Why do ISIS terrorists and Turkish regime kill Yazidis?

Why have ISIS terrorists and the Turkish regime killed and captured thousands of Yazidis in Iraq and Syria while the international community has done almost nothing to document the 2014 genocide in Iraq’s Sinjar by ISIS [Its Arabic Acronym is DAESH]?

Turkey, a NATO member, never bombed Iraq’s Sinjar when it was besieged by ISIS. It waited until Yazidis returned before claiming it needed to bomb “terrorist” targets.

In August 2018, Turkey assassinated a Yazidi leader who was driving back from a memorial service for genocide victims, alleging he was a PKK leader, according to media reports that affirmed there are still up to 3,000 missing people kidnapped by ISIS, mostly women and children. The community, which suffered genocide, now faces a new threat of airstrikes.

“On August 3, 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, IS, Daesh) terrorist group attacked the Yezidis in Shingal, Iraq. Yezidis are an ethno-religious minority in Iraq. ISIS killed or captured nearly 10,000 Yezidis. They forced them to convert to Islam or be killed. ISIS enslaved and sexually abused the women and girls. They brainwashed the boys and used them as suicide bombers. They executed the men. They sold the babies and toddlers to raise them as Muslim. This was the 74th recorded Yezidi genocide,” Dr. Amy L. Beam, an American researcher, writer and human rights advocate said in her book “The Last Yezidi Genocide” which was published in English paperback on Amazon in 2019.

The 362- pages book contains heart wrenching stories of survivors of ISIS captivity, their dangerous escapes, and eye witnesses testimonies to the atrocities. Half of the book is the author’s narrative analysis explaining the culture, history, evidence, and politics of the genocide in Iraq. 3,000 Yezidis remain missing.

“The Last Yezidi Genocide” by Dr. Amy L. Beam

The United Nations recognized the Yezidi genocide in 2016, established a UN committee to investigate the genocide in 2018, and funded it in 2019. This book, which is the result of four years of interviews provides evidence of the genocide. It should be required reading for any researcher, scholar, social worker, or policy-maker studying terrorism, genocide, immigration and asylum, and the Middle East.

 She was living in southeast Turkey expanding her tourism business when 20,000 Yezidis fled over the mountains from the barbaric ISIS terrorists’ attack upon their homeland of Shingal, Iraq, in which 10,000 Yezidis were killed or captured in August 2014.

A Yazidi woman, Sara showed Beam the IDs of her husband and two small children whom had been captured.  Beam explains, “I got up to hug Sara, and she broke down in sobs, then fainted in my arms.  Then her mother fainted. People showed me photos of beheaded men and piles of dead bodies.  They gave me lists of their abducted family members.  I was the only outsider there, and I could not turn away from this tragedy. I knew I had to alert the world to this crisis, but the enormity of the responsibility left me trembling inside.”  Since that day, Beam has not stopped campaigning to help the Yezidis get international asylum and aid.

In 2018, Beam moved to Shingal city and she was the only foreigner with permission to live there.  

She states, “I came to report the truth to the world because judges in Europe were denying asylum to Ezidis who had risked their lives to get there. The courts are erroneously claiming that it is safe to return to their villages in Shingal. I came to Shingal to video the empty villages and report that there is no electricity, no water, no infrastructure, and no means of livelihood. It is impossible under current conditions for Ezidis to return from their camps to their villages. There is no solution in sight.”

Beam has gotten more than 700 Iraqi IDs and passports for survivors of ISIS captivity and rape. Most of them received asylum in Germany, France, Australia, and Canada. While meeting the survivors many wanted to share their stories with her.

Heart wrenching stories

She narrates in her book a lot of stories, including the story of  three sisters who are survivors of three and four years’ captivity with ISIS terrorists.

“The three sisters now live in Australia. ISIS killed their father on  August 3, 2014, in Tal Ezeer, Shingal, northern Iraq. ISIS, in addition, killed Mirza Baker’s father-in-law. First they drove a car over his legs then they shot him,” Beam told Syria Times e-newspaper, pointing out that some sources announced that as of the end of April, 3.371 Yezidis had been rescued from ISIS terrorists.

According to these sources, ISIS kidnapped 6.284 Yezidis among them 3.467 females.

On March, 5 2019, it was reported that 550.000 Ezidis lived in Iraq prior to August 2014. While 100.000 estimated emigrated out of it since the same year.

ISIS terrorists destroyed 68 religious sites and shrines for Yezidis in Iraq.

Last month, one of my friends told me that one of the Turkish-backed terrorist groups killed a Yazidi lady because of her ethnicity in Afrin city in Syria’s Aleppo province.

She added that the terrorists also kidnapped over 200 Yazidis and demanded ransoms to release them.

“They killed some of them. Before the start of the Turkish regime’s aggression on Syria on January 20-2018 , there were 35.000 Yazidis in 22 villages in Afrin region. Now there are only 1500 Yazidis, most of them are elderly, while the others have been displaced and they are living in camps in Syria and Lebanon,” she said.

A Yazidi young man wrote this poem to express his pain and the pain of his people, and allowed me to share it with you:

It’s about Genocide!

I want to scream and cry for children cried when their mothers were enslaved and raped !

I want to scream and cry for the kids who lost their parents during Genocide.

I want to scream and cry for little Yezidi girls who were kidnapped and enslaved!

I want to scream and cry for the Yezidi mother who IS cooked her kid to eat it!!

I want to scream and cry for the kid who lost his girlfriend who was taken as slave!

I want to scream and cry for the girls who lost their husbands after a week of their marriage!

Basma Qaddour