The Unknown Yazidi

Written by Vian Faraj
Vian Faraj is a Kurdish Iraqi studying in the United States. Her father was an armed Kurdish fighter—a peshmerga (literally, “those who face death”). After Saddam Hussein attacked the Kurdish region in 1991, Faraj fled to Iran with her family. She returned to Iraq at the age of 14. She attended the University of Sulaimaniyah, where she earned degrees in mathematics and politics. She plans to earn a doctorate in political science and return to Iraq to teach politics.

Few people outside Iraq know anything about the Yazidi, an important Iraqi minority and followers of one of the original religions of the Kurdish people. Yet nearly 400,000 Yazidis live in the heartland of the Middle East—largely in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Their only temple, Lalish, is the Yazidi equivalent of the Muslim Mecca and is one of the most historic places in Kurdistan. The Yazidi ultimately came to the world’s attention last year when news media documented their deaths at the hands of Muslim extremists.

For the past two years, I have visited with and learned about the Yazidi. As a Kurdish person but not a Yazidi, I wanted to learn more about their history and about my Kurdish background. I wanted people to understand and remember these people, who have been persecuted by Saddam's regime and who sometimes survived only by living in mountainous regions of the country. Only since the fall of Saddam have Yazidi men finally been able to exchange their Arabic garb for Kurdish clothing.

In Iraq, Yazidis often isolate themselves on the outskirts of Arab cities, as they do in “No Man's Land,” land contested between Arabs and Kurds outside of Mosul, an area so dangerous that when I first went to meet my contact there, she sent armed men in two separate cars to meet me.

The Yazidi people, though unique in their history and religion, are not immune to the struggles facing mainstream Iraqis. The shared plight of Iraqi women is one good example. Most women in Iraq are expected to marry before they turn thirty, even if they continued their education and went to university. There is similar pressure for Yazidi women. My Yazidi contact from outside Mosul was a beautiful but nervous 33-year-old woman. I asked her why she wasn’t married.

“Because of the inconsiderateness of men! In our culture and our religion, we are not allowed to marry people who are not Yazidi,” she said. She was embarrassed. Only one of her seven sisters was married, and one of them was 40. Yazidi people also are divided into four levels, and no one from the first level can marry someone from the other levels. These religious rules are difficult to change, even by dissenting members of the religious council.

“We don’t have anything to do here in this country except to live our lives as housewives,” she said. What she said had a strong impact on me. In a country in ruin, the only opportunities these people have are to become parents, wives, and husbands. Even these choices are limited. My contact knew that if she broke these rules, she might suffer the same fate as Du’a, a 17- year- old Yazidi woman who married a Muslim man in 2007. She was stoned to death, supposedly by her own people, because of this outside marriage.

But Du’a’s killing was not only an attack on women’s rights; it was an example of the extremism that can take place in Iraq. Du’a’s killing served as a vehicle for increasing conflict and terror in the region. The video of her death by stoning was widely circulated, but I could not bring myself to watch it. Some of the people in the crowd were not Yazidi, and I believe some of those involved were followers of the Baathist party who were interested in creating conflict between Muslims and Yazidis. The same night Du’a was killed, a threat was sent out to the Yazidi people over the Internet, and the Yazidi people went out to the streets to protest.

Less than one week after Du’a’s murder, extremist Islamic groups seeking bribe money killed twelve innocent Yazidi people, including women and children. It was like hell. I was in a Yazidi area when one of the bodies was returned to a neighbor. The mother and sister of the dead person went outside and struck themselves. They screamed, “How come you’re dead? Who killed you?”

My friend didn’t let me go outside because I was a stranger who looked Muslim. “Maybe the Yazidi people will do something. You won’t be safe,” she said. I wanted to go back home. My friend told me to tell people what I saw and explain that the victims were regular people, who weren’t in high profile positions. Yazidis are not the only targets of these extremist groups; a Christian priest was killed as well.

I had returned home a few months later when, on the eve of a Yazidi religious celebration, bombing attacks killed more than a thousand Yazidis and wounded more than three thousand in Sinjar, according to Kurdish news sources. We were about five or six hours away when we saw the news on live television. The Kurdish government brought the wounded to my city hospital. Television programs solicited blood donations, and everyone contributed. The wealthy brought blankets and clothing.

I can’t forget those days. You try to make your life okay, but when you see that, it’s no longer okay. I was working at the National Center for Gender Research, training women from other cities for political participation and for making life more democratic. When I saw all of these things happening, I felt depressed. Why couldn’t I make more change? War is everywhere, and all of what I have tried to do is gone.

The tension between Muslims and Yazidis has since lessened. I believe the two groups respect one another. I believe there are some people who want Iraq to be peaceful and others who do not, like those who want the Baathist regime’s return or other countries that will be threatened by Iraqi or Kurdish success. Safety is still unpredictable. In the Yazidi Kurdish area, you should not go out after 5 p.m., and if you go out in the morning you should carry a gun. Even though I do not live in the Yazidi areas, there are no borders. There is no permanent safety; and we have relatives we worry about who may live there.

The population of Iraq is divided into eight religious groups: Shia, Sunni, Yazidi, Kakaee, Kildanee, Christian, Sirianee, al-Saaba, and al-Mandanaeea. The Iraqi nationality formations are Arabic, Kurdish, Turkoman and Kldo Ashury. Yizidi Kurds live in five different countries. Some of them are in Syria, some of them are in Iran, most of them are in Turkey, and some of them are in Russia.

http://iraqwarnews.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=160:the-unknown-yazidi&catid=32&Itemid=200016