Persecution of Yazidis by Muslims

The persecution of Yazidis by Muslims has been ongoing since at least the 15th century.[1] Yazidis are an endogamous and mostly Kurmanji-speaking[2] minority, indigenous to Upper Mesopotamia.[3] The Yazidi religion has been regarded as devil worship by Muslim fundamentalists in earlier centuries,as well as by modern Islamists.[4] Yazidis have been persecuted by Kurdish tribes since the 15th century, and by the Ottoman Empire from the 17th to the 20th centuries.[5] As the Ottoman Empire expanded, Kurds and Turks often worked together to persecute Yazidis. Much of the Ottoman persecution sought to convert the Yazidis to Islam. This was also a goal of Kurdish persecution, as well as to assimilate them culturally through Kurdification. Ottoman and Kurdish persecution of Yazidis was at its worst during the 19th century.

Yazidi refugee children from Sinjar in Newroz Camp, Al-Malikiyah District, August 2014, after the Sinjar massacre

In the 21st century, Yazidis faced violence from Islamists during the Iraq War, including the April 2007 Mosul massacre, and the 2007 Yazidi communities bombings which killed 796. The Sinjar Resistance Units (YBŞ) was set up to defend Yazidis in the aftermath of these attacks. Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) attempts to extend its influence have also caused tension, prompting renewed accusations of Kurdification.[6]

The genocide of Yazidis by ISIL, which began with the 2014 Sinjar massacre, led to the expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Yazidis from their ancestral lands in Sinjar. Thousands of Yazidi women and girls were forced into sexual slavery by the Sunni fundamentalist majority-Arab Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and thousands of Yazidi men were killed.[7] Five thousand Yazidi civilians were killed[8] during what has been called a "forced conversion campaign"[9][10] being carried out by ISIL in Northern Iraq. The genocide began following the withdrawal of the KRG's Peshmerga militia, which left the Yazidis defenseless.[11][12] Among the reason for the Peshmerga's retreat was an unwillingness to fight fellow Muslims in the defence of Yazidis.[13] ISIL's persecution of the Yazidis gained international attention and led to another American-led intervention in Iraq, which started with United States airstrikes against ISIL. Kurdistan Workers' Party, People's Protection Units, and Syriac Military Council fighters then opened a humanitarian corridor to the Sinjar Mountains.[14][15][16][17]

Since 2016, Yazidis in Syria have been forced to flee from the Turkish occupation of northern Syria to the relative safety of the secular Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria,[18] because of the war crimes committed against Yazidis and other minorities by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, an overwhelmingly Sunni militia with strong jihadist influence.[19][20] The Turkish Armed Forces have also targeted the YBŞ, including the April 2017 Turkish airstrikes in Syria and Iraq and the 2018 Turkish strikes on Sinjar.

References
  1. https://books.google.it/books?id=3RNEBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA45&dq=Sindi+Kurds&hl=de&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
  2. Allison, Christine (20 February 2004). "Yazidis i: General". Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 20 August 2010.
  3. Nelida Fuccaro (1999). The Other Kurds: Yazidis in Colonial Iraq. London & New York: I. B. Tauris. p. 9. ISBN 1860641709.
  4. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/07/who-yazidi-isis-iraq-religion-ethnicity-mountains
  5. Evliya Çelebi, The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman: Melek Ahmed Pasha (1588–1662), Translated by Robert Dankoff, 304 pp., SUNY Press, 1991; ISBN 0-7914-0640-7, pp. 169–171
  6. https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/11/10/vulnerable-ground/violence-against-minority-communities-nineveh-provinces-disputed
  7. Callimachi, Rukmini (16 August 2018). "Turkish Airstrike in Iraqi Territory Kills a Kurdish Militant Leader". New York Times. Archived from the original on 21 October 2018.
  8. Cetorelli, Valeria (9 May 2017). "Mortality and kidnapping estimates for the Yazidi population in the area of Mount Sinjar, Iraq, in August 2014: A retrospective household survey". PLOS Medicine. 14 (5): e1002297. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002297. PMC 5423550. PMID 28486492.
  9. From Sinjar massacre: Cetorelli, Valeria (9 May 2017). "Mortality and kidnapping estimates for the Yazidi population in the area of Mount Sinjar, Iraq, in August 2014: A retrospective household survey". PLOS Medicine. 14 (5): e1002297. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002297. PMC 5423550. PMID 28486492.
  10. Arraf, Jane (7 August 2014). "Islamic State persecution of Yazidi minority amounts to genocide, UN says". The Christian Science Monitor. Archived from the original on 8 August 2014. Retrieved 8 August 2014.
  11. Blair, David (6 June 2015). "Isil's Yazidi 'mass conversion' video fails to hide brutal duress". The Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 23 August 2014. Retrieved 24 August 2014.
  12. From Sinjar massacre: Blair, David (6 June 2015). "Isil's Yazidi 'mass conversion' video fails to hide brutal duress". London: The Telegraph. Retrieved 24 August 2014.
  13. Phillips, David L. (2018-11-29). The Great Betrayal: How America Abandoned the Kurds and Lost the Middle East. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781786735768.
  14. Murad, Nadia (2017-11-07). The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State. Crown/Archetype. ISBN 9781524760458.
  15. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/freeing-yazidi-women-combating-21st-century-slavery-revival-project
  16. Phillips, David L. (2017-07-05). The Kurdish Spring: A New Map of the Middle East. Routledge. ISBN 9781351480369.
  17. "ISIS Terror: One Yazidi's Battle to Chronicle the Death of a People". MSNBC. 23 November 2015. Archived from the original on 16 March 2016. Retrieved 17 March 2016.
  18. Denkinger J.K., Windthorst P., El Sount C.R.-O., Blume M., Sedik H., Kizilhan J.I., Gibbons N., Pham P., Hillebrecht J., Ateia N., Nikendei C., Zipfel S., Junne F. (2017). "The 2014 Yazidi genocide and its effect on Yazidi diaspora". The Lancet. 390 (10106): 1946. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32701-0. PMID 29115224.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  19. https://www.nationalia.info/new/10430/assyrians-in-kurdistan-arm-themselves
  20. https://www.voanews.com/extremism-watch/hundreds-yazidis-displaced-amid-turkeys-incursion-northeast-syria
  21. https://time.com/5706818/yezidi-isis-turkey-syria-iraq/
  22. https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-syria-exit-puts-yazidis-in-peril-11571351665
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