Yazidi UPDATES genocide has occurred and is ongoing

[Anthea]

Rudaw

Hundreds of Yezidi, Shiite Women Held Captive by IS
By Aso Fishagi

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq’s human rights minister said that hundreds of Yezidi and Shiite women were held captive by the Islamic State (IS/ISIS) armies, amid reports they are being sexually abused and sold as slaves.

Muhammad Shiya Sundani also told reporters in Baghdad the militants were killing Turkmen in Tuz Khurmatu and had massacred hundreds of Shiite Iraqi soldiers and aviation students at a military base in Tikrit.

“The ISIS militias have kidnapped more than 690 Yezidi and Shiite women,” Sudani said. “These women are currently being held and tortured in two prisons in Shingal and at the Asar School in Tel Afar,” he added.

Since the fall of the Yezidi town of Shingal earlier this month, and Tel Afar with its smaller Yezidi community, there have been harrowing reports of killings and all kinds of other atrocities committed by the IS fighters.

Christians have also been viciously driven from their homes since the fall of Mosul in June, but the Yezidis have been in greater danger because of their faith, regarded as “unbelievers” by the militants.

There have been reports of Yezidi women herded together like animals and daily picked out for sex with the militants and their leaders.

Earlier this week, on a hidden phone and in secret phone calls, a Yezidi girl held with 200 others as war booty at an IS prison near Mosul, painted a tragic picture of girls being singled out daily as sex slaves, and some committing suicide.

Every day, IS fighters visited the prison hall to pick out the prettiest for their emirs, said the girl, who told her story to a Rudaw reporter as she wept on the phone, sometimes abruptly breaking the conversation as she heard guards approaching.

The Iraqi minister said the militants had killed hundreds of Yezidis and others.

“ISIS has so far killed 420 Yezidi citizens and imprisoned 75 Shiite women in Shingal town. There are also 15 more women imprisoned by ISIS in the town of Jurf al-Sukhr in the province of Babil,” he added.

Sundani also mentioned that his ministry was closely investigating reports that abducted Yezidi and Shiite girls are being sold as slaves at markets in regions under IS control.

The minister added that, for the past several weeks IS had laid siege to the Turkmen town of Amrli in Tuz Khurmatu, killing residents on a regular basis.

He also said his ministry had recorded the names of 800 Shiite soldiers and aviation students who had gone missing at the Speicher military Base in Tikrit, suspected massacred by IS.

He said Iraq is taking the killings of the soldiers and air force cadets to the Human Rights Council in Geneva next month.

http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/220820141

[Anthea]

Mail Online

Children of war: Heartbreaking images show Yazidi and Kurdish refugees huddling in makeshift camps after fleeing ISIS terrorists

Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis and Kurdish fled hometowns fearing they would be executed by ISIS terrorists
Makeshift refugee camps are full to overflowing with many forced to sleep on bare mattresses under open sky
Many believe they will never be able to return to their homes, but it is not clear where else they can go

By Chris Pleasance for MailOnline

The horrors of Mount Sinjar - where the young, sick and old slowly wilted and died in heat of up to 50C - may now be behind them, but for these Yazidis the struggle for survival has only just begun.

Sleeping on tatty mattresses underneath the open sky in a makeshift refugee camp in Bajed Kadal, near Dohuk in northern Iraq, thousands of families are scratching out a desperate living in the middle of the desert.

Doctors in the camp have told of three children sleeping to a single bed, dehydrated and malnourished after a week without food while the hid from soldiers of Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS) on the top of a mountain.

Nearly half a million Yazidis, a minority religious sect, were displaced after IS militants overran their ancestral home of Sinjar and began executing people for being devil worshippers - or forcing them to convert to Islam.

While the Yazidis are now under the protection of Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers, meaning they are safe from IS attacks for now, many believe they will never be able to return home.

Elsewhere Kurdish refugees from Makhmur take shelter in a mosque after their town was also seized by IS. They join hundreds of thousands who have fled the violence, but what marks these Kurdish families out is that it is not the first time they have been displaced.

'I have suffered displacement a total of nine times in my life. I've been a refugee for 20 years,' says Ramazan Mohammed Khalil, a 47-year-old father of six who lived in Makhmur alongside some 10,000 other Kurds from Turkey.

Khalil and his family, who speak Turkish as well as Kurdish, live in a mosque in the town of Hajyawa, around three hours away from Makhmur.

Other refugee families are scattered in around 30 other mosques nearby, as well as in six schools. 'I was 24 years old when I fled Turkey,' Khalil says.

'This month, we fled just as they (the IS) were about to attack, because we'd heard of the massacres in other Kurdish areas like Sinjar,' he says.

At the mosque in Hajyawa, women bake traditional flat bread in the courtyard, while others wash their children's clothes using taps usually reserved for people performing ablution before prayers.

Where the Yazidis and Kurds go next is a question which has not yet been answered, and while IS continues its murderous advance across Iraq, it is unclear how long they can stay where they are either.

PLEASE Follow Link to See Many Photos of Yazidi Children:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... rists.html

[Anthea]

The Independent

Iraq crisis: The Yazidi - a persecuted people driven to the edge

They have been forced to seek sanctuary from Isis among the Kurds, but their lives are still in danger

Normally, in August Kurdistan's Yazidis gather at the holy shrine of Lalish, in northern Iraq, to celebrate the feast of Sheikh Adi, a saint whose tomb is housed in the temple.

