SINJAR, Iraq: Since Iraqi forces pushed the Kurds out of the Yazidis’ mountainous heartland of Sinjar in northern Iraq in October, residents are wondering what could happen to them next. Food and money are in short supply since aid organizations stopped delivery after Iraq’s advance. Buildings collapsed in the fighting and of those still standing, many are marked with bullets and littered with IEDs. Water and electricity barely work.
The Yazidis, whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions, have long been viewed with suspicion and repeatedly persecuted by other groups in Iraq.
In 2014, more than 3,000 were killed by Daesh militants in a campaign described by the UN as genocidal.
Now the land they have lived on for centuries is caught up in a tug of war between Baghdad and Iraq’s Kurds, who had controlled it since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
“We’re trapped in this game of political football, between Iraq and the Kurds,” said a Yazidi resident of Sinjar, Kamal Ali. “But neither of them cares about our future.”
The militias have hoisted Iraq’s tricolor flag over government buildings and any remaining Kurdish flags have been scrawled over with the words “Iraq” and “Allahu Akbar,” the blazing sun at its center scribbled over in black marker.
Sinjar is politically important because it’s in the disputed territories, ethnically mixed areas across northern Iraq, long the subject of a constitutional dispute between Baghdad and the Kurds, who both claim them.
Sinjar fell under the Kurds’ control, despite lying outside Iraqi Kurdistan’s recognized borders.
Baghdad did little to challenge the arrangement until its October offensive, launched to punish the Kurds for their September 25 independence referendum. Iraqi forces have seized the disputed areas the Kurds had expanded into including Sinjar.
The referendum reignited long-simmering tensions over geographic dominance in the oil-rich north, between Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), who fought side by side to defeat Daesh.
The Yazidis are divided about what should happen now.
Some are glad the Kurds have gone and see an opportunity for increased autonomy now that they are under federal control following the offensive by Iraq’s security forces last October. Kurdish forces handed over Sinjar without a fight to the Lalesh Brigades, a Yazidi militia backed by Baghdad’s Shiite paramilitary forces (PMF).
Most Yazidis speak a Kurdish dialect, but many don’t see themselves as ethnically Kurdish.
“We’re happy the Kurds have left,” said Abu Sardar, a 47-year-old Yazidi man. “We’re Yazidis we’re not Kurds, we do not want to be part of Kurdistan.”
Like others, Abu Sardar complained that the Kurds forced him to vote in the Kurdish referendum, accusations the KRG denies.
He returned two months ago to the ruins of his home in the Sinuni district of Sinjar and expressed bitter disappointment that little had changed since he left in 2014: hospitals and schools remain shuttered while the city is still mostly rubble.
He hopes that Baghdad and its militias will rebuild Sinjar.
Others lament the Kurds’ departure.
The KRG and allied Yazidi groups hold former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki responsible for the campaign by Daesh. They say his troops’ desertion of Mosul allowed militants to capture billions of dollars in weapons later used to attack the minority.
Yazidi commander Qassem Shesho says Iraq’s government is too sectarian and dislikes the Yazidis as much as Daesh.
Like many others, he blames the Kurds for the attack by Daesh.
“But they’re all we’ve got,” he said.
Shesho is allied to Iraqi Kurdistan’s ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party, even though the Kurds cut his fighters’ salaries after the Lalesh Brigades took over Sinjar.
Some days, residents say, there are only bones in Sinjar. Nearly 50 mass graves have been uncovered outside the town since 2014.
“Sinjar is a city of ghosts,” said the Lalesh Brigades’ leader Ali Serhan Eissa, also known as Khal Ali.
Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled the militant onslaught and headed for Mount Sinjar. Of those who didn’t reach the mountain, about 3,100 were killed – with more than half shot, beheaded, burned alive and disposed of in mass graves.
Others were sold into sexual slavery or forced to fight, according to a report by the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.
Some are still on the mountain, about to spend a third freezing winter in tents.
Before the attack, Sinjar was home to about 400,000 people – mainly Yazidis and Arab Sunnis. Only 15 percent of Yazidis have returned home, according to humanitarian estimates.
Most Yazidis remain in IDP camps in the Kurdistan region, along with most of the area’s displace Sunnis. Aid workers worry the camps will be closed if tensions between Baghdad and the Kurds flare up.
The presence of fighters from Turkey’s separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) further complicates the picture. Many Yazidis credit them with opening up a land route to allow those stranded on Mount Sinjar to escape the militants in 2014.
The PKK entrenched itself in the community, even creating a local unit, the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) which controls multiple checkpoints around Sinjar.
Turkey and neighboring Iran are closely watching the power shift in Sinjar.
Tehran wants to secure this north-western region of Iraq as it sits on the border with Syria, while Turkey wants the region free of the outlawed PKK.
Yazidis caught in “political football” between Baghdad, Iraqi Kurds
Yazidis caught in “political football” between Baghdad, Iraqi Kurds
Palestinian citizens in Israel demand more security from violence
- Protests and strikes are sweeping Israel over record levels of violence targeting the country’s Palestinian citizens
- At least 26 people were killed in January alone, adding to a record-breaking toll of more than 250 last year
KAFR YASIF, Israel: Nabil Safiya had taken a break from studying for a biology exam to meet a cousin at a pizza parlor when a gunman on a motorcycle rode past and fired, killing the 15-year-old as he sat in a black Renault.
