Sinjar: Proxy Wars on Sacred Ground
Eleven years ago today, ISIS began its genocidal assault on Iraqi Yazidis. Reporting from the Sinjar region, our correspondent shows how a fractured community finds its path to recovery hindered by geopolitics as much as by violence.
Hanif Khudeda, a Yazidi woman, stands outside of her tent on Mount Sinjar. (Courtesy of Jaclynn Ashly / Jacobin)
Mount Sinjar rises from the arid plains of northwestern Iraq like a grassy sentinel — ancient, scarred, and unyielding.
Today marks eleven 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.
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