The World Has Forgotten Us

Thomas Schmidinger

Description

The persecution of the Yezidis, a Gnostic religious community originating in Upper Mesopotamia, has been ongoing since at least the 10th century. On 3 August 2014, Islamic State attacked the Yezidi community in Sinjar, Kurdistan. Thousands were enslaved or killed in this genocide, and 100,000 people fled to Mount Sinjar, permanently exiled from their homes.

Here, Thomas Schmidinger talks to the Yezidis in Iraq who tell the history of their people, why the genocide happened and how it affects their lives today. This is the first full account of these events, as told by the Yezidis in their own words, to be published in English.

The failure of the Kurdistan Peshmerga of the PDK in Iraq to protect the Yezidis is explored, as is the crucial support given by the Syrian-Kurdish YPG. This multi-faceted and important history brings the fight and trauma of the Yezidis back into focus, calling for the world to remember their struggle.

Acknowledgements

Preface to the English edition

Timeline

Abbreviations

Maps

Introduction

Part I History of Sinjar and the genocide

1. The Sinjar Mountains as a natural space

2. Sinjar in ancient times

3. From the Islamic conquest to the periphery of the Ottoman Empire

4. The religion of the Êzîdî

5. Social order and religious office-holders of the Êzîdî

6. The tribal society in Sinjar

7. Sinjar in the late Ottoman Empire

8. The British occupation and protectorate

9. The Êzîdî in Iraq

10. Resentments against the Êzîdî

11. Ethno-confessional groups in the Sinjar region: Êzîdî, Christians, Jews and Muslims

12. Sinjar under the rule of the Ba’th Party

13. After the fall of Saddam Hussein: between Baghdad and Erbil

14. The massacre of 14 August 2007: the 73rd firman?

15. Encircled by jihadists

16. The IS genocide in August 2014

17. Genocide

18. The reintroduction of slavery and sexual violence

19. Struggle for liberation: regional conflicts in the smallest spaces

20. The life of the displaced

21. Regional conflicts: Sinjar in the crosshairs of Turkey and Iran

22. Marginalised and instrumentalised: is there a future for the Êzîdî in Iraq?

Part II Photographs

Part III Interviews

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• International Relations
• Human Rights
• Political Science
• Middle Eastern
• HISTORY
• Religión
• Fatty Joins the Force
• Iraq
• History of the Middle East
• General officer
• Military
• Terrorism
• Middle East
• Genocide
• World
• Religion
• General
• Irak
• PDK

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780745346076
• Langue: German, Middle High (ca.1050-1500)
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