The shooting — which police later said was a case of mistaken identity — stunned his hometown of Kafr Yasif, long besieged, like many Palestinian towns in Israel, by a wave of gang violence and family feuds.
“There is no set time for the gunfire anymore,” said Nabil’s father, Ashraf Safiya. “They can kill you in school, they can kill you in the street, they can kill you in the football stadium.”
The violence plaguing Israel’s Arab minority has become an inescapable part of daily life. Activists have long accused authorities of failing to address the issue and say that sense has deepened under Israel’s current far-right government.
One out of every five citizens in Israel is Palestinian. The rate of crime-related killings among them is more than 22 times higher than that for Jewish Israelis, while arrest and indictment rates for those crimes are far lower. Critics cite the disparities as evidence of entrenched discrimination and neglect.
A growing number of demonstrations are sweeping Israel. Thousands marched in Tel Aviv late Saturday to demand action, while Arab communities have gone on strike, closing shops and schools.
In November, after Nabil was gunned down, residents marched through the streets, students boycotted their classes and the Safiya family turned their home into a shrine with pictures and posters of Nabil.
The outrage had as much to do with what happened as with how often it keeps happening.
“There’s a law for the Jewish society and a different law for Palestinian society,” Ghassan Munayyer, a political activist from Lod, a mixed city with a large Palestinian population, said at a recent protest.
An epidemic of violence
Some Palestinian citizens have reached the highest echelons of business and politics in Israel. Yet many feel forsaken by authorities, with their communities marked by underinvestment and high unemployment that fuels frustration and distrust toward the state.
Nabil was one of a record 252 Palestinian citizens to be killed in Israel last year, according to data from Abraham Initiatives, an Israeli nongovernmental organization that promotes coexistence and safer communities. The toll continues to climb, with at least 26 additional crime-related killings in January.
Walid Haddad, a criminologist who teaches at Ono Academic College and who previously worked in Israel’s national security ministry, said that organized crime thrives off weapons trafficking and loan‑sharking in places where people lack access to credit. Gangs also extort residents and business owners for “protection,” he said.
Based on interviews with gang members in prisons and courts, he said they can earn anywhere from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on whether the job is torching cars, shooting at buildings or assassinating rival leaders.
“If they fire at homes or people once or twice a month, they can buy cars, go on trips. It’s easy money,” Haddad said, noting a widespread sense of impunity.
The violence has stifled the rhythm of life in many Palestinian communities. In Kafr Yasif, a northern Israel town of 10,000, streets empty by nightfall, and it’s not uncommon for those trying to sleep to hear gunshots ringing through their neighborhoods.
Prosecutions lag
Last year, only 8 percent of killings of Palestinian citizens led to charges filed against suspects, compared with 55 percent in Jewish communities, according to Abraham Initiatives.
Lama Yassin, the Abraham Initiatives’ director of shared cities and regions, said strained relations with police long discouraged Palestinian citizens from calling for new police stations or more police officers in their communities.
Not anymore.
“In recent years, because people are so depressed and feel like they’re not able to practice day-to-day life ... Arabs are saying, ‘Do whatever it takes, even if it means more police in our towns,’” Yassin said.
The killings have become a rallying cry for Palestinian-led political parties after successive governments pledged to curb the bloodshed with little results. Politicians and activists see the spate of violence as a reflection of selective enforcement and police apathy.
“We’ve been talking about this for 10 years,” said Knesset member Aida Touma-Suleiman.
She labeled policing in Palestinian communities “collective punishment,” noting that when Jews are victims of violence, police often set up roadblocks in neighboring Palestinian towns, flood areas with officers and arrest suspects en masse.
“The only side that can be able to smash a mafia is the state and the state is doing nothing except letting (organized crime) understand that they are free to do whatever they want,” Touma-Suleiman said.
Many communities feel impunity has gotten worse, she added, under National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who with authority over the police has launched aggressive and visible campaigns against other crimes, targeting protests and pushing for tougher operations in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.
Israeli police reject allegations of skewed priorities, saying that killings in these communities are a top priority. Police also have said investigations are challenging because witnesses don’t always cooperate.
“Investigative decisions are guided by evidence, operational considerations, and due process, not by indifference or lack of prioritization,” police said in a statement.
Unanswered demands
In Kafr Yasif, Ashraf Safiya vowed his son wouldn’t become just another statistic.
He had just gotten home from his work as a dentist and off the phone with Nabil when he learned about the shooting. He raced to the scene to find the car window shattered as Nabil was being rushed to the hospital. Doctors there pronounced him dead.
“The idea was that the blood of this boy would not be wasted,” Safiya said of protests he helped organize. “If people stop caring about these cases, we’re going to just have another case and another case.”
Authorities said last month they were preparing to file an indictment against a 23-year-old arrested in a neighboring town in connection with the shooting. They said the intended target was a relative, referring to the cousin with Nabil that night.
And they described Nabil as a victim of what they called “blood feuds within Arab society.”
At a late January demonstration in Kafr Yasif, marchers carried portraits of Nabil and Nidal Mosaedah, another local boy killed in the violence. Police broke up the protest, saying it lasted longer than authorized, and arrested its leaders, including the former head of the town council.
The show of force, residents said, may have quashed one protest, but did nothing to halt the killings.
