Nightmare in Iraq

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/nightmare-in-iraq.html

Fearing for their lives, more than 150,000 Yezidis fled Sinjar and surrounding villages to mountains north of the city on August 3, 2014 when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) attacked the area. Some young and elderly are dying from the harsh conditions.

Nightmare in Iraq
By contributors | Aug. 11, 2014
Joe Stork via Human Rights Watch

I visited a Yezidi village south of Dohuk last Wednesday — a magnet for 60,000 to 70,000 Yezidis fleeing fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS). Those not taken into homes of local residents were camped in classrooms, schoolyards, or buildings under construction. They had bread and water, but not much else, having fled their homes a few days earlier with no more than the clothes on their backs.

The next day, a colleague found only two families at the village – the rest, thousands of them, had fled overnight after ISIS seized control of nearby towns populated by Iraqi Christians. The Yezidis, an Iraqi minority who are ethnically related to Kurds and practice a 4,000-year-old religion, feared they could not count on protection from Kurdish peshmerga forces who control Iraqi Kurdistan.

Many more Yezidis – upwards of 150,000– fled Sunday morning from Sinjar and surrounding villages into rugged mountains a dozen or so kilometers to the north. There, they found few means of sustenance or even shelter amid the mountains’ sparse vegetation – no water to speak of, and little by way of shelter from summer temperatures that can soar to 120 Fahrenheit. Perhaps as many as 40,000 managed to descend on the northern side and make their escape that same day, before ISIS surrounded the mountains.

Over the following days, a few thousand more trickled out in small groups, braving ISIS snipers, and made their way into Syria before crossing back into Iraq, with the help of Syrian Kurdish fighters, some distance to the north of Dohuk.