Families from around the region, sometimes even from abroad, descend on the village for a few days and set up camp on the many paved terraces built into the surrounding hillside. As well as participating in religious ceremonies, it is an opportunity to come together as a community.

The Yazidi have been flocking to the temple again this year but not to celebrate. They are desperately seeking sanctuary from Islamic State militants (who earlier called themselves Isis), who have killed or kidnapped an estimated 15,000 members of their small community since 2 August.

Most of the people sheltering at Lalish are from Sinjar, west of Mosul. An ethnically mixed district, it has been the site of some of the militants' worst atrocities to date.

Khider Elias, 40, is from Siba Sheikh Khdr. He and his family have set themselves up under a large tree in one of the temple's main courtyards. A few blankets tied to the branches serve as make-do walls and offer a modicum of privacy from the other families now living at Lalish. A suit jacket and trousers are neatly hung on the tree trunk to keep them clean.

The residents of Siba Sheikh Khdr had been warned that militants were near by and, around 3am on the morning of 3 August, a small, armed band was waiting for them on the edge of the village. "Before we could see them," Elias says, "they started shooting out the street lights, so we knew they were coming."

The villagers engaged in a gunfight with the militants until 7am the next morning, but had to flee when they ran out of ammunition. Elias managed to hide as the Isis fighters came into the town.

"They raised their flag and were shouting 'Allahu al-Akhbar'. There were five or six families left in the village and I saw the Isis just shoot and kill three men. One of my friends was taken but I don't know what happened to him," says Elias.

Together with thousands of other survivors from the village, he walked the nine miles to the Sinjar mountains and spent five days and nights there, without food. "We had to walk three hours to get water, but it was dangerous because the militants were near the water and would shoot at us," Elias says.

Full Article:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 87850.html

[Anthea]

Victims of ISIS rampage: Yazidis face squalor on Iraq’s borders after fleeing their homes in ordeal condemned by United Nations

Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis and Kurdish fled hometowns fearing they would be executed by ISIS terrorists

Now generations of families are taking shelter in unfinished buildings and refugee camps - but many can't be helped

Many believe they will never be able to return to their homes, but it is not clear where else they can go

The Yazidi refugee victims of the Isis rampage are now facing a desperate existence amid squalor on Iraq's borders, in an ordeal condemned by the United Nations.

Nearly half a million Yazidis, a minority religious sect, were displaced after IS, or ISIS, militants overran their ancestral home of Sinjar and executed people for being devil worshippers - or instead forcing them to convert to Islam.

United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay has condemned the 'appalling, widespread' crimes being committed by Islamic State forces in Iraq, including mass executions of prisoners and 'ethnic and religious cleansing'.

The persecution of entire communities and systematic violations by the al-Qaeda offshoot, documented by U.N. human rights investigators, would amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes under international law, she said in a statement.

'Grave, horrific human rights violations are being committed daily by ISIL and associated armed groups,' Pillay said, citing targeted killings, forced conversions, abductions, slavery, sex crimes, forced recruitment and destruction of places of worship.

'They are systematically targeting men, women and children based on their ethnic, religious or sectarian affiliation and are ruthlessly carrying out widespread ethnic and religious cleansing in the areas under their control.'

Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen were among the minorities targeted by the Sunni militant group, which has forced people to convert to their strict form of Sharia law, she said.

Islamic State insurgents have captured a third of Iraq with little resistance and declared a caliphate in the areas of Iraq and Syria it controls. It has drawn the first American air strikes in Iraq since the end of the occupation in 2011.

Last week Islamic State released a video showing one of its fighters beheading the U.S. journalist James Foley, kidnapped in Syria in 2012. Their wealth and military might represent a major threat to the United States that may surpass that once posed by al Qaeda, the U.S. military says.

Some 1.2 million people have fled fighting and ISIL's advance in Iraq this year, the U.N. refugee agency says.

The al-Qaeda splinter group seized control of the city of Mosul on June 10, in a spectacular show of strength against the Shi'ite-led Baghdad government.

ISIL loaded 1,000 to 1,500 prisoners from Badush prison in Mosul onto trucks and took them to a vacant area for screening, Pillay said. Sunni inmates were taken away again on the trucks.

'ISIL gunmen then yelled insults at the remaining prisoners, lined them up in four rows, ordered them to kneel and opened fire,' she said.

Up to 670 prisoners from Badush prison were killed by Islamic State on June 10, she said, quoting dozens of survivors and witnesses, some of whom survived by pretending to be dead.

'Such cold-blooded, systematic and intentional killings of civilians, after singling them out for their religious affiliation, may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity,' said Pillay, a former U.N. war crimes judge who steps down on August 31 after serving six years as U.N, rights boss.

In northern Nineveh province, hundreds of Yazidis were killed and up to 2,500 kidnapped in early August, Pillay said, citing testimony from victims and witnesses. Yazidis fled their ancient homeland of Sinjar and other villages to escape the militants, who regard the ethnic minority as devil worshippers.

Those who agreed to convert are being held by ISIL, but witnesses report that among those who refused, 'men were executed while the women and their children were taken as slaves and either handed over to ISIL fighters as slaves or threatened with being sold', the U.N. statement said.

