The Yezidis are an ancient Kurdish/Arab people with a religion that combines elements of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and ancient pre-monotheistic devotion to the sun, the moon, water, fire, earth and air. There were approximately 70,000 Yezidis in Iraq, mostly in Nineveh Province near Mosul in the town of Sinjar until they were forced to flee from the violence of the Islamic State or ISIS.
Now 40,000 to 50,000 of them have fled to Mount Sinjar, a holy place to them since they believe that this is where Noah’s Ark came to rest after the great flood. The mountain has always been their home in Iraq with the remaining 180,000 Yezidis in the world living in Syria, Turkey, Iran, Armenia and Georgia. So the question remains as to why the ISIS wants so desperately to commit genocide on a peaceful people with no homeland, who bother no one and who have lived peacefully amongst both Christians and Muslims for centuries.
The simple answer is that the Caliphate that Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi is creating in the 21st century belongs in the 7th century. The ISIS will tolerate no one who does not subscribe to their fundamental and violent version of Islam for very long even if they pay the Jizya tax and assume the mantle of second class Dhimmitude. They also practice “Takfir” which is determining that those thought formerly to be pious Muslims are in fact not because they do not believe in the Caliph’s version of Islam. This then make them Kaffirs and subject to death as apostates.
The story of their persecution is therefore almost a template for modern middle east politics which for far too many Muslims cannot be separated from their religious beliefs and hatreds. There are Christians on the mountain also. Mosul was for a very long time a vibrant Christian community with numerous churches and monasteries all of which are now occupied by the IS who already have blown up the tomb of Yunus or Jonah. In this act of violent desecration which mimicked what the Taliban did to the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afganistan, the ISIS attacked not just a figure of Christian or Jewish importance but also a Muslim one.
But this was but a mild prelude to the slaughter that came next to both Christians and Yezidis. The ISIS spared no one. Catholic Online reported “There is a park in Mosul,” Mark Arabo told CNN during a Skype interview from San Diego, “where they actually beheaded children and put their heads on a stick and have them in the park.” Other children were gunned down with their bodies left to rot in the sun. Men were crucified and beheaded, at least one woman was stripped naked , turned upside down, had her throat slit and her blood filled up a bowl beneath her as if she were slaughtered in an abattoir under religious law.
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We know this because of photos which the ISIS post as well as others to terrorize the population. Christian and Yezidi wives are also separated from their husbands, raped and forced to be wives to ISIS fighters all consistent with the rules of war established by Muhammed in the 7th century. On the mountain parents are reportedly throwing their children to their death rather than let them fall into the clutches of ISIS. 300,000 Chaldean Christians also have fled to Kurdistan or to Mount Sinjar where they beg for rescue.
As late as 2003 there were over one and a half million Christians living in a multi-sectarian secular but murderous Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Now that number has dwindled to between 350,000 to 450,000 all of whom are refugees on the run if in the north. Those who sought sanctuary in Kurdistan under the protection of the Peshmerga are now once again being threatened by The ISIS forces advancing on Erbil the Kurdish capital with state of the art U.S. made weapons captured from Iraqi soldiers who fled when attacked by the smaller forces of ISIS.
The Kurds are running out of ammunition and need to be re-supplied with everything up to date that the U.S. has. The U.S. also has to use overwhelming air power to obliterate this Da’esh army while it is still in the high desert in open convoys.
Meanwhile the people on the mountain wait for food and water to survive knowing that if they come down that mountain they will be butchered. Obama has promised them that help is on the way. He has inferred that he will use air power if U.S. interests are threatened. He has promised to avert a humanitarian genocide, perhaps in recognition that it was his misguided, premature withdrawal of US fores from Iraq that has caused this debacle to occur.
Larry Allison authored this analysis.