Yazidis Face Death, Obama Sits On His Hands

Who are the Yazidis versus ISIS (Islamist nation of Syria, Iraq and the Levant)?

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Redacted From: Wikipedia and Israeli TV Ch. 1

The Yazidi  are a Kurdish religious community who practice an ancient religion linked to Zoroastrianism and ancient Mesopotamian religions. They live primarily in the Nineveh Province of northern Iraq, a region once part of ancient Assyria. Additional communities in Armenia, Georgia and Syria have been in decline since the 1990s, their members having migrated to Europe, especially to Germany.

The Yazidi believe in God as creator of the world, which he placed under the care of seven “holy beings” or angels, the “chief” (archangel) of whom is Melek Taus, the “Peacock Angel.” In Zoroastrian-like tradition, the Peacock Angel embodied humanity’s potential for both good (light) and bad (dark) acts, and due to pride temporarily fell from God’s favor, before his remorseful tears extinguished the fires of his hellish prison and he reconciled with God.

Historically, the Yazidi lived primarily in communities in locales that are in present-day Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, and also had significant numbers in Armenia and Georgia. However, events since the 20th century have resulted in considerable demographic shift in these areas as well as mass emigration. As a result population estimates are unclear in many regions, and estimates of the size of the total population vary.

In August 2007, some 500 Yazidis were killed in a coordinated series of bombings in Qahtaniya that became the deadliest suicide attack since the Iraq War began. In August 2009, at least 20 people were killed and 30 wounded in a double suicide bombing in northern Iraq, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said. Two suicide bombers with explosive vests carried out the attack at a cafe in Sinjar, a town west of Mosul. In Sinjar, many townspeople are members of the Yazidi minority.

The Salafist militant group Islamic State ISIS) which considers the Yazidi devil-worshippers, overtook Sinjar in August 2014 following the withdrawal of Peshmerga troops, forcing up to 50,000 Yazidis to flee into the nearby mountainous region. Threatened with death at the hands of militants and faced with starvation in the mountains, their plight received international media coverage, leading President Obama to authorize humanitarian airdrops of food and water onto Sinjar Mountain and US airstrikes against militants in support of the beleaguered religious minority. The humanitarian assistance began on 7 August 2014.

Israeli TV news expert reporter, Ehud Yaari, 8-8-14, CH1:

Obama sent TWO airplanes which dropped TWO SMALL bombs ONLY , each of 160 Kg (350 pounds) (I have read 500 pounds elsewhere) on the ISIS Muslim terrorists who are killing ten of thousands of innocent people there and sell women to slavery (yes, in 2014), and the UN council said it “should be stopped”  with no condemnation. The war there has been going on for two months and only now Obama dropped two bombs on the butchers. He has also dropped via air, food supplies that are totally inadequate and are not falling into the hands of people who truly need them.

… ISIS has treated Iraqi minority groups absolutely brutally during its advance. This has included Christians and other groups, but in early August ISIS began threatening Iraq’s Yazidi group, who are trapped in a horrifying plight. The Yazidis are an ethno-religious minority with about 600,000 adherents worldwide. Yazidi religion is often described as a blend between Zoroastrianism and Islam, particularly mystical Sufi Islam, but ISIS calls them “devil-worshippers.”

The planned humanitarian airdrops are explicitly designed to help the trapped Yazidis. Still, airdrops alone may not be enough. One analysis suggests that “24 C-130 transport aircraft flying round trips every day would be necessary to keep the Yazidi supplied with water” — and that doesn’t even include food. US airstrikes will attempt to break ISIS’ encirclement of the mountain.

Iraqi Christians are also victims of ISIS’ march. On August 6, ISIS took Qaraqosh, Iraq’s largest Christian town. The town of 50,000 has had limited access to food, power, and water since, and some Christians have been given the “choice” to convert to Islam or be killed…”

(Obama’s intervention is as usual, too little too late with his foreign policy in complete disarray. The only question is can the US survive two more years of his administration? Obviously, there are hundreds of thousands of people that cannot) jsk

Things Get Worse For Non-ISIS Iraqis.