ISIL also killed and abducted hundreds of Yazidis in Cotcho village in southern Sinjar on August 15, Pillay said, citing witness testimony including 'harrowing phone calls'.

U.N. human rights investigators have received increasing reports of civilians being targeted for killing, she said, citing incidents of dozens being killed in Basra and Diyala.

In Baghdad, medical sources indicate that at least 15 bodies are found in the city on a daily basis. 'All appear to have been bound and executed', Pillay said.

Pillay called on the Iraqi government and international community to protect vulnerable ethnic and religious groups.

These included at least 13,000 Shia Turkmen in Salahuddin province besieged by ISIL forces since mid-June amid 'fear of a possible, imminent massacre' and Yazidis in besieged villages of Sinjar who remain at 'serious risk', she said.

Link to Article Photos and Video:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... tions.html

[Anthea]

Reuters

Smugglers and Kurdish militants help Iraq's Yazidis flee to Turkey
By Humeyra Pamuk

Sewra was terrified of being caught by Turkish soldiers as she, her children and grandchildren inched their way through Iraq's mountainous border region, fleeing an Islamist militant onslaught by cover of darkness.

The 56-year-old and her family, among tens of thousands of Yazidis uprooted by Islamic State militants, paid $500 to an Iraqi man with relatives in Turkey who said he could get them over the border to safety without passports or visas.

"If they'd caught us and tried to send us back to Iraq, I would have killed myself," Sewra said, sheltering from the sun under a makeshift tent in a refugee camp in the Turkish town of Silopi, a stone's throw from the border.

"Iraq is finished for us, there's no going back."

Yazidis like Sewra, followers of an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism, fled their homeland in the Sinjar mountains as Sunni militants, who see them as devil worshippers, seized towns and carried out mass killings this month.

Thousands have flooded the Iraqi border towns of Zakho and Duhok, living in school gardens, church backyards, deserted buildings and half-finished construction sites with little food and water in temperatures reaching 50 degrees Celsius (over 120 Fahrenheit).

Local municipality workers running the camp in Silopi just over the Turkish border say 1,500 people are sheltering there alone. A new facility with a capacity of 5,000 is being built nearby to cope with the continuing influx.

At least 100 people are arriving from Iraq each day, the camp workers say, many of them, like Sewra, smuggled across the border by locals, sometimes paying up to $1,000 per family.

"This may look like business to you but it's actually charitable work," said a Kurdish van driver who gave his name as Cudi and said he regularly brought Yazidis from Iraq.

(PIG so much for Kurdish unity - poor Yazidis who have lost everything have to pay pigs like him - the man needs shooting - my opinion may not be the opinion of RBK management: Anthea)

"They have no visa, no passport. They live in awful conditions in Iraq. Should I just ignore them," he said, declining to give his full name because what he is doing is illegal.

Turkey, already sheltering more than a million refugees from the war in neighboring Syria, has reiterated that it will maintain an 'open door policy' to those fleeing violence, although customs officials at the main Habur border crossing with Iraq are only allowing in those with passports.

KURDISH MILITANT ROLE

The Yazidis are part of Iraq's Kurdish minority and some have crossed into Turkey under the protection of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which fought a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state and is considered a terrorist group by Ankara, the United States and European Union.

PKK fighters have rushed to the assistance of Kurdish peshmerga forces battling the advance of Islamic State militants, playing a decisive role in blunting their sweep through Iraq.

"Thank God for the PKK," said Mirza, 22, a Yazidi refugee who arrived in Turkey under PKK protection and who is now sheltering at the Silopi camp, run by local authorities from the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP).

"They brought us from over the border, they saved us from Daash," he said, using the Arabic term for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Islamic State's previous name.

When the peshmerga withdrew, overwhelmed, and left Yazidi towns defenseless against the advancing Islamic State fighters, it was PKK and its armed sister group - People's Defense Units (YPG) - which came to the rescue, refugees said.

"I would not have been here if it wasn't for the PKK," said Fouaz, 22, a Yazidi refugee sat in a dusty tent in Zakho, on the Iraqi side of the border.

"It's not only me, dozens and even hundreds of us would not be alive if they hadn't saved us," he said, describing how he hid under dead bodies for more than an hour during an Islamic State attack, before YPG and PKK fighters arrived.

REFUGEE CAMPS

Fouaz lost all of his direct family in the violence. Sleeping and eating on a worn-out carpet in a camp run by a Kurdish businessman, Fouaz hopes to get to Turkey, where he has heard conditions for refugees are far better.

He is not wrong.

The camp in Silopi has regular food and water supplies and is partly made up of two-storey concrete buildings being used as shelters for the refugees against the blistering summer heat.

The camp is officially run by the HDP municipality but PKK members are responsible for security, as well as the provision of basic utilities like water, local residents say. Officials at the camp did not want to be interviewed.

The local authorities are building another camp nearby with the capacity to accommodate 5,000 people, which they expect to be ready in the next few days.

"We will be bringing the thousands of people in Uludere to here," Seyda Urper, an engineer for the municipality, said at the site, referring to a predominantly Kurdish border town through which many Yazidis have crossed.

About 120 km (75 miles) to the west, in the predominantly Christian town of Midyat, already home to a wave of Syrian refugees, Turkey's disaster management agency AFAD is sheltering around 1,500 Yadizis in one of its camps.

The agency is also working across the border in northern Iraq to set up two separate camps for Yazidis and Turkmens, Iraq's third largest ethnic group after Arabs and Kurds, who have close cultural and linguistic links with Turkey.

(Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara,; Writing by Humeyra Pamuk, Editing by Nick Tattersall and Giles Elgood)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/ ... MX20140826

[Anthea]

Betrayal of Yazidis Stokes Iraqi Fears of Return to 2006 Sectarian Horrors
By AZAM AHMED

ZAKHO, Iraq — The afternoon before his family fled the onslaught of Sunni militants, Dakhil Habash was visited by three of his Arab neighbors. Over tea, his trusted friend Matlul Mare told him not to worry about the advancing fighters and that no harm would come to him or his Yazidi people.

The men had helped one another over the years: Mr. Mare brought supplies to Mr. Habash’s community in the years after the American invasion, when travel outside their northern enclave was too dangerous for Yazidis. Mr. Mare bought tomatoes and watermelon from Mr. Habash’s farm and sometimes borrowed money.

But his friend’s assurances did not sit right with Mr. Habash. That night, he gathered his family and fled. Soon afterward, he said, he found out that Mr. Mare had joined the militants and was helping them hunt down Yazidi families.

“Our Arab neighbors turned on all of us,” said Mr. Habash, who recounted his story from a makeshift refugee camp on the banks of a fetid stream near the city of Zakho, in Iraqi Kurdistan. “We feel betrayed. They were our friends.”

It would be the last time the men saw each other, as they were swept into different spheres of Iraq’s fracturing sectarian landscape, where militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are filling their ranks with the country’s disenfranchised Sunni Arabs.

Some Iraqis fear that the plight of the Yazidis, thousands of whom are missing or have been massacred by ISIS fighters, could be a harbinger of a return to the sectarian nightmare of 2006 and 2007, when neighbors turned against neighbors.

Many Sunni tribes have not supported ISIS’s advance. But the group has benefited from widespread bitterness among Sunni Arabs over perceived mistreatment at the hands of the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. When ISIS arrived, officials say, some Sunnis saw an opportunity to reclaim some of the supremacy they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein’s rule.

As ISIS has advanced, more than 400,000 Yazidis, who follow an ancient religion with roots in Muslim and Zoroastrian traditions, have been forced to flee their enclaves. The humanitarian crisis helped prompt President Obama to authorize American airstrikes to halt the slaughter, a decisive step in checking the militants’ advance across northern Iraq.

“I called my closest friend after we fled, an Arab man who owned a shop in our village,” said a Yazidi man who identified himself only as Haso, declining to give his first name out of fear of reprisal. “When I asked him what he was doing, he told me he was looking for Yazidis to kill.”

The friend denied Haso’s account. But he grew angry when a journalist referred to the militant group as ISIS, because the militants now prefer to be called the Islamic State.

Another Yazidi refugee, Qasim Omar, said that just before ISIS reached his village, Arab neighbors began flying the group’s black flag from their homes.

“Before ISIS came, the Arab villagers had already helped them,” said Mr. Omar, 63. “I couldn’t believe it. They were our brothers.”

The extent of the collusion is hard to map. Many Yazidi families interviewed did not have firsthand information of Arab neighbors aiding ISIS. And in some cases, Arabs risked their lives to save persecuted friends.

But amid the chaos, an emotional truth has emerged: ISIS has destroyed the peaceful coexistence that many northern towns once cherished.

“We would like to go back to our village, but we will never have a relationship with the Arabs anymore,” Mr. Habash said. “It will never be the same.”

His realization began on Aug. 4, when Mr. Mare and some other neighbors who lived near his family’s farm came to his door, seemingly making the rounds of all of their Yazidi neighbors.

Over tea, the men told the family to remove their flag supporting the Kurdish Democratic Party and replace it with a white one.

“You will be safe,” Mr. Mare repeated, according to Mr. Habash and other family members who were present.

The men left at sunset and the family waited, Mr. Habash said.

A few hours later, calls began to pour in from friends as nearby villages fell to ISIS. The Kurdish pesh merga security forces were retreating. Men were being executed. Women and children were vanishing. At 2 a.m., the family fled.

But Mr. Habash’s niece stayed behind with her husband’s family.

“Her new family trusted the Arabs more than they trusted us,” said her father, Mohsin Habash, who stayed behind for his daughter.

The rest of the family raced toward the Yazidi enclaves at Mount Sinjar, but discovered that the road to the Syrian border was still open, and headed there instead. That evening, they arrived at a border checkpoint, among a caravan of trucks swollen with passengers collected along the way.

Later, they headed into Iraqi Kurdistan, where they received a call from a fellow Yazidi who had been stopped at a snap checkpoint set up by the militants. Manning the roadblock was an armed crew of ISIS fighters and local Arabs, among them Mr. Mare.

“He asked me why I was leaving, and I told him I needed to see my family members,” said Nasr Qasim Kachal, the friend.

“Then go to hell,” Mr. Kachal, reached by phone, recalled Mr. Mare saying before he was waved through.

Mr. Habash’s niece, Ahlan Mohsin Kalo, was not as lucky. She and her family stayed for two days before deciding to flee. But on their way out of town, Mr. Mare spotted them, according to villagers and Mr. Kachal.

Her father has not heard from her since. “They didn’t have time to run,” Mohsin Habash said.

Though Mohsin Habash’s family suffered because of one Arab neighbor, he pointed out that they were saved with the help of another: a longtime friend who led a convoy of Yazidi refugees to safety at great risk.

The convoy drove through the night, passing ISIS-controlled territories undetected. Mohsin Habash believes it was because his friend knew the Arab areas better than any of the Yazidis.

Hours later, they reached Syria. From there, Mohsin Habash’s friend introduced them to another Arab man who took the group to the border with Kurdistan.

“He saved us,” Mr. Habash said.

Rod Nordland contributed reporting from Erbil, Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/world ... .html?_r=0

[Anthea]

...his friend’s assurances did not sit right with Mr. Habash. That night, he gathered his family and fled. Soon afterward, he said, he found out that Mr. Mare had joined the militants and was helping them hunt down Yazidi families.

A sad tale and one that is probably repeated many times over

What choice did Mr. Mare have other than to join the militants - I am assuming Mr. Mare had a family - had he have sided with the Yazidis his life and the lives of all his family could well have been forfeited for such an allegiance

We have tales of Arabs helping Yazidis to reach safety - seemingly at no financial cost

Shockingly we have tales of Kurds helping Yazidis to reach safety - and charging them money

Syria and Iraq are part of a seething unending conflict - but it need not have been this way

If the world had heeded the Kurds of Syria's MANY and REPEATED request for Independence none of this would have happened

FACT not just Kurds but some other Syrians were upset with the Syrian government

I remember Homs - a lovely young Syrian boy sung protest songs - a few cars were set light to - then army deserters joined them - soon many other ARMED dissidents joined them and they changed from being a troublesome group of harmless youngsters into an area full of armed rebels - the armed rebels made Homs a target for the Syrian Government

Soon it seemed as though everyone was jumping on the bandwagon - go to Syria and fight - many went and many fought just for the sake of fighting - hundreds of warring factions were born within the Free Syrian Army until nobody knew who was fighting whom - often funded by other countries in the hope of bring down the Assad regime money was finding it's way to the coffers of ISIS

If Tony Blair had supported the Syrian Kurds all those years ago - when Kurds went to him asking him to support an Independent Western Kurdistan - there would never have been a Free Syrian Army in an Independent Western Kurdistan

[Anthea]

Guardian

Yazidis still stranded on Mount Sinjar

'We need weapons now more than food or water'

The US has said little about Mount Sinjar since 14 August, when Obama declared the siege broken, but recent satellite imagery and interviews with Yazidis still on the mountain indicate a humanitarian emergency continuing to unfold
Spencer Ackerman, Mona Mahmood, Ian Saleh and Kenton Powell

For the US and its allies, Mount Sinjar is a success story: a humanitarian disaster alleviated by US air power. But hundreds, if not thousands, of Yazidis – mostly sick and old – remain atop the mountain, with no relief on its way.

Satellite images taken on 21 August by the firm ImageSat International and interviews with members of the Yazidi religious minority still on the mountain indicate a humanitarian emergency continuing to unfold. While thousands have fled down the mountain’s north face, making a dangerous trek into Iraqi Kurdistan through Syria, those on the southern side remain in crisis.

There has not been a US airdrop of food, water or medicine since 13 August, after a reconnaissance team of US special operations forces that had briefly been on the mountain reported that conditions were not as dire as Washington initially thought.

Survivors of the Islamic State (Isis) siege describe leaving behind their elderly and infirm relatives. The younger Yazidis who have stayed behind talk of fighting Isis until they either liberate Sinjar city below or they die.

One Yazidi man, Abu Sulaiman, described the situation on the mountain now as “heartbreaking”.

“My pillow is a small rock, and my bed is crumpling ground where there is no water, no food, no single cigarette to smoke. Sometimes, my brother would get me a piece of bread, but I’m too ill and have no appetite to eat. I just want to be lifted out of here,” he said.

Those still on the mountain are effectively abandoned, while the Obama administration considers the Mount Sinjar operation a success. The Pentagon estimated two weeks ago that 4,000 to 5,000 people remained on the mountain, and says it cannot offer a more current estimate. The US Agency for International Development assesses that perhaps 2,000 people do not intend to leave. The United Nations mission to Iraq pegged the residual population at “a few hundred who did not want to leave,” said spokeswoman Eliana Nabaa.

Although Barack Obama said US warplanes and Kurdish forces “broke the siege of Mount Sinjar,” Isis fighters remain, confronted by a small and desperate Yazidi force.

“We need weapons now more than food or water,” Salim Hassan, a Yazidi fighter on Mount Sinjar, told the Guardian.

US Central Command would not say if it has assessed that Isis remains beneath Mount Sinjar. American efforts have moved on to planning an attack on Isis forces in Syria, where US surveillance flights have begun.

All US air strikes at the foot of Mount Sinjar occurred below its southern, south-western and south-eastern faces, apparently where Isis forces positioned themselves for the siege of the mountain. The main pathway off the mountain comes from its north face, though some have escaped from the west. Those on the southern slope appear stranded. Two people recently atop the mountain told the Guardian that they ascended the southern face only after Isis fighters prevented them from taking what they thought would be a safer route to the northern face.

ImageSat provides 70cm resolution satellite imagery and analysis for defense and corporate clients and works with partner firms like Germany’s BlackBridge geospatial firm and the European Space Agency. Its analysts tell the Guardian that the south slope of the mountain, shot below its apex on 21 August, is dotted with dark rectangles: trucks that once brought people up the heights. They sit in clusters, either containing people seeking refuge and hoping to escape, or abandoned outright.

The southern slope is conspicuously sparse, and some areas have visible burn marks. There are no livestock, said ImageSat’s Alex Imas, “no tents and no agriculture nearby. The people that fled here have nothing.”

It is possible the trucks remain abandoned, the result of a frantic escape up the mountain. Overall, Imas said, “the look of it all speaks of movement, people on the run, chaos.”

A retired intelligence officer experienced in satellite imagery analysis said it appeared like there were “scores” of cars and trucks in the image.

“It’s easier to make the call on the lighter colored ones,” he said, “because you can see the lighter body and then the contrasting darker windshield. That being said, taken together the dark things that are roughly the same size and shape are probably trucks, too.”

Satellite photography by itself carries inherent limitations. ImageSat captured a single day’s worth of images over Mount Sinjar, so it cannot show changes on the mountain over time. Nor did it capture the entire mountain, an area near 800 sq miles, which perhaps helps account for the relative paucity of clearly identifiable people. The Guardian supplemented the imagery by interviewing Yazidis still on and recently off the mountain, US government officials and international aid workers.

There are indications that those still atop Mount Sinjar are the most vulnerable.

Sulaiman, a 58-year old Yazidi, fled up Mount Sinjar’s south slope with his elderly mother and aunt. Afflicted with diabetes and heart problems, he has been without his prescription medications since he fled his nearby home on 3 August. He spoke with the Guardian via a mobile phone recharged through the battery of a water tanker brought in by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.

“The scene of starving kids as well as elderly people is really heartbreaking, and I can assure you that many kids have died on the mountain for lack of food and water,” Abu Sulaiman told the Guardian on 18 August.

With his family, Abu Sulaiman drove from his home to the southern slope, but had to abandon their car. Seven men carried him up the mountain on a stretcher. His wife, sons and daughters and their families have managed to escape into Iraqi Kurdistan, “but I’m still here with the old members of the family,” aided by his young nephew.

Bassima Salim, from the nearby city of Sinjar, survived two weeks atop the mountain before evacuating from the north slope into Zakho, a town in Iraqi Kurdistan on the Turkish border. Corroborating Abu Sulaiman’s tale, she told the Guardian that before making the 30-hour journey – on foot, with minimal provisions, through Syria – families had to make a heart-wrenching calculation.

“Not all members of the family can stand such a strenuous trip,” she said. “The decision was to break up into two groups, some of us to remain with the old parents at the mountain and others to march to the checkpoint to find shelter in Kurdistan and to bring the entire family later on.”

US Central Command told the Guardian on 13 August that it had “no indications of ineffective airdrops.” But both Salim and Abu Sulaiman said that they were unable to access food or water dropped by US military cargo planes.

“I heard a lot about US planes dropping aid to the Yazidi refugees stranded on the mountain, but I swear to God I have not got anything till today,” he said, five days after the final airdrop.

Abu Sulaiman estimated 4,000 people remain on top of Mount Sinjar, a figure matching one offered by Rear Adm John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, after the reconnaissance mission. Gustavo Fernandez, the northern Iraq operations chief of Médecins Sans Frontières, said local authorities report 500 families remain on the mountain, as “apparently they have chosen to stay there.”

Those escaping have slowed to a trickle. “We see very few people arriving into Syria, around 50 [per] day,” Fernandez said. “They are tired and hungry but not in critical health conditions. Some people who needed further medical care were referred to the local hospital over the last week.”

The Obama administration has said little about the situation at Mount Sinjar since 14 August, when Obama declared the siege broken. Once US missiles began striking Isis near the Mosul Dam – the locus of the vast majority of US air strikes – international attention swiveled away from the Yazidis once feared to be at risk of genocide, and now centers around speculation of a US bombing campaign in Syria.

But Isis fighters remain below the mountain, said Hassan, who has stayed behind to take their Sinjar city home away from the jihadist army.

“I made an oath not to leave my place on the mountain till I die or Sinjar is liberated,” he said in a telephone call on Thursday.

Hassan said that he and others descend the mountain in shifts to ambush Isis forces, firing until their ammunition stocks deplete. While he credits US airstrikes for “easing the burden on us,” he wants weapons from the US, and blames the Kurdish peshmerga for letting Sinjar fall in the first place.

It is unclear if the US will do anything more to aid the residual population of Mount Sinjar, which played a central role in Obama’s rationale for returning the US to war in Iraq.

“I lost my son who was killed in the fight, as well as my neighbor, but we were able to kill many Isis fighters and then withdraw to the mountain,” Hassan said, where he and scores more remain.

Article and Pics:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/a ... ite-images

[Anthea]

If you wish to help Yazidis please contact Aid The Innocent

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[Anthea]

Mail Online

Hundreds of Yazidi women held in Islamic State prison where they are held as sex slaves or sold off as jihadi brides for as little as $25

Hundreds of Yazidi women captured by IS while trying to flee Mount Sinjar
They are now being kept in Badush Prison, in Mosul, northern Iraq
Escapees have told of how the women are either sold as brides or raped
Some report victims being forced to call their families to describe attacks
By Chris Pleasance for MailOnline

Hundreds of Yazidi women being held prisoner by Islamic State fighters in Iraq are being sold off as brides for as little as $25 or repeatedly raped if they refuse, it has been claimed.

Survivors have told how beauticians were brought in to put makeup on the women before they were attacked, and said some victims were forced to call their families after to explain what had happened.

According to those who escaped Badush Prison, in Mosul, northern Iraq, the number of women held there could be in the thousands and include Christians and Turkomens - a largely Muslim group closely related to the Turks.

Following the capture of Mosul by IS (formerly known as ISIS or ISIL) in June, troops stormed the prison, took 670 Shia inmates from their cells, and executed them inside the compound.

Since then the jail has been used to house women captured by the Islamic militants during their campaign across Iraq, including many Yazidis who failed to escape from Mount Sinjar.

Nearly half a million Yazidis, a minority religious sect, were displaced after IS militants overran their ancestral home of Sinjar and began executing people for being devil worshippers.

According to Pakhshan Zangana, an official in The Kurdish Regional Government, women arriving at the jail are given two choices: convert to Islam and be sold off for between $25 and $150, or refuse and be subjected to rape and slow death.

She told The Daily Beast that one girl called her mother from inside the jail and described being raped by dozens of men in the space of just a few hours.

Others have told how some women have given birth inside the jail, only to have the babies taken away hours later, never to see them again. Some of the victims are as young as 14.

Zangana is now trying to raise money to buy the girls back, but without international aid she has been forced to turn to crowd-sourcing, promising people their money back if they help.

She said: 'It’s complete psychological warfare. These families are already destroyed by the loss of their loved one’s, and now ISIS has them calling to tell them of the atrocities they have suffered.'

She added that the crisis did not just affect Iraq or the Yazidis, but was caused by international fighters joining IS from Chechnya in Russia, Britain and Holland.

Meanwhile, across the border in Syria, IS today posted a graphic video which apparently showed Islamist soldiers executing around 250 Syrian troops.

An Islamic State fighter claimed the men were from the Syrian government's Tabqa air base which extremists seized on Sunday, potentially handing them warplanes, tanks, artillery and ammunition.

The airfield was the last government-controlled base in the Raqqa region, which is now solely under the control of IS fighters.

Human Rights Watch described shocking video as evidence of 'another ISIS war crime'.

US airstrikes in Iraq have helped to stop the IS advance across the country for now, but jihadi fighters have also managed to repel government attempts at a counter attack.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... le-25.html

[Anthea]

Rudaw

Kurdish Activists ‘Convert’ to Yezidis in Act of Solidarity

In an act of solidarity with Yezidis made homeless and persecuted en masse by the Islamic State (IS/formerly ISIS) in Iraq, dozens of Kurdish intellectuals and activists announced they have symbolically converted to the faith.

“We become Yezidis to show the radical Muslims that their genocidal campaign would only increase the number of Yezidis in Kurdistan,” said a group of 48 intellectuals and activists in a joint statement.

They said that the Yezidis are “subjected to savage attacks only because they have a different religion.”

“Because of their non-Muslim faith they are killed en masse, their girls and women are enslaved and many of them have been forcefully converted to Islam,” their statement read.

IS militants attacked the Yezidi town of Shingal early this month, killing several hundred civilians and displacing tens of thousands to Mount Shingal, where many died of hunger and thirst.

“I feel like a Yezidi,” pronounced Frmesk Mustafa, a Kurdish actress. “I am one of them,” she said.

Mustafa, who has returned to Kurdistan from Norway to work with Yezidi refugees, said: “The aim is to make them return the girls. And to show that Yezidis have to remain with their faith without fear.”

The activists stressed in their statement that the Kurdistan Region has no room for religious intolerance, and that Yezidis are welcome as members of Kurdish society.

“One of the prides of the people of Kurdistan is their belief in religious and ethnic diversity where every individual can live together,” they said.

The group called on the people of Kurdistan, Iraq and the world to become Yezidis, albeit symbolically, in solidarity with the small and persecuted community.

“We want to tell the Yezidis and the people of the world that we will not leave the Yezidis to face a genocide alone,” read the statement.

http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/310820141

I have been thinking a lot about doing the same thing

My name is Anthea and I am a Yazidi

[Anthea]

Rudaw

IS Sold Yezidi Women for $1,000, Hundreds Given to Fighters as War Trophy

Islamic State (IS/ISIS) militants in Iraq have sold or handed out hundreds of Yezidi women captured as war trophy to fighters in Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.

The British-based Observatory said it had documented evidence that 27 of the captured Yezdi girls had been “sold and married” to fighters in Aleppo, Raqqa and Al-Hassakah. It said the girls were sold for $1,000 each.

In addition, “in recent weeks, some 300 women and girls of the Yezidi faith who were abducted in Iraq have been distributed as spoils of war to fighters from the Islamic State,” SOHR said in a statement.

The Islamic State, which has been fighting in Syria for more than three years, had captured about a third of Iraqi territory since June, declaring a Caliphate in seized lands.

Iraq’s non-Muslim minorities, like the Christians and Yezidis, have been especially targeted by the IS armies. Because of their faith, the Yezidis are considered “unbelievers” by the militants, many of them killed and captured, their properties looted and their young women taken as war booty.

Heiner Bielefedt, the UN’s special monitor on religious freedoms, warned last month: “We have reports of women being executed and unverified reports that strongly suggest that hundreds of women and children have been kidnapped - many of the teenagers have been sexually assaulted, and women have been assigned or sold to 'IS' fighters.”

Early this month, IS militants captured the Yezidi town of Shingal and surrounding regions, capturing hundreds of young women and sending villagers fleeing to an arid mountain where they fought for more than a week for survival.

The suffering of the Yezidis was cited as US President Barack Obama as one of the motives for starting air strikes against the IS.

Link to Article and interesting assortmen og comments - see selection below:

http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/310820142

Arabs go to hell!!
Right that's it I have just lost my faith in ISlam!!! No offence to peaceful muslim brothers. But tell me this , which is better a devil worshiper who have done no harm to us or a Muslim following a caliphate ideology and killing other Muslims and other people of different faiths. I know most of you would say muslim....but it's gone too far!! Why every time we ignore this problem and then more killing of Muslims because of jihad or caliphate ideology? therefore this faith cannot be trusted. It was forced upon us by Arabs in the past and still we have corrupt Mullahs also preaching in mosques who follow this faith in an extreme way, since the beginning of Islam right up to now. We were forced to convert or die! And when Saddam was in power we were arabised and were not able to speak our language and most of our land was taken away, our peoples homes were bulldozed and forced to leave for more Arab tribes to settle in. To hell with them! IS or arab tribes can all go to hell!!, this IS came from Jordan and funded by Saudis and armed by US and other western countries. It's funny that IS we're able to sell oil and Kurds had to try hard persuading US government to sell theirs. How ironic.

Hawler
Kill Arabs. Kill Arabs! Killlllll arabs. The Arabs villagers, that was in sinjar has helped isis to enter the Kurdish villagers and even to select the prety girls and women. Arabs out of Erbil! Never trust Arabs even the so called good one! Destroy their litle brain

Kurdish Voice - Bakoor
This is our namous!!!!! Our kurdish brothers and sisters, we need to aggressively work on getting our people back!!!!! These women and kids are our namous......These savages ISIS needs to be tortured and burnt alive, one by one!!!! No court on planet earth should give the leniency for a trial, their sentence must be death, a slow and painful one, hearing them scream for death!!!!!! Savages!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ezidi
Why? Why kurdish brethren you are permiting that they kill us, rape us and torture us like that? Once upon a time we shared the same faith but when the armies of Islam came you started butchering us. We loved you because you were our blood brothers but you obeyed the arabs and start massacring us as if we were insects. We only felt love for you in our hearts, kurdish brethren, we didnt care that you converted to Islam, We still loved you yet your hands were showered with our innocent blood. It seems our presence disturbs you. If that is the case we wont offer more resistance and will let the armies of Islam kill us. We are tired of being hated and killed. It is better that we just become a chapter of history books because you dont want us in your presence. I will just stand in front of them and let them kill me. I am tired of all this. So much suffering. Kurdish brothers remember that we ezidi still love you. You listen to arabs and let ezidi die but that wont change the love we feel for you. We will take that love with us in our graves. Remember, the blood that runs in your veins is our blood too.

[Londoner]

Please include me. I want to convert to the religion of our forefathers, the real religion of Kurdistan, Yezidi.

[Anthea]

Please include me. I want to convert to the religion of our forefathers, the real religion of Kurdistan, Yezidi.

It has always annoyed me that so many reports state Yazidis have taken bits from other religions including the Muslims, Jews and Christians

How could they - the Yazidi were here FIRST

The truth is that ALL ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS have their basis in the Zoroastrian and Yazidi beliefs

A great many Muslims try to deny the FACT that their forebears became Muslim after being given the choice of "Convert or Die" yet in Kurdistan there are valleys that contain the skeletons of those who refused to convert

All praise to the Yazidi - who after many centuries and more than 70 attempted genocides - have managed to hold out against the often savage opponents

In fairness Christians are not much better - they have destroyed or enslaved entire tribes who would not convert to Catholicism

[Anthea]

BasNews

YPG Prevents Aid From Reaching Yazidi Refugees
Nuwar Faqie Mosul

Kurdish arm group YPG has forced Yazidi youths on stranded on Sinjar Mountain to join them, or they would not allow them get aid.

After Kurdish Peshmerga forces, working with a special force of Kurdish Yazidis, found a way to rescue the refugees on Sinjar Mountain, they have discovered that members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) have settled on the mountain and formed a youth movement.

Peshmerga Forces Commander on Sinjar Mountain, Qasim Shasho, told BasNews that the YPG, the military wing of Democratic Union Party (PYD), has been forcing Yazidi youths to join the movement.

Most recently they have tried to obstruct the rescue of the refugees on Mount Sinjar, and prevented aid arriving.

“The PYD has raised its own flag over the tomb of Sharafaddin a person well-known among Yazidi people,” said Shasho.

“The YPG fighters have made so many problems for us, and we want the PKK and YPG fighters to leave the area in order for us to free Sinjar town and return stability and security to the area,” added Shasho.

http://basnews.com/en/News/Details/YPG- ... gees/32628