in the presence of men.

Up to 120,000 people have returned to Sinjar. IS destroyed 80% of the infrastructure and 70% of the houses in the city, much of which has yet to be rebuilt. Although the 2020 Sinjar Agreement between the KRG and the Iraqi central government provides 18 million USD for reconstruction, implementation has failed due to the lack of local involvement. Natia Navrouzov of Yazda (2024) estimates that 1.5 billion USD will be needed for complete reconstruction. Many people are living in homes belonging to other Yazidis, some of whom now want to return. Numerous school buildings were destroyed, and many areas were mined by IS. Medical care and gynaecological services are lacking. The genocide damaged family structures, leaving vulnerable orphans, formerly enslaved women and children. Unresolved questions about Yazidi security and the return of Arabs to Sinjar are also creating tensions. There have been a number of conflicts between Yazidis and Arabs in Sinjar. Yazidis do not want Sunni Arabs to return to Sinjar city, accusing them of complicity with IS.

Despite this, returnees are trying to pick up where they left off in 2014. There are many farms, shops, tree nurseries, garages and bakeries. The parks and almost all of the shrines destroyed by IS have been rebuilt, allowing Yazidis to live their lives again and celebrate weddings and festivals together.

After 2014, Yazidis from Sinjar founded numerous NGOs that are still active today. Well-known examples include Yazda, Free Yazidi Foundation, Nadia`s Initiative (founded by Nobel Prize winner Nadia Murad, an Yazidi women who was enslaved by IS) and the Farida Global Organisation (founded by Farida Khalaf, who was enslaved by IS). Financed by third parties, they implement local projects such as creating places of remembrance, promoting self-help, and accompanying the exhumation of mass graves and the identification of remains. Female Yazidi survivors have become prominent spokeswomen for their community, and have advocated for Yazidi interests in Baghdad, Erbil and beyond. This new movement is attracting young people in particular.

The most striking form of self-organisation is that of the various armed units, most of which were formed after the beginning of the genocide in August 2014. These units have links to larger actors, some of which are ideologically and strategically hostile to one another. Politically linked to the YBŞ unit, for example, are the newly formed Sinjar Council and the women's movement for the liberation of Yazidi women (Tevgera Azadiya Jinên Êzidî), which covers almost all of Sinjar. Women also form part of armed units of YBŞ and the Peşmerga unit of Qasim Şeşo.

According to the UN Genocide Convention, a state is responsible for acts and omissions that amount to non-compliance with its obligations under the Convention. These include not committing or supporting genocide, using all available means of prevention, the duty to punish perpetrators, and the adoption of legislation to implement the provisions of the Convention. Article 2 defines genocide as acts that intend to destroy an ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part. These include killing of members of a group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

In September 2014, the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat IS was launched with 77 partners (states and institutions). Its objectives included delivering emergency aid to Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar in the early days of the IS attacks and backing the Sinjar liberation offensive in November 2015.

Various UN missions became involved in the Yazidis’ plight. UNAMI, which was set up after the 2003 US-led invasion, drove the Sinjar Agreement signed by the Iraqi central government and the KRG (or more precisely, the KDP) in October 2020. Some Yazidis participated in an advisory capacity, but not in the negotiations and decisions. The agreement covers security, administration and reconstruction. It aims to stabilise Sinjar district and encourage people to return voluntarily. Only local police, the national security service and the intelligence service are to be responsible for security, and all local militias are to be disbanded. Existing militias in Sinjar have rejected the agreement, however, and it has only been partially implemented.

The two main armed forces in Sinjar are the 5,000-strong YBŞ which is ideologically close to the left-wing revolutionary PKK, and the paramilitary unit the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF, Hashd al-Shaabi), which has close ties with Iran and falls under Iraq’s National Security Agency (NSA).

The PKK/YBŞ and PMF share a common aim in countering Turkey and the KDP. Both established deep local roots through their response to the genocide and the fight against IS, filling the security gap left by the KRG and the central government. The PKK/YBŞ and PMF’s influence in Sinjar is primarily military, but also political and economic and, in the case of the YBŞ, ideological. They both compete and cooperate. The situation allows these transnational actors to provide military support (weapons and fighters) to allies in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. Both see Sinjar as a refuge from US (for the PMF) and Turkish (for the YBŞ) drones and airstrikes. In the case of PKK/YBŞ, this is only partial, as Turkish airstrikes since 2017 have also injured and killed civilians, and destroyed private property and the Skeniye medical centre.  

The EU responded to the 2015/2016 refugee crisis, itself partly caused by the Syrian civil war and IS violence in Syria and Iraq, by tightening its external borders. Many refugees attempted dangerous routes by land or across the Mediterranean. In 2015 alone, about 550,000 people, including Yazidis, crossed the Mediterranean to Europe. Of these, 3,000 drowned or remain missing. Many went into debt to pay people smugglers.

Yazidi migration and refugee movements continue to follow different routes. The Yazidis in Sinjar initially became internally displaced persons (IDPs) on 3 August 2014, following the IS attacks. To date, 200,000 Yazidis are living in 24 IDP camps in Kurdistan Region. The women in these camps have received little or no treatment for their trauma, and some of them have committed suicide. The plan is for the IDP camps to be closed by the end of 2024 and for the Yazidis to move voluntarily (with a 3000 USD incentive) to Sinjar, where 80,000-120,000 Yazidis now live once more. In April 2023, Iraqi prime minister al-Sudani ordered the government to launch a reconstruction campaign for Sinjar, announcing the allocation of 34.2 million USD.

The reasons given by Yazidi IDPs and refugees for not returning to Sinjar include inadequate security, destroyed infrastructure and houses, unexhumed mass graves, and the lack of legal reappraisal and clarification of the involvement of Arab neighbours in IS. Some Yazidis in IDP camps have protested that they were pressured by the KDP to vote for them in elections and to vote for the independence referendum in 2017.

Commemorating the genocide against the Yazidis can be understood as a complement, rather than a competitor, to the memory of the Holocaust, allowing people to learn from the past and the present. Moreover, the question of the relationship between the Holocaust and the persecution of Jews in the Middle East raises the question of whether and how the persecutions of non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire were linked and influenced each other, preparing the ground for present-day conflicts and ideologies that threaten social peace.