ISIS Is on the Verge of Expelling Northern Iraq's Religious Minorities

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BY NINA SHEA , CP OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

August 6, 2014|9:35 am

• 
  Nina Shea is director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and co-author of Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians

The Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS, is continuing its two-month-old rampage across northern Iraq's large, multi-cultural Nineveh province, intensifying religious cleansing and further consolidating its power. Nineveh's Assyrian Christians report that Sunnis from throughout Iraq – including some from Kurdistan — have joined the some 10,000 jihadists to fight under the black banner of the Islamic State.

While much attention is being given to the destruction of Nineveh's ancient monuments, the suffering of the province's religious minorities at the hands of the jihadists is being given short shrift by both the media and our political leaders. Individual lives and entire civilizations are being destroyed, not in conflict – there hasn't been much — but through the deliberate convert-or-die policies of the Islamist extremists.

To date, neither President Obama nor Secretary Kerry has mentioned the epic humanitarian and human rights catastrophe underway in this large agricultural province that for over a millennium has been home to Christians, Yazidis, and various ethnic Sunnis and Shiites. The U.S. has provided humanitarian aid in the wake of each attack, but the Islamic State's siege of Nineveh requires immediate additional measures to protect Iraq's uniquely vulnerable minorities.

In a rout of Kurdish peshmerga forces this past weekend, the Islamic State captured Shinjar, home to the Yazidi minority, two other smaller towns, and an oil field.

The United Nations' envoy to Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, has warned that a "humanitarian tragedy is unfolding in Sinjar," as some 200,000 people, including many Yazidis, have fled to the mountains, where the humanitarian situation is "dire."

The New York Times reported that one Yazidi worker said he escaped through the hospital window while being shot at when Islamic militants burst in, demanding to know his religion. Hundreds of civilian Yazidi families were reported rounded up and the men were executed and their widows made "jihad wives." According to the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization (HHRO), working in north Iraq, more than 50 Yazidi children have died.

Yazidi Prince Tahseen Said has issued a desperate appeal for help to President Obama, among other world leaders, but no response has been received.

The Yazidi religion is an ancient, pre-Christian monotheistic faith that reveres angels, is linked to Zoroastrianism, and is viewed by the Islamic State as an intolerable affront to Islam. Like the Christians, Yazidis have been subjected to horrific persecution by extremists in recent years, including a recent incident related to me by the Yazidi Human Rights Organization, in which Isis plucked out the eyes of 13 Yazidi men who refused to convert to Islam and then, when they still refused, doused them with gasoline and burned them alive.
The horrors deepened on Monday, when jihadists entered the village of Tel Kepe. With the Islamic State's persecution of Mosul's Christians fresh in mind, Assyrian Christians from there, the village of Batnaya, and other villages north of Mosul immediately fled by car to the Kurdish border. It appears that Qaraqosh, a majority Assyrian-Christian town of 50,000 in Nineveh, will be attacked, if not next, then soon.
With tens of thousands of Yazidis facing imminent threat, a likely attack on Iraq's largest Christian town, the lives of many thousands of various minorities in play throughout Nineveh, and a dam that could be used by the Islamic State to flood Mosul and Baghdad up for grabs, the U.S. government needs to act fast. It should immediately do the following three things:

1) Respond to the Kurds' desperate plea for arms in their defense of Nineveh, which borders on but is not part of Kurdistan.

In an emergency meeting on Nineveh called by House speaker John Boehner last week, protection was identified as the most pressing concern, even more than humanitarian aid, by a variety of aid and rights groups The administration withholds arms from the Kurds while awaiting a new, unified Iraqi government with a new prime minister. Meanwhile, Iraqi troops abandoned Mosul to the Islamic State on June 10 and no Iraqi army troops are in Nineveh province now. Yesterday, Iraqi's current prime minister ordered air support to help the Kurds, but Baghdad has reportedly not paid Kurdish soldiers, now spread very thin, for six months.

2) Warn local populations of impending attacks; establish regular communications with vulnerable local minorities.

An advance evacuation warning could enable an orderly exit of residents ahead of jihadist attacks. When the Islamic State took Shinjar on Sunday, thousands of civilians fled into the nearby mountains, where aid will not reach them. When the group attacked Mosul on June 9, the city's residents were taken unaware and half a million panicked civilians fled in chaos. Later some of them, including Christians and Shiites, returned, apparently unaware of the Islamic State's convert-or-die policy in Syria, only to be stripped of their possessions and expelled penniless a few weeks later. Generally, communications between Nineveh residents and the international community need strengthening. As the situation deteriorates, aid delivery will become ever more difficult for aid agencies based in the Kurdish capital, requiring regular communications with local minority representatives inside Nineveh.

3) Assist resettlement within the country of displaced religious minorities. As Iraq fractures along religious and ethnic lines, the Christians, Yazidis, Mandeans, and other small minorities need help to resettle in places where they can restart their lives.

Baghdad facilitated an airlift to evacuate Shabak and Turkmen Shiites and resettle them in Najaf after Mosul fell, but Mosul's displaced Christians and Yazidis have had to rely on the hospitality of nearby villages, which themselves are struggling under the burden and with acute water shortages created by the jihadists. As the Islamic State takes more Nineveh towns, there will be less local hospitality available and more displaced mendicants. Consulting with local religious and political leaders, Washington should start now to help coordinate resettlement within Iraq for the Christians and Yazidis who have no area of refuge. A safe haven within Nineveh that can be realistically protected, as some Assyrians are calling for, should be considered. The Kurdish Regional Government has generously invited to take in the Christians without confining them to camps. Basra, where there is already a Christian presence, might be another possibility. In each case, these thousands of displaced minorities, many of whom are skilled professionals, will need help to get restarted. If such assistance is not soon in coming, religious diversity will be another of the Islamic State's conquests, as members of the small minorities continue to leave the country. Of course, in dire cases, France's offer of asylum to Nineveh's Christians should be taken up and assistance for this is also needed.

The Islamic State's bombing of Jonah's tomb and the historic mosque surrounding it two weeks ago was a significant cultural loss. But now the West must recognize that a horrific crime against humanity is taking place against Christians, Yazidis, and others right now in Nineveh. The leadership of the Obama administration is urgently needed, and the average American can freely speak up to demand it.

Nina Shea is director of Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom and co-author of Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians (Thomas Nelson Publishers, March 2013).

Where Is The UN? 40,000 Civilians Trapped By ISIS On A Mountain And No One Seems To Care.

40,000 Iraqis stranded on Sinjar mountain after Islamic State death threats

Tens of thousands of members of Iraqi religious minority groups are dying of heat and thirst on Mount Sinjar, human rights groups say, after death threats from Islamic State - formerly Isis

By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent

4:44PM BST 06 Aug 2014

Tens of thousands of members of Iraqi religious minority groups driven from their homes for fear of the jihadist group Islamic State are dying of thirst and heat on a desert mountainside in the north of the country, according to the United Nations and human rights groups.

Some 40 children have already died from the heat and dehydration, the UN children’s organisation Unicef says, while upwards of 40,000 more are sheltering in the bare mountains, without food or water or access to supplies. It says 25,000 children may be stranded.

^{Smoke rises during clashes between Kurdish "peshmerga" troops and militants of the Islamic State on the outskirts of Sinjar, west of Mosul (Reuters)}

Hundreds of adults, particularly men but also women and children, are already feared to have been killed or abducted by the group, which now surrounds their hiding place.

Most of the refugees, who fled their home city of Sinjar when it was seized by Islamic State at the weekend, are members of the Yazidi community. The Yazidis are an offshoot from Zoroastrianism and the “Peacock Angel” at the centre of their beliefs is associated by some Sunni Muslims with Satan.

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This makes them especially vulnerable to the sectarian attacks practised by Islamic State, which refers to them as “devil-worshippers”.

The group’s social media feeds, often used to trumpet its atrocities to instil fear in its enemies, have already begun to show executions said to be of Yazidi men.

“We are being slaughtered. Our entire religion is being wiped off the face of the earth. I am begging you, in the name of humanity,” a Yazidi MP, Vian Dakhil, was quoted as saying in parliament, as she broke down in tears.

There were also said to be Christians and Muslims among the refugees in the mountains, and the shortage of food was forcing them to hunt for wild game.

The Peshmerga announced their troops were in the area, supported for the first time by Kurdish fighters from guerrilla groups in neighbouring Syria and Turkey. But they have so far been unable to reach the refugees.

One man told an Amnesty International researcher, Donatella Rovera, that his relatives were among 30 members of two families seized by Islamic State from the village of Khana Sor, north-west of Sinjar.

“They killed the 15 men and took the women and children and until now we do not know what happened to them, where they are or if they are alive or dead,” he said.

Islamic State, which also controls nearly a third of neighbouring Syria, swept across most Sunni parts of Iraq in a dramatic strike at the beginning of June, seizing the second biggest city, Mosul, and the birth-place of Saddam Hussein, Tikrit.

It has already filmed itself carrying out mass executions of Shia soldiers it captured as the army withdrew precipitously. Sunni soldiers were made to pledge allegiance before being sent home.

Its fighters are still attacking the edges of Shia majority areas of the centre and south of Iraq, including within a few miles of Baghdad, but has held off a full frontal attack. It seemed also to have been held up by Kurdish forces in the north and east, who guard the Kurdistan autonomous region.

However, they too were forced to retreat by a sudden advance across an 80-mile front at the weekend, abandoning both Sinjar and another northern city, Zumar, where Islamic State claimed to have killed the regional Kurdish intelligence chief.

The Kurds, who are only lightly armed, are appealing for help from the United States, but Washington has up to now insisted all military aid in Iraq goes through the central authorities. It has sent military advisers to Baghdad, along with surveillance drones and Predators armed with Hellfire missiles.

Meanwhile, the jihadists’ advance has sent Christians, Shia, and other minority groups flooding into Kurdistan for protection. The number of Christians in Iraq had already declined by between a half and three-quarters since the allied invasion of 2003, and now priests are warning the religion is on the verge of extinction in the country.

^{Displaced families from the minority Yazidi sect walk on the outskirts of Sinjar (Reuters)}

On Wednesday, Islamic State shelled Christian towns near the frontline, sending more refugees on the road to the comparative safety of the Kurdish capital, Erbil.

The Kurdish forces, the Peshmerga, said they were starting to fight back, with the support of the central government, with whom they usually have a poor relationship. State television in Baghdad claimed an Iraqi army air strike on Mosul prison, which Islamic State was using as a base, killed 60 jihadists, though this could not be verified.

The Yazidis mostly fled south when Sinjar was attacked, but the mountains where they are hiding out are entirely cut off by the Islamic State. Some photos have emerged of panicked lines of cars, and groups of people huddled at the entrance of caves.

The army has managed to drop some supplies by helicopter, but not enough.

“The civilians trapped in the mountain area are not only at risk of being killed or abducted; they are also suffering from a lack of water, food and medical care,” Ms Rovera said. “We urge the international community to provide humanitarian assistance."

Amnesty claimed the Kurdish government had begun blocking access to refugees. “The plight of displaced people caught up in the fighting in Iraq is increasingly desperate and all parties to the conflict must do more to ensure their safety,” Ms Rovera said.