Mount Sinjar rises from the arid plains of northwestern Iraq like a grassy sentinel — ancient, scarred, and unyielding.
Today marks ten years since the Islamic State launched its genocidal assault on the Yazidis in Sinjar.
To the Yazidis, the mountain is sacred; they believe Noah’s ark rested here after the biblical flood. Its slopes are dotted with shrines, sacred places where fires are lit and prayers spoken. Under starlit skies, Yazidi oral histories of creation, exile, and survival are passed down from generation to generation.
Mount Sinjar has also served as a shield for the Yazidis through generations of persecution. The historically marginalized ethnoreligious community, with roots in pre-Zoroastrian belief systems, blended with Sufi influences, has long relied on the mountain for protection.
So when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or Daesh — a Salafi-Jihadist group that branded the Yazidis as infidels — stormed the Yazidi heartland of the Sinjar region on August 3, 2014, hundreds of thousands instinctively fled toward the mountain.
While many escaped to Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, an estimated fifty thousand Yazidis took refuge on Mount Sinjar’s upper plateaus.
For those unable to reach higher ground, unimaginable horrors ensued. Within days, ISIS had killed thousands. Nearly seven thousand Yazidis were kidnapped — women and girls sold into sexual slavery, boys indoctrinated as child soldiers. Over a thousand Yazidis, mostly children and the elderly, died from starvation, dehydration, or injuries during ISIS’s siege of Mount Sinjar, which cut off tens of thousands from food, water, and medical care.
The entire Yazidi community of around…
Auteur: Jaclynn Ashly