The World Has Forgotten Us
A comprehensive, indispensable work.
- Sudwing
The discrimination, exclusion and persecution of the Yezidis did not just begin in 2014 with the so-called Islamic State. Thomas Schmidinger shows with great dedication the anatomy of a subtle genocide against the Yezidis in the last two hundred years.
-Professor Jan Ilhan Kizilhan, Director of the Institute for Genocide and Peace Studies, Stuttgart
An important book delving into the history and recent memory of the community, a vivid reminder of how the past and present of the Yezidis continue to be painfully intertwined.
-Nelida Fuccaro, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the New York University Abu Dhabi
Thomas Schmidinger is one of the best experts on the region. This book is a must read.
-Josef Weidenholzer, former MEP and Professor Emeritus, University of Linz
The World Has Forgotten Us
Sinjar and the Islamic State s Genocide of the Yezidis
Thomas Schmidinger
Translated by Michael Schiffmann
First published as Die Welt Hat Uns Vergessen : Der Genozid des Islamischen Staates an den JesidInnen und die Folgen by Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna, www.mandelbaum.at
English-language edition first published 2022 by Pluto Press
New Wing, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Thomas Schmidinger 2019, 2022
The right of Thomas Schmidinger to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 4606 9 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 4605 2 Paperback
ISBN 978 0 7453 4607 6 EPUB
ISBN 978 0 7453 4609 0 PDF
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface to the English edition
Timeline
Abbreviations
Maps
Introduction
Part I History of Sinjar and the genocide
1 The Sinjar Mountains as a natural space
2 Sinjar in ancient times
3 From the Islamic conquest to the periphery of the Ottoman Empire
4 The religion of the z d
5 Social order and religious office-holders of the z d
6 The tribal society in Sinjar
7 Sinjar in the late Ottoman Empire
8 The British occupation and protectorate
9 The z d in Iraq
10 Resentments against the z d
11 Ethno-confessional groups in the Sinjar region: z d , Christians, Jews and Muslims
12 Sinjar under the rule of the Ba th Party
13 After the fall of Saddam Hussein: between Baghdad and Erbil
14 The massacre of 14 August 2007: the 73rd firman?
15 Encircled by jihadists
16 The IS genocide in August 2014
17 Genocide
18 The reintroduction of slavery and sexual violence
19 Struggle for liberation: regional conflicts in the smallest spaces
20 The life of the displaced
21 Regional conflicts: Sinjar in the crosshairs of Turkey and Iran
22 Marginalised and instrumentalised: is there a future for the z d in Iraq?
Part II Photographs
Part III Interviews
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
This book would have been impossible without the many interviews and conversations I was able to carry out with a very broad range of z d , Christian and Shiite survivors of the IS genocide. It would go beyond the scope of these acknowledgements to thank them all by name. However, I want to thank in particular those who - like erihan Rajo and Ali Saleh Qasim - shared with me stories that were extremely painful to them. And of all those who have supported me in this project, I want to thank a few additional people by name. My special thanks go to Mirza Dinnay, who I have known as a friend for one and a half decades. As far back as 2010, he enabled me and my wife, Mary Kreutzer, to visit Lali and have a long conversation with the Baba Sheikh, and he has often lent a helping hand in arranging important contacts. Without him, this book could not have been written. I want to thank Pir Dayan for not hesitating to take me in his office car to the mountain in September 2017, when it was completely impossible to get permission from the Kurdish authorities to travel to Sinjar. I also thank Muhammad Hassan from Rojava for accompanying me from Syria to Sinjar in January 2019 and for organising important interviews that I felt were still necessary for the book. And finally, I want to thank the many z d friends in Xanke, in Rojava, and at the Sinjar Mountains who opened their houses for me and offered me their hospitality during my field research. In a region where there are neither hotels nor hostels, the hospitality of the people is a basic precondition for any extended stay at all. I thank you all for these wonderful encounters, for your stories, for the meals together and for the nights under the clear star-spattered sky in the mountains of ingal. I will forget none of this for the rest of my life.
Preface to the English edition
When I wrote the first version of this book in 2019, I deliberately wrote it in German, not only because German, as my first language, is still more familiar to me than English, but also because I wanted as many z d as possible to be able to read this book themselves. After Iraq, Germany is now the country where more members of this religious community live than anywhere else. The conflicts in Turkey and Syria, the poverty in the Caucasus, but also the persecution in Iraq have led to a situation where a locally anchored religion with its local sanctuaries has in part become a diaspora religion.
This is one of the reasons why interest in the z d and the genocide of 2014 is often more pronounced in German-speaking countries than in Britain, the USA, Canada or Australia. German was thus the obvious first language for this book. However, from the beginning I was also keen to make English, Arabic and Kurdish editions possible. The English edition is now appearing more than a year later than planned due to the consequences of the COVID-19 crisis for the English-language book market.
However, this also made it possible to update the book even more and to include the results of further research visits in spring 2021 and following developments in autumn 2021. The English edition is thus more up to date and complete than the German version. It also contains significantly more photos from the region.
The text of the German edition was translated by Michael Schiffmann, but the entire edition was reviewed. I inserted the additions and updates in English. The book is thus not just a translation of the German edition but updated to the summer of 2021. However, no further interviews have been inserted in the interview section. The original voices of various actors in the region still speak for themselves today, just as they did in 2019 when the first German-language version of this book was published.
I hope that on the basis of this version there will soon be Arabic and Kurdish editions of this book, and in the meantime I hope this English edition will meet with international interest, and also that this book, like my earlier books on Rojava and Afrin, can be discussed at events in the English-speaking world.
Vienna, 3 July 2021

A note on spelling: readers will notice that the transliteration of z d is inconsistent with the book s subtitle. The most common English spelling was used for the subtitle to ensure that the book will be more easily found by readers searching for information on this subject. For the main text I have used a spelling consistent with the system of transliteration used throughout the rest of the book.
Timeline
1832
Attack by Muhammed Pasha from Rawanduz
1837
Attack by the Ottoman governor of Diyarbak r Hafiz Pasha
1849
First permanent representative of the Ottoman Empire in Sinjar
1892
Attack by Omar Wahbi Pasha from Mosul
1915
Christians and z d from other parts of the Ottoman Empire flee the Genocide of the Young Turks and are protected by Hemoy ero
1918
British occupation of Sinjar
1932
Sinjar becomes part of the new Kingdom of Iraq
1957
First villages in the mountain destroyed and resettlement projects
1960
Land used by z d in the south of Sinjar transferred to Arab farmers
1970s
Destruction of 400 villages in the mountain and resettlement of the z d in collective towns ( mujama at ); z d counted as Arabs
1991
Sinjar stays under control of the regime of Saddam Hussein, while parts of the xan region, including Lali , become part of the Kurdistan Region controlled by Kurdish Peshmerga
12 April 2003
US troops occupy Sinjar, local resistance in Sinun against US-troops
2005
Sunni Islamist uprising in Tal Afar
14 August 2007
Terrorist attacks in Tel Ez r and S ba x Xidir
29 June 2014
Islamic State (IS) declared in Mosul
3 August 2014
IS attacks Sinjar and the z d villages around Sinjar, about 50,000 people flee to Mount Sinjar
3-5 August 2014
About 500 z d men executed in and around Sinjar City
8 August 2014
US starts air strikes on IS units and convoys
9-11 August 2014
PKK, YPG and YPJ open corridor between mount Sinjar and Syria
15 August 2014
Massacre of Ko o
21 October 2014
IS takes over additional territories in the north of Sinjar and cuts the escape routes
17 December 2014
First Kurdish offensive against IS starts; north of Sinjar Mountains liberated
12 November 2015
Second Kurdish offensive to liberate Sinjar City starts
13 November 2015
Sinjar City liberated
3 March 2017
Armed conflict between Roj Peshmerga and YB near Xanasor
12-29 May 2017
Liberation of southern Sinjar by People s Mobilisation Units (PMU) and Iraqi army
25 September 2017
Referendum on Kurdish independence, also